Please don’t ask me how late I went to bed. I needed to feel like I had achieved something last night. Yes, there are some tiny pieces in the bottom right corner that I won’t cut out until I’m ironing, because I know I will lose them. I’ve learned things as I’ve aged, as I’ve progressed through the artmaking process. Seven hours and 44 minutes of cutting stuff out. And I graded stuff last night too. And cooked dinner. And did a bunch of other administrative stuff for school and other groups I’m in. After monitoring 140 kids dissecting frogs.
No wonder I have a headache this morning (or is that the late night? Hard to say.).
I get to iron things together next. That’s the part I really like. That’s the part where it’s hard to get me to stop. Plus I have another one I need to have done by mid-July and I haven’t started it. This is getting a little crazy. Or maybe crazy is my normal. Really, I’d probably be happier just making art all day, but I’m not sure I’d make any MORE art than I do now. Maybe I’d get more sleep and the dishes would be done. Or not.
There are 15 days of school left. I can do that. Panicking about getting grades done still. As well I should be. Tried to push boychild into jobhunting yesterday. Not sure how seriously he took it. Going to start sending him job-finding YouTube videos. In fact, maybe all of you should do that. It might help. SIGH. And he ate all the girlchild’s lunch food. Of course, I put a post-it note on MY lunch food explaining where the ingredients were if he wanted to make his own. Does that make me smarter than she is? No. Just more experienced. I had a dad and a brother who went after my food even if I labeled it. Then a roommate’s boyfriend as well. So I have been traumatized. Seriously…my SIL says my brother and I are way too protective of our food. We both point to Dad. Food stealer extraordinaire.
OK. Well. I have a ton of stuff to do for work this morning, including a parent meeting. I wish I could just hang out here and wax poetic about my desire to iron things, but it seems the need to pay the bills is strong today. No, I don’t have my car back! Oh well. Took meds for the headache, prepped the best I could for some portion of the day. The rest will have to wait. As always.
So apparently after mostly recovering from pneumonia (I’m still coughing on and off), exercise can kick your ass. I finally got back into it last night, and I needed a nap afterwards. This is proof of old age right there! It’s OK. It was a really long day already, and an occasional nap is not a bad thing. I can either nap in the late afternoon (OK, it was early evening), or I can stay up really late, or I can do both! Like last night.
It did mean I started dinner late and then I was working on grades, which went even later. I have five things that still need to go in the gradebook, but I’m not collecting two of them until tomorrow, and the other three will get handled on Friday. Luckily, they are not grading things…they are just calculations of stuff the kids are supposed to do all trimester, so it won’t take much time. I want to be done on Friday night. Seriously done. And I will be. I still need to grade makeup tests, which I hate doing, but whatever. And then on Wednesday, kids are handing in the last unit and taking a test, but those will go to the next trimester, because there’s no way I can grade them in time. I’m really trying to be organized!
I’m trying to be organized because the art…she calls me. I was reading entry forms on Saturday (trying to be organized again) and one blurb made an entire drawing just pop right into my head. That’s two that are residing up there. I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to get them on paper. I keep thinking about it, but it takes mental energy and space to do that, and I haven’t found that yet. Last night, after dinner and grades, I had choices about what to do next: trim the two cancer hands and put bindings on them? Ugh. Sounds like decision-making. Finish quilting the upholstery nude? Ugh. Sounds tiring. OK, then there’s only one thing left (besides drawing, which I had already dumped off the table, due to a lack of available brain power): cutting out Wonder Under for the Ventura piece…
So that’s what I did. It was sufficiently brainless enough that I could handle it. Obviously, I had way more available brain power over the weekend (because I gave up on the grading?).
I also traced some stuff on freezer paper…
This is the piece I’m not allowed to show. In fact, I don’t know when I’m allowed to show it…it’s not my pattern anyway. This is what I work on at soccer games at the moment. I really should be finishing all those birds I’ve been working on for the last two years, but I haven’t been in the mood. The more tense the game is, the less I can do complicated embroidery. Just stitching bits of wool together seems to be all I can handle.
In other news, the girlchild should start hearing back from colleges in the next 2-4 weeks. No stress here! Seriously, I’m not looking forward to it…we know she’ll get in to a few of them at least, but then how does she choose? Hard to know…wait on the financial aid stuff, I think. The boychild really only had two choices…so it made it much easier.
Meanwhile, those two drawings in my head are poking at me like small children…hungry to be released. Maybe I should find a way to get one of them started today…or tomorrow…she says, looking at her calendar and all the shit that is piled upon it (metaphorical, vague shit…not actual shit). It’s possible I am overextended. As usual.
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…
Oh my god, I just want to be done with it…the neverending quilting. That stage when you aren’t far enough along to be close to done, dammit. You can see the end of the dark tunnel, but it’s just a speck of light in the distance, not close enough to start running towards it, because you have to conserve your energy. Sigh. Even trying to get done with the outlining would have been OK, which was interesting, because when I started quilting (late, again) last night, I thought, oh no, you’re not going to finish the outlining tonight…even though the previous night you thought it was just one more night, that part of your brain was obviously delusional and just needed to go to bed. Then I started stitching, and I got about 45 minutes in, and I’m looking at it, and my brain is at war: one part is sure I can finish and the other is telling me to give up and go to bed (that’s really what the responsible, normal adult would have done, but as I have proven over and over again, although I am responsible with many things, making art and going to sleep at a reasonable hour are not my strong points). In the end, I kept going, sure, positive, convinced I could finish.
I was so close…really, maybe another hour. But no. Sigh. Went to bed. Slept the sleep of the crazy dreamer who wanted to be DONE. Which is just stupid, because I would only be done with the OUTLINING. I still have to quilt the fucking background, and it’s proving to be a bitch, bunching up all over the place, trying to make a mess of my quilting, so I’ll be swearing at it and pulling at it and stretching it flat and wondering how all those people who quilt like 1/8″ apart do it without making a monstrous mess (this is why you are NOT one of those quilters. You think they’re crazy amazing for quilting that close together and they think you’re the same for cutting out a million pieces and then trying not to lose them all while ironing them together. Really, you’re all nuts.).
So I’m 8 hours in and I haven’t even finished the outlining, and I suspect I’m about halfway through, but really I don’t have a freakin’ clue. I do know that at only an hour a night, I’m not going to make my deadline. AND finish grades. AND hike on Saturday.
Oh well. And I really want to clean house; my bedroom and the studio are driving me nuts and I’m barely home long enough today to do anything. So. Yeah. Dysfunctional human much?
Don’t you wonder what happens in the artist’s brain to make the expression of some image (or sound or whatever) SO important that everything else seems pointless? I mean, food isn’t pointless, especially being diabetic, but I wish I had a replicator and could just ask it to make more of that avocado tomato salad this morning so I could take it to school. I have all the ingredients, but not the time (or mental energy, apparently). OK, I might find energy for that. Maybe. But I’d really rather finish sewing or do the next drawing or anything really rather than clean house. I wonder how close to hoarder status I’m approaching. That should motivate me to take the bags of clothes out of the entryway to the thrift shop today, except I don’t actually have time to do that.
Anyway. Writing is also taking up my time these days, but it’s OK. It was my November goal, and I realized at the time that it would be a stretch. I’m writing more than 2000 words a day on the novel at the moment, killing off characters with wild abandon and then going back and giving them a video entry or a first name only, because dammit, they had kids and I need their kids for genetic testing. In the book. Not in real life. I don’t have an outline for this book. I don’t know how it ends. I don’t know how it gets to the ending. I have a general feel for the shit that might happen and for the core problem of the book, but it’s writing itself. It reveals itself to me while I write…which honestly is the way I draw as well. Although I might have a drawing in my head, it doesn’t come fully apparent until pen hits paper, and I often have no idea where it will go until it’s done. I’m tapping into some part of my brain that just makes. It doesn’t really care what you think about it; hell, it barely cares what I think about it. It does take some direction, when I have some, but mostly I’m just spilling some synaptic goo out on paper or screen and trying to make sense of it afterwards.
Seriously. The book is gonna need a massive edit. But that’s OK. I hear that’s normal. Maybe tonight I’ll finish outlining, and then the light at the end of the tunnel might feel a bit closer. Sigh.
Kathy Nida 