A Bit Lost and a Lot Damaged…

So I posted yesterday from a college presentation in a hotel up in La Jolla after reporting the girlchild’s car stolen (OK, the boychild might argue that it is HIS car, and I would truthfully tell both of them that it is MY car that they are allowed to drive and apparently allow to be stolen). Yes, it was locked. My brain had hit stress overload about two hours prior and was quickly self-destructing, as that little section that asserts control started pushing all the bad shit into the corner and blocking it off…”You can’t see that. It’s not there.” My counselor says I should just deal with one day at a time right now…I think yesterday I managed the Next Five Minutes at a time. And it worked. Honestly. We managed everything, the sheriffs (is that a word? It sounds wrong) were at my house at 10 PM, we ate dinner in there somewhere, because I had the brains to prep it before we left for the presentation, and did I grade anything last night? Ha. You know the answer to that AND the swear words I would apply to it. Insert here.

I did manage about 40 minutes of fabric last night. Zonked out and woke up too early to the girlchild’s ride to school (thank god for friends), drove off to my school and completely lost it. Understand there are some other major things going on that didn’t help. Made it to school, got everything under control. School is a good place to be when you’re freaking out, because you can’t spare the brain power to actually Freak Out. You have too many kids in your class, too many fires to put out, too much to manage to completely lose it. Trust me. I know this. I survived last year precisely because of that.

And during 7th period, girlchild texted me (in all caps) that they had found the car. That it had not been shipped to Mexico for parts (it’s one of those cars, old, but useful). That it had not been damaged. A couple things were stolen, but nothing of huge import, and it’s drivable. And the other major situation semi-resolved itself as well by the end of the day, and all that crap that was standing on my shoulders and JUMPING up and down…it was gone. Mostly. Better.

So I went to the gym and I ate and I finished my book for book club tomorrow night and I graded a little bit and then I cut out pieces, because I still have this crazy goal to have that all done this week…

The top bin has the pieces I haven’t cut (an awful lot of them), the middle one is stuff that’s cut out, and the bottom one is trash, which I hold on to for a bit, just to make sure I didn’t throw a piece in there by accident (it happens). I got a lot done tonight…I’m about 5 hours in. I guessed what? I don’t remember. Fifteen hours? Aargh. Not happening by Friday, that’s for sure. I’m getting there, but not fast enough. My plans for the weekend? Grading papers, progress reports, watching soccer, going to the gym, and dealing with this quilt. Nothing else. I have something else I will do if I am far enough along, but I suspect I won’t be. So now my goal is to have everything cut out by the end of day Saturday, hopefully even sorting the pieces Saturday, so I can start ironing Sunday. If I can get it ironed by the 17th? I might be OK. I will still have to pinbaste that weekend and then start quilting.

I’m going to be gone for Houston at the end of the month, so I lose three days…three good days, of course, because I’m going to Houston with my mom to the Celebrating Silver opening…I got my catalog yesterday…

It was nicely packaged with a silver bow and a silver padded envelope. It looks like it will be a nice exhibit…

I’m going to remember to bring my catalog with me this time so I can have the artists sign. There will be a few artist walk and talks, but I will only be able to do Friday at 2 PM. Stop by and say hi if you’re around. I will also hopefully be at the SAQA meetup the night before, assuming we don’t miss any flights. I will also be at the Visions opening next weekend, even though I didn’t get in (because I rarely do) and the SAQA Shades of Passion opening on Friday next week in Poway as well, although running late. I guess October is art opening month. So that cuts into my working time. Plus I’m trying to make sure girlchild gets to all the college presentations that she wants to go to…she’s doing it so differently than the boychild, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Anyway. After the stress of the last 36 hours, it was nice to just sit in the quiet tonight and cut things out while watching bad vampire television. My brain basically shut down…well, except for the part that was questioning the bad science on the teevee. I’m relieved about the car…trying to buy another car at this point is just not on the list of things I can deal with…hell, I can’t deal with hanging the TV on the wall or fixing the door handle for real. Maybe I can go back to planning one day at a time now, instead of 5 minutes. You never know. I’m trying to dial down the overload with school, totally using my teacher’s aide as much as I can (he’s awesome, by the way) and not taking on too much. Ha. Yeah. That’s always a joke. But I’m trying.

I suspect that’s all I can do at the moment. Continue to try, to move a little bit each day, to find sanity and laughter and goofiness in every day. I stalked a 6th grader today who was talking to himself…followed him for a while until he noticed, jumped a bit, and then giggled. I’m amazed by how many kids know my name, even though they’re not mine. I’m glad to be finding some of my goofball self again. Slowly but surely she’s coming back. The part that dances in stores and sings at the top of my lungs in the mall and chases kids all over the quad. That person. She needs to be around more. She’s OK. Wow. It really hurts to say that. Because I know she was gone for so long. Hidden. Hiding. Lost. Damaged. And she’s still a bit lost and a lot damaged, but she’s ready to dress up like a painting and ride a bike in combat boots and hike like a zombie. If the universe could ramp down the car abductions and other crap, that would be a plus.

Maintain, Dammit. Maintain.

Deep breaths. Keep thinking of the positives. I finished ironing last night (it was 2 in the morning). It took 14 hours and 14 minutes to pick all those fabrics, about 3 hours more than I had predicted. At one point, all I had left were these…

and I considered stopping, because it was freakin’ late and I was tired and I’ve been fighting a hormone/weather headache on and off for 4 days and it was back (it’s back now too…making me think stress is the third arm of it, the part whacking at my brain right now). But I thought…fuck. I’m ALMOST FUCKING DONE. Just do it. If that doesn’t tell you more about who and how I am, I don’t know what will.

Cutting out tree parts is a pain in the ass, because they take a huge piece of fabric and don’t fit together well. It’s time-consuming…

and hard to find big enough pieces of fabric in my stash. But I did it. Ninety-four fabrics later…

There they all are. Heavy on the grays, strangely. So I sort of met my deadline on that and now need to cut them all out by Tuesday. Ha! I might need to revise that.

I’ve started, sure, but I am so freakin’ buried in schoolwork right now. Trying to tread water, keep head up and breathing. Deep breaths. Meditating every day at the moment, which yes, I should be doing anyway, but the fabric choosing was taking care of that mindset until Friday. Friday things started to implode in my head. I’m overwhelmed. I need to step back and make my lists and deal with one day at a time. I can’t lump it all together and try to deal with it all at once. I can’t even go Big Picture at the moment.

I’m 37 hours into this quilt. Cutting out should take a while. Apparently on a similarly sized quilt, it took 13 hours to iron and 15 to trim the fabrics. If that’s realistic and I have 13 hours to go, I’m not going to get anywhere near finished until next weekend. Then I’ll start ironing. Maybe that’s my goal: to be ready to iron sometime next weekend. (Kathryn: no hiking, reduce social events as much as possible? Fuck.) I’m really busting my butt on this and at work and it’s starting to show. I’m really incredibly tense (chiropractor this week!) and I have no mental release really. I’m so deep into the have-to list that I cannot get focus. This week is ugly too. They all are. Who am I kidding?

Anyway. College stuff is paid. Boychild still doesn’t have a job. Girlchild is currently waiting for me to come help her paint her parking spot (she’s a senior), but I have to go grocery shopping first. I remembered to buy dog food yesterday, but forgot the cat food. Midnight broke into the food cupboard in protest and ripped open the other cat food bag, the one she doesn’t like. I regularly have to duct tape holes in cat food bags because of her. I still have one class of tests to grade and I have 5 kids who don’t really read or write English who honestly need a curriculum at about a kindergarten level, but with 7th grade content. I haven’t fully planned this week’s lesson yet, and I’m about to blow off any connection to technology, just to save my sanity.

But I finished the God-Damned Fucking Ironing.

I am the crazy-haired woman all in black who is standing in the middle of the produce section at the grocery store in meditation pose, eyes closed, deep breathing. You should just walk around me. Maybe give me a hug while you do it.

Ironed Flesh

A typical afternoon after school during the Fall soccer season: Our heroine lounges on the couch, freshly made hot cup of tea at hand, grading in a pile next to her, studiously at work. The phone rings and hysterical screeching emanates, so loud that the nearby windows vibrate with the sound. Girlchild is at her soccer practice after coaching little girls at the wonders of the game, and her father has brought her the bag with all her equipment, but the giant hole in the side means one of her shoes has fallen out…somewhere between the couch and the driveway…of her father’s house. Sigh. Our heroine stands up, considers whether to re-engage the bra-strapping structure that she was quite relieved to have removed, and gets into the car, figuring no one is looking at her boobs anyway. What the fuck. Whoops. Lost character there. She drives to her ex’s house, raids it for the shoe (it took a while; it was wedged between two cushions) and drives to the soccer field, where she slowly drives past the field, waving the shoe in the air until one of the parents runs over and fetches it, delivering it to the girlchild.

You think I jest. This is unfortunately how it goes sometimes. That was after my second cup of tea and 3 Motrin, trying to banish the giant headache brought on by minimum day schedule, blood sugar affected by minimum day schedule, and a hellish back-and-forth with adults that should not be allowed in a work environment. As teachers, we seem to have fewer protections against stupid adults (including the ones we work with) than in other businesses. I am now department chair, not by choice, but because it was the best thing to do for the survival of the department (and my sanity). Next year, there will be more options and I should not have to be in charge. For now…it sucks, but it is. I also finally went off on the tech lady who keeps telling me No Duh stuff, like “did you check their email and password?’ Um. No. I assumed that if a 12-year-old can’t log in, that they did it right and I don’t need to test it myself. And I wasn’t smart enough to check my OWN password list, instead of relying on them to provide that information. Because I’m not smart or anything. Granted, many teachers aren’t tech savvy, but some of us are, and it’s not in your best interest to piss off those who have a clue what they’re doing. Don’t assume we’re all idiots and talk to us like that. Fucking condescending tech people.

So yeah. It was a meditation day. In class. My kids were really the least of my troubles. Today they were the easiest part of my job, which is saying something.

I just took on another art entry too…due by January 1. I think I took it on. I might be clinically insane on that one. Because there’s one I want to do for February as well. There is no rest for the crazed.

I really need to go to bed, instead of trying to write this tonight. Suffice it to say that I will continue tomorrow morning, after more caffeine has crossed my non-ruby lips, and hopefully I will have something pithy to say about the million fleshy pieces I ironed tonight (and the million I did NOT).

It’s morning. I wish I felt rested, but it is not my way. I did finally start ironing last night around 10…because I graded papers and cooked dinner and dealt with girlchild’s breakdown over a variety of crazy things, not the least of which was that the ACT test that she took a little over a week ago? They lost the test booklets somewhere, so they all have to retake the test. She’s livid (her word). I’m kind of amazed. How does one lose such a thing? And what is their home address? Because I know a few hundred high-school kids who want that.

Anyway, part of the issue was solved last night, but we still have to deal with the ACT…in her crazy schedule, she doesn’t have a spare 5 hours lying around to retake a test. So we’ll have to jiggle some things.

Anyway, I finished sorting all the fleshy bits and ironing them down…

It’s kind of like a crazy jigsaw puzzle. That will never fit together right. That’s one of 7 in the run…plus fingernails and toenails. I haven’t dealt with all the other stuff yet…it’s piled up at the back of the table…

It includes eyeballs, hair, hearts, arteries, lungs, nipples, lips…anything that’s not the standard flesh colors. I’ll start those tonight…so although I’m in the 800 box, I haven’t finished stuff from the 300s yet…so I have no idea how much I have left. I did iron for almost 2 hours last night (I was in the zone), which is why I’m so tired this morning. Because I can’t just stop ironing and go straight to bed. My brain’s moving a bit too fast. I have to let it ramp down, read for a bit, space out a little. It takes almost an hour…sigh.

Katie and Babygirl are not currently friends…this standoff was while I was trying to iron, with Katie standing right where I need to be. She won’t move when you tell her, or at least, she won’t if there’s a cat involved…so I have to physically pull her out of there.

Babygirl likes the iron because it’s warm.

I would think she would back off a bit when I’m actually ironing, but she doesn’t. She looking pissed off…well, she always looks pissed off…but we did comb her fur, because boychild said we had to, and she quite happily whacked away at the both of us with her claws while we were doing it. Amazingly, we are both scratch free, so she didn’t really mean it.

So 7 1/2 hours into the ironing. Still progressing. Yesterday was very successful. Grading a whole assignment got done, ironing got done. I wish I could guarantee the same each day this week, but…yeah.

This is the best part of Wonder Under…

(That’s sarcasm) Yup. The fusible sometimes releases from the paper. I am really obsessive apparently and lay out the pieces of WU and try to match them up to paper pieces that are the same shape. If I can’t figure it out, I just retrace them. I have not been good about keeping my WU in plastic bags this time around, and I can tell…it’s releasing easier. But it’s still the easiest method for me to do what I do. The two pieces on the right? I didn’t number them. I will figure out what they are eventually. Something in the tree.

OK. Today I teach zombies. Or I teach ABOUT zombies. Can’t remember. Might not matter.

Finally Ironing Myself to Fabric…

I met my goal. I ironed for three hours. I was really tired and had to rest twice. It makes it sound like I’m running a marathon (kinda am). Brain power needed to color pictures in head and find appropriate fabric colors is apparently quite a large amount. So after soccer and the gym, not much brain power left. Plus haven’t slept much lately. Keep fucking stuff up because of that lack-of-sleep thing. I slept finally Friday and Saturday nights (well, minus middle-of-the-night freakouts), but I feel more tired right now than on school mornings, when I only have 5 hours.

Probably I should avoid ironing myself into the quilt. Hard to do when I’m tired already.

Both kids are texting me this morning. So it’s quiet, but people are talking. Weird, huh? I haven’t had enough caffeine to deal with either. Too much information crossing.

So I started by cleaning up this space yesterday…

Because that’s where I lay out the Wonder Under pieces while I’m trying to figure out what to iron them to…I was trying to get that done before the soccer game, but it never goes the way you want, does it?

I managed to get a pile of fabrics on the ironing board…

(moved from one place to another…very efficient) and then later got them into piles by color and realized I have way too much fabric at the moment. I know that doesn’t make sense. I do keep buying fabric, but I don’t buy a lot at a time, and mostly it gets used up in backgrounds and backings and bindings and sleeves, but apparently I’m still adding more than I’m subtracting…something to do with how little of a particular fabric I use at a time? Or they are breeding.

So I didn’t start actually ironing until 9 PM.

Not particularly efficient sometimes. Really. I had all day. I’m not sure what happened.

Well, this happened…

They won 3-1…and they made all 4 goals (whoops). Between drive time and having to be there 45 minutes early, I usually lose 3 1/2 hours per game.

Girlchild headed the ball into the goal, her first header goal.

She did the happy dance. The ball on the right comes over and she’s the one in red in front of the goal. Right in front of the goalie and her white-shirted teammates, who probably blocked her getting to the girlchild. Yes, I forgot my camera at home, so these are all phone pictures.

Then we came home and there was some of this…

Because Katy needed it apparently (apparently her name is not spelled the way I thought, and she used to be KatyGirl, and that was way too much)…

Or girlchild needed it. Hard to say.

Once she was gone and it was quiet again, I set up the room the way I like it…so I can see the drawing while I’m picking stuff out…

and because apparently I have to have something underfoot and Calli was at the other house, Katy stepped up and laid her chubby little body out for me to step over. She is pretty mellow, though, and will not freak out when I step over her. She will follow me out of the room 700 times though if I leave to get my tea or pee.

It’s not ironing unless I’m stepping over a dog. And piles of crap. You’d think I could solve the piles-of-crap issue.

I ironed for a while, got into some fleshy bits, not sure if I have enough of these fabrics for the larger figures…

Guess I will figure that out the hard way. Yes, I’m still watching Star Trek. It really is awful dialogue at the moment, The Next Generation. I keep almost bailing on it, but I love Picard too much to leave him.

It’s amazing. I have so many flesh-colored fabrics and I keep coming back to the same ones, time after time. I try to branch out, but trying to get tones that go in a nice range is difficult. This one’s too brown, this one’s too pink, too peach.

This is what I’ve used so far…grays, reds (there was a heart), lots of pinky colors…

I only got about 185 pieces ironed last night…actually, no, it was more than that because I was pulling from other bins for the scales…

I stopped because it was after midnight, I was tired, and the next two things were very complicated birds. And I don’t know what color I want them to be. I could go for realism or crazy. Tempted by crazy. But still trying to color it in my head. Probably going to wait a bit before I start. Maybe. Blue and orange? Purple? It’s gotta pop on the background…

Anyway. It’s progress. Three more hours of ironing is my goal today, but I need to grade things too and grocery shop and plan for the week, so that could be problematic. In fact, I just went off and emailed the parents at school, because the kids have an assignment due tomorrow at 9 AM, and I suspect by my Edmodo stats (which I can unfortunately check on my phone, my iPad, and my computer) that many have forgotten. Of course, the app keeps crashing, so who the hell knows? Ah yes. 57 out of 140 submitted. Sigh. That is unfortunate. Easy to grade if they don’t turn it in, though. Man, that’s cynical.

The transition to technology is not without its issues. OK. Moving on with my day. Might be awake enough to deal. Hard to say.

Holding It in My Head…

So I’m done with that heinous task, the cutting out of 1070 pieces of Wonder Under. Total, it took 7 hours and 23 minutes. I’m noticing my estimates are fairly accurate in terms of hours, but not so accurate in terms of days. I think that’s because I overestimate my ability to blow off everything else. I forget about sleeping and eating and peeing. That shit takes time. It took me 5 nights. I did 3 hours yesterday. The shortest day, I did 40 minutes. Last night, I had quilt class, so I cut out for an hour and a half, and then I came home and decided I wasn’t going to bed until I was done. I even thought, only briefly though, that I should sort them all last night too, but I decided that was crazy talk. Because it was. It was after midnight when I finished.

It will take me another hour to sort them, so I’ll try to do that this afternoon/evening, depending on what other tasks arise. I really need to grade assignments. I was going to type ‘papers,’ but a goodly portion of what my students turn in at the moment is on the web, not in my hand. I finally got Google Classroom! Yay! I don’t know if it will solve all my problems, but it might solve a couple. Now I just need to find time to set it up and populate classes, which is complicated by the fact that more than half my students don’t have names in my Gmail. Which is maybe Hapara’s fault? Or Google’s? Or probably it’s just a planetary shift issue and will adjust when the magnetic poles flip and I become Queen of the Hinterland.

I am NOT sarcastic.

So finding time to grade stuff has always been a problem for me. I’m debating letting my teacher’s aide grade warmups. The girlchild does, when she has time (she has no time at the moment, and did not clean up the living room yesterday when I asked her to because Math. That was the answer. I don’t understand how Math can stop you cleaning. Art? I can understand that, but not Math). I can’t have him grade anything that requires me to check for understanding, though, and warmups are sometimes like that. Girlchild knows to hand me papers that trouble her. I don’t know. I can’t decide. Sigh! Poor guy; he has been very patient with me. I think I scare the crap out of him sometime…I wonder why certain kids want to be my aide. It can’t be fun.

Anyway, here’s the finished pile of very exciting, artistic, tiny little pieces of Wonder Under.

You wish you had some of this. Admit it.

This means fabric tonight! Which yes, means I did manage to go to Rosie’s yesterday afternoon and pick out background fabric…

This bright blue/purple called out to me. Some others called out to me as well, so I stood there and stared at the fabric that called and half closed my eyes and visualized the drawing imposed on the fabric, and then started coloring it in in my head. If it’s blue, am I using a lot of water in the quilt? If so, what will that look like? What things in the drawing are touching the background? What have to lace their way across it, like the trees I do? How will the contrast work? Trees can be problematic…browns tend to be medium range for trees (at least when I do them), so if the background is too close to a medium range, the tree won’t be as obvious. Same with dirt. Sometimes that’s a good thing…sometimes it’s not. What about the leaves? What about the main figures in the quilt? Will they show up well or fade into the background? What do I want them to do?

To the casual quilt-shop observer, I’m meditating in front of a row of bolted fabric. Well, you’re kinda right. It is a form of meditation. Using my brain to process the image. Who needs a fucking computer?

Yes, I also bought some other fabrics, some light/whites for eyeballs and fingernails (seriously) and two Halloweeny fabrics with anatomical hearts and skeletons and the like. I thought Rosie’s looked pretty empty of fabrics…maybe because Market is coming up? I don’t know. Lots of empty shelves. It disturbed me. I’ve been going to Rosie’s since I started quilting in 1987. That’s a long time…and yes, it’s my favorite San Diego store. There’s a quilt store closer to home (it’s actually moving further north, but will still be about the same distance) that I rarely frequent. It’s not got a lot of fabrics. It caters to class-takers, those that like to buy rulers. I only have two rulers. Actually, I think I have a couple more than that, but only because people give them to me. I’m still using the same two rulers I’ve had for probably 25 years. I don’t cut a lot of straight lines. I don’t take any classes really either. At the opening last week, someone offered me a brochure for a local art facility that does classes, and I’m thinking, um, yeah, I’m kinda past that stage. I might take a mural-painting class or a graffiti class at this stage in my life, but I don’t need to do a whole lot else. I’ve already done it.

So I’m trying to be excited about the next stage…it’s usually the hardest AND the most relaxing stage of the quilt…picking fabrics. It’s definitely the most creative, after doing the original drawing. I’ve been trying colors out in the drawing in my head. This one is pretty easy. Some are much harder. I can see this one pretty clearly though. So hopefully that will make it easier. Realistically, there’s social stuff I could be doing in the next week (I actually went searching for some), but I can’t. I need to get this done. I don’t have money to go do a lot of stuff either, so it’s better if I don’t. If I can get 3 hours done tomorrow and another 3 on Sunday (my goal), then 5 during the week…if I get too tired for the ironing portion, I can work on cutting things out instead. I’m still aiming for Sept 30 to be done with fabric and ready to iron. Gasp.

It’s nice to have a plan. Unfortunately, as we know, it will get blown up at some point, but at least I try. I’m being very hermit-like and antisocial trying to get this thing done. That part is depressing, but it’s necessary at the moment. When it cools off and soccer mellows out, maybe I can start hiking again. I would go next week, but am buried in meetings and a back-to-school night. Can’t really hike by myself at 9 PM.

I think it’s Friday. I’m onto the next part of the quilt. I made progress. Holding that in my head for now.

Dead Ends

Sometimes I feel like the days are running into each other. I woke up this morning, no idea what day it was. No clue. Couldn’t tell Wednesday from Tuesday from Thursday. Then the girlchild got into the shower, so that narrowed it down, but only slightly. Do I have school today? Do I have to get up? The alarm hasn’t gone off yet, and she could be up early for soccer, so that didn’t help figure the day out. My brain is so foggy in the morning from dreaming, from the REM sleep that surrounds me because I went to bed too late. I should really do something about that, but I have a hard enough time getting stuff done when I sleep this little…I know, not a healthy decision, but…I’m at my most awake from about 10 PM on.

So the end of the world happened yesterday: my mom texted me. She’s been anti-text for so long, I was seriously confused when I saw it pop up on my phone. Amusing.

I went to yet another technology training yesterday, a new app we’re piloting in our district (I’m still trying to figure out if I care enough to use it, or how it might be useful, because if we don’t pay for it, then I’ve dumped a lot of time and resources into it for nothing), and the official district people were there, not IT exactly, but the computer experts from the teacher realm, so I showed them my weird Google/Gmail issues…and they admitted that I am cursed. Google really does hate me. I have confirmation. Seriously, it is behaving badly. I have one more thing I can try, and then? Well? I’m left twisting in the wind, I think. But I do wonder if my Google Classroom issue is related to this. I did slam her assumption that I was using another Gmail account and that’s why none of it was working. Yes, I realize the majority of teachers are not very tech-savvy and do stupid shit like that all the time. I’m not one of them sweetheart. I understand which account I’m supposed to be using. I sat next to her WITH my computer and went through and told her to tell me if I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t. They admitted my freak status.

Well then. Moving on. She also tried to blame it on my using Firefox at school. I had tried Chrome, but a couple of the district websites don’t work on Chrome, so I switched back, per the instructions of our former tech genius. I use Chrome at home, though, and it didn’t work there either. So I switched into Chrome and showed her that. Sigh.

The pros from yesterday? I packed up the damn quilt and will ship it this morning. I was focused, although really tired. The heat is getting to me. So that was one thing off the list. I’m working on some of the other things today. I’m going to go get the background fabric today after school, I think. Maybe. If I can pull it off. Store closes early…would have been smart to do it yesterday, but after being at school for 10 hours, I was kinda done. I haven’t decided what color the background should be yet. I tend to pick darker colors because I do a lot of flesh-colored quilts, and they pop on the dark. I don’t like pure black…it tends to read really flat. I prefer dark blues, greens, and purples. Occasionally I push it with a pink or orange background (the orange one is hanging in my office right now, waiting to be completed). I had to schedule it on my calendar. Otherwise I might forget. I’ve been editing my calendar daily, pushing the things I didn’t get to onto the next day every day. SAD! I completed 2.4 tasks yesterday. I really needed it to be 3, but I lost time to getting the ex back to the soccer field after he drove the dizzy girlchild (didn’t eat enough, I think) back after soccer and then I had to go get her gas for her car. I think I’m going to put my foot down on that one. Calculate the gas she uses and just give her the amount. She can fill the damn tank. Yes, I know. Of course she can. It’s just easier sometimes to do it myself. I’m working really hard on delegating this year (my teacher’s aide really appreciates this).

I did more of this…again…

but only an hour. Yes, that’s a TARDIS in the background. That’s my worry, though…that I’ll only get in an hour of ironing a night, and it’ll take about 10-12 hours, and that’s way too many days. So Saturday and Sunday are important. I have class tonight, so I’ll get a couple of hours of trimming in. I’m at 4 1/2 hours now, but I have most of two yards left to cut, so probably another 3-4 hours. Too many days! But I have grading every day and lesson plans. I can’t ignore all that. I’d like to. Not an option.

I’m also trying to put some of the house issues on the front burner. I told the girlchild yesterday that I needed an hour this weekend (she freaked) to straighten up/clean the house. This after we couldn’t find anywhere to sit and eat dinner, mostly because she just dumps stuff everywhere and never picks it up. A week or so ago, I picked up everything on the couches and put it in a bag and hung it from her bedpost in her room. I’m going to need to do that again, I guess. I keep looking at the house and realizing the boychild will come home in December and I still will not have finished cleaning up from the remodel. My bedroom is still hoarding central with stuff that has no home or that I need time to process. The living room still needs some stuff done so we can put everything away. I don’t know how to push that higher on the to-do list. I run out of time and energy. The thing that screams the loudest is what gets done. Art screams really loud.

Anyway. I’m frustrated at the moment. By everything. Dissatisfied. Not happy with what’s there. Overwhelmed by some things. If the weather cools down a bit, I think that will help. If I can get the girlchild to help out a bit, that would also be useful. If I can get all this Wonder Under done, that might help too. Giant sighs. There’s a path out of this. I just can’t see where it starts. I keep running around and finding the start of a path, but it dead ends in cactus. Or a hole in the ground. Or up against the wall of an ugly building.

Sitting on It

It’s OK. All the crap from yesterday is still here, but I am sitting on it. Like you sit on your younger brother when you’re trying to keep him from running away. It’s squirming around a lot and trying to hit at me and yelling for mom, but mostly I can keep it down. I think if I keep getting shit done and keep meditating and keep exercising (oh holy endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, I worship thee), I might be OK. Did you know that some plant spines and insect venom contain serotonin, causing pain to those that are stung or poked? And some seeds have serotonin in them, causing diarrhea, making the body expel them quicker? Did I tell you I’m writing a sci fi novel about a plant/animal hybrid? I need to know more science to write this book. Seriously. What was I thinking? If it were fantasy, I could just make shit up and pretend the fantastical science backed it up, but in sci fi, it’s gotta be semi-believable.

I’m still doing this…

It’s taking a long time. Not really. I’m some number of hours in. I don’t know how many. My phone does, but it’s way over THERE. I know I didn’t start until 11, because I was grading papers, after meditating, after eating dinner, after going to the gym, after detention at school. I didn’t do a whole lot else. OK. You’re right. That’s actually a lot.

Fucking balance. Never to be achieved.

It was very hot here yesterday; car registered 106 on the way home from school, after 4 PM. We had a freak rainstorm in the area that hit the house and downed big branches (nothing hit the house), but it barely rained at school, a whopping 2.47 miles away. Today is supposed to be cooler. I wonder if the weather is messing with my mood. I was drained at the gym, unable to muster any emotion at all, but cried all the way home. I often just stand back from that part of my brain and watch it, confused. WTF? Get a handle on it, Kathryn.

I’ve been looking at my schedule, trying to fit a hike in, but there just isn’t time. Too many meetings, tutorials, trainings…the timing sucks. When my brain is doing its worst, I have very little time for social stuff too.

I miss my boy. The girlchild is home so rarely, and when she is, it’s better than it was over the summer, but if she’s hot and tired and I’m hot and tired, there could be screaming. Mostly, though, we are like two ships passing in the night. I see her for 10 minutes before she leaves for soccer. Sometimes that’s all I see. And if I have to spend 3 hours on the computer trying to post things like this…the post about the opening Saturday night…then I feel guilty for not hanging out with her. And she complains too. At least the boychild was around most of the time. If I was lonely, I could go bug him. He mostly tolerated that. Now I have to think that it’s three hours later there and I probably shouldn’t be texting him at 1 AM his time.

Anyway. Busy at school. Busy making art. Busy trying to catch up with all the stuff that needs doing that I never have the energy to actually do, which explains the house.

Even the cats were having issues with the heat.

Actually, Midnight was mad because I took the table runner off the coffee table, because girlchild left her cup of water on there (again) and Midnight rolls around a lot on the table, just stretching her body out and eventually knocking everything over and pushing it off onto the floor, so the table was sopping wet when I got home and I had to wash everything and dry it off, so her table runner was gone. So she picked the floor to roll around on instead.

OK, my to-do list is calling…it’s a lab day and I need something for homeroom and something for my teacher’s aide to do. I have a list for after school as well, after the training I’m signed up for to learn more tech stuff that will only work half of the time (seriously, that’s what happened yesterday…Google disappeared things and disconnected people and Edmodo acted like a spoiled brat and then Gmail got into it with me and acted like a crazed loon. I’m done.). I’m really looking forward to that.

I guess people like me never really master technology. We fuck with it until we can get it to mostly do what we need it to do, but it’s really lurking around the corner in the dark, waiting for a chance to jump out and knock us down. It was designed by techy boys, and I haven’t had great luck with them either, so it’s not so surprising.

More Wonder Under tonight. No fabric tonight (which reminds me, I don’t even have a background fabric, so I couldn’t pick fabrics if I wanted to…but now I need to schedule a trip to get the background fabric…argh.). First surviving the day.

Shit. And Fuck. Deep Breaths…

I woke up this morning hoping that last night’s mood had wandered off in the still-sweltering heat or better, that a predator had jumped it from behind and torn it limb from limb. Even that it was lost in the streets somewhere, no GPS, unable to relocate me, find my brain, continue to wear on me. I don’t even know where it came from…it snuck up on me, as I persuaded myself that this art rejection was not crucial, that technology isn’t out to get me, that I can in fact finish all the things I’m supposed to finish and be allowed to make art and maybe even exercise and meditate and eat. Maybe.

But no. ‘Tis not to be.

The first assumption is hormones, those beastly chemicals that rule my world. Look at the calendar. Do some calculations. Fuck me. I don’t do calculations. I look at an app and it does it for me. What it can’t do is predict all the other factors: stress, lack of sleep, who’s demanding things of me, what stupid shit I will have to take on because of other stupid people, teenagers, did I mention stress? And I’m wondering about the effect of our new minimum days at school. On Monday, we push the kids through shorter periods, which confuses my brain and blood sugar, so we can have an hour of collaboration. Which we did, but my food schedule gets off and that doesn’t help. And I was frustrated by technology limitations, and went down to my room to complete a task I was told would take 15-20 minutes, and after half an hour, was so frustrated I was on the verge of tears. I am not stupid. I know how to use help menus. I know how to read. But it wasn’t working.

Hey, any time something at school (insert work here?) gets so bad that you are tearing up? Leave. Go home. Change what you’re doing. So I did, but got a call as I was leaving that the girlchild’s dog had disappeared (damn pool guy’s dad who doesn’t close the gate behind him). It’s OK. She’s dumb, but smart enough to run to the other house, where my ex found her. Sigh. And this morning? I just caught her chewing on the girlchild’s senior photos. Which cost a million bucks. Luckily, I got them before she did major damage. Sigh. So she’s lying on the floor behind me and she knows I’m pissed off at her.

I had this dream last night that girlchild was picking out Christmas presents for family members and she had them all piled up in the store, and I kept telling her to check the prices, but then I had to leave to be somewhere, and she was going to check out at the register, and when she handed the receipt to me later, every item on it was over $100 and one was $515 and one was $212 (where is my brain coming up with these prices?) and I almost had a heart attack with the total. You don’t need to check Freud for that one. Just the most recent bursar bill from Cornell.

No pictures today. Do you want to see another pile of trimmed Wonder Under? I don’t. I managed 40 minutes of cutting last night. I think my plan of being on fabric by Wednesday is fucking delusional. And I’m supposed to be doing a million other things too. Filling out forms, shipping quilts, grading papers, reading the three books that are due back at the library (how I cause myself stress over that, I don’t know.), picking a day for my formal observation at school. I hate this shit. Hate all of it. Just want to come home and have it be a different life for once. Pack up all my stuff and move to some island with a bunch of pygmy goats and pigs and one horse who isn’t too big and boisterous. Then I can pretend I’m in one of those novels where I am totally isolated and NOT surrounded by people, and there is someone who delivers supplies every two weeks or so and it turns into one of those gothic romances I used to read when I was in 6th grade or so, where there’s no sex, just heaving bosoms and breathy statements of love and support and the horse comes in and whinnies in a supportive manner.

Sigh. Even that would irritate me today, I think. Fuck the guy yesterday who told me I could do that computer thing in 20 minutes flat. Fuck him for making me feel stupid. Better…fuck ME for making me feel stupid. It’s OK. I know who can help. I have a plan.

So when I get like this, I know I have to take action to keep it from becoming worse, from taking me over. I need to be efficient today, despite the over-100-degree temperatures. I need to not let anything get to me, even though I have to go to school and teach 150 7th graders how to do technology, AGAIN. Even though I have to commit to an observation date with a screwed up calendar. I will go to the gym, the air-conditioned gym, with my book (that was due last Saturday) and I will make my body behave, even if my brain can’t. I will meditate, because although it makes me cry (still, yes…even when I don’t talk about it, it still happens), it also helps with these moments, the ones where the stress and unhappiness inside me are ballooning out, trying to tear out of my chest. And I will pack up that damn quilt so I can ship it tomorrow, and I will fill out whatever damn forms I need to fill out and I will cut out Wonder Under for at least an hour.

And yes, at this rate, I may not finish cutting out Wonder Under until the weekend. And then I will work Saturday night and Sunday morning to make sure I have a good start on the fabric part. Because ideally, the fabric is chosen and trimmed by September 30. (choke) OK. That’s my goal. You can’t always realistically reach your goals. At the moment, I don’t seem to be able to achieve any of them. All right. Dear universe, dear brain…I’m not happy with either of you, and in true Kathy fashion, I will be fighting your shit. You can make me scream, yell, cry, fall down and kick my feet against your crap, but I will still fight it.

Meditating that shit right now.

In My Head…

I’m a little frustrated at the moment. I just spent about 20 minutes trying to find my camera cord, which the last time I looked, was hooked up to this computer. That was 36 hours ago. So apparently someone broke into my house, left the TV and computers and iPad, but stole my camera cord. OR…I have a teenager here. And she was obviously doing something here, because my iPad charger was in the living room, and she doesn’t use my iPad…so someone was here who has a newer iPhone than she does and they needed to charge it. And then they must have done something with photos on my computer and taken the camera cord off the hub, and then I don’t know what happened. And I can’t ask her, because she is currently taking the ACT. So the photos, lame that they were, because YES…I am still tracing that fucking Wonder Under…cannot come off the camera until the cord reappears.

I’m a little irritated. I don’t mind their using stuff…just put it back when you’re done and tell me what’s going on.

Sigh. I’m tired and it’s hot and I’m not happy. I traced for over an hour last night and only got like 40 pieces done, because they were all long hellishly twisty tree branches that had to be finagled onto the Wonder Under around each other, with multiple decisions of what overlaps what, and at the end of a long day, my brain was rebelling. I finally gave up. So yeah, I still have almost 200 pieces to trace today. I’m OK with that. My daytime is actually mostly open at the moment, except for some major school stuff and going to the gym. I can’t trace in the morning anyway, because the light table is in full sun and it’s bloody hot over there. It’s supposed to be over 100 degrees today (yes, our summer hits in September) and I’m not looking forward to hours of sweating…the gym is air conditioned, so I will go do that and then come back once the sun has hit the overhead mark. Maybe by then, someone will be able to tell me where my camera cord is.

Found it. Another 10 minutes of “Where would she put it down if she happened to be walking around with it, which why on Earth would she be doing that, because it doesn’t fit her camera?” On the couch, under her bag. Much as I will miss them when they’re both gone, there are moments when it seems it might be a lot less stressful and annoying to have no teenagers in the house.

There have been a lot of meditative moments in the last 36 hours, with school trying to kick my butt and me kicking it back, to getting yet another art rejection (dammit…but not unexpected…just frustrating), to dealing with the Wonder Under last night, to this morning’s cord situation. None of it’s major. It’s just all building up and sitting inside me and I need to meditate it out. Or exercise it out. Or something.

These are the branches that were getting to me last night…

It didn’t help that I was tired. And I’m almost done. I just wanted to be done last night. It’s OK. I’ll be done today. I’m thinking I can cut them all out in about 7 hours, so maybe by Tuesday night? So fabric on Wednesday? Let’s ignore the fact that I need to do another bird binding (only one left). And school. Let’s definitely ignore that. Like yeah. Totally.

Here’s a shot from the top of Cowles Mountain on Thursday night…

Just throwing that in there. Totally randomly.

I didn’t get more done last night because the girlchild and I went shoe shopping. I haven’t bought new shoes in over two years and wanted some boots, and she had a giftcard to a store that is usually a million miles away, but they just opened one near us, so we went. And we found old giftcards we hadn’t used for a restaurant out there, so we used them for dinner. And I didn’t end up with the shoes I wanted, but I got something else. Whatever. And then I came home and was even more tired. But I spent time with her and she was in a good mood and it was all good. So there. Because I barely see her all week. Today, she is gone all day, pretty much. She has the ACT, then goes straight to the game she’s coaching, and from there to the game she plays in. I’ll see her there briefly, because I’m bringing her water, but I have to leave early for the opening of the Fence/Barda exhibit. Ships passing in the night. She said that I come home and she leaves five minutes later, and that really is what happens. So I’ve held off on adding more book clubs to my list, because they all meet the nights I have her, and then I don’t see her at all. And much as I enjoy talking about books with smart people, I miss my kids.

Anyway. I’m almost awake now. Really, the brain doesn’t handle sleep well. Waking up even less so. I’m going to eat something and go to the gym with my book that was due at the library yesterday (it’s not the only one that was due yesterday either, and both have holds on them), and I’m going to enjoy the air conditioning there, and then I’m going to come back and finish tracing stuff and maybe do some school stuff, and go to the girlchild’s game and the opening, and it is a full day, at least…with plenty of purpose…and the fact that I feel less than something at the moment is really all in my head. Of course, that’s where ALL the good (and bad) stuff happens…in my head.

Zombies, Please Take My Brain…

Someone actually found my blog by searching “penis tortured on an ironing board.” Ironically, I was tracing a penis onto Wonder Under last night, but no ironing boards were involved. I finished the female figure and moved on to the male. I only got a paltry 110 pieces traced, but it was back-to-school night and I spent 10.5 hours at school and was the Walking Dead when I got home. Speaking of Walking Dead, the CDC has zombie lesson plans and a graphic novel that I’m going to use for the end of my “what is living” section. I’m not apparently living at the moment. Lots of parents and kids and parents who think you should know who they are because you’ve had their older kids, but hell, you don’t have a CLUE who they are. Sigh. I eventually figured some of them out. I think. But no, I don’t have your child’s grade memorized. Sorry.

Anyway. It’s done. I think it was successful. We certainly had way more people than we normally do, mostly because our current principal is like a circus/rodeo guy (not really; he just plays one on TV) and he did raffle prizes and gave out free pizza that was actually pretty good. We bribed them with extra credit if a parent or guardian showed up. Many came with multiple people (you got a raffle ticket for every person). All very strange. Different. It’s weird being a teacher and having your principal change every three years (I’ve never had one longer than that), and the personality of the school changes with it and all the teachers have to adjust and there’s issues with that because teachers can be a bunch of whiners.

Anyway. So the girlchild and I got home at about the same time, and I made a cup of tea and collapsed on the couch, and she did the same, except she had homework in hand (I didn’t even TRY to work. I gots books to read, don’tcha know). And eventually she said she was hungry and we cobbled together a strange meal of leftovers, some of which were so leftover that they should have been tossed out (they are now), and in doing so, I found some things that had gone bad. Food stuffs that were now really gross. We’re playing rock/paper/scissors to deal with the tupperware of fuzzy muffins. I really am not on top of all the household chores at the moment. I have school brain and art brain, and all other brains appear to be offline. Down for the count. Missing in action. I make plans to pack up stuff for the thrift shop or deal with the unfinished living room or hang art or clear the hallway, and it just doesn’t happen. I come home and my working brain flees, screeching, hiding under the bed. There’s not a lot left.

So I didn’t start tracing until almost 11, I think, because I exercised and meditated, and the meditation app was having issues, so I had to delete and reinstall it and then finally email the techs at Headspace, who apparently fiddled with my account last night. And then I started tracing, while the girlchild stressed about colleges and how to whittle her list in half…

I’ve got about 650 pieces done…I think I could finish in two nights if exhaustion doesn’t take over (ahem. OK. Good luck with that.). So my goal is to be done Friday night. Then cutting out all the pieces starting on Saturday, getting that done in 3 days? Maybe? It could happen. Except I do have other stuff to do, as always. I set the goals and then I trash them. I’m trying to keep working as if I don’t know about the extra two weeks at the end that I just found out about yesterday. Let alone the offer of a couple weeks beyond that. Nope. Sticking to mid-November. And I don’t know what to tell the girlchild. I had her do some research to try to narrow it down. I feel like the college counselor should be helping more with this.

Boychild was texting complaints again. I offered suggestions that involved his making decisions and ordering stuff instead of me. He wants plants in his room. I remember plants. I used to have plants all over the house. And then I had kids and I had a choice: keep the kids alive or the plants alive. I guess you know who won. But it wouldn’t be bad to try to get back in the habit. He reminded me of plants. No, we’re not mailing him cactus…but we did consider it.

Both the girlchild and I are trying to give Babygirl attention, since the boychild is gone, and she likes him best and he gave her the most love and affection. I’m not sure she appreciates it. I have holes in my arms that imply she doesn’t. And girlchild gets a little psycho with the attention…

We texted that to the boychild. I don’t think she really ate the cat. She’s old. Not very tasty.

I’m still bullying through Google and now Edmodo, which needs a beatdown. Seriously, it should not take 10 keystrokes to hand in an assignment. But it does. Eighty-nine of my 150 students have turned the assignment in. I know that because my phone tells me. I swear. This will make my life easier. Maybe. I’m a day behind in instruction. Do I care? Hell no. By the end of this unit, I’ll be more than that behind, and I am winging it and I just don’t care. I’ve got engagement. It’s all good.

Seriously, this is just PART of the instructions on the board, and the thing is, most of them won’t (can’t?) read this. And all the intuitive poking around that I would do? They don’t. They just put their hand in the air or start yelling out, and they can’t figure out what to do next. Sometimes I type it up and put the instructions on the desk. It doesn’t matter; the high-level kids will still do it and the others will just sit there. And if I say it to them while demonstrating on my OWN account (because I have a student account set up), then some start to space out and get behind, or they are just really slow to hear things or honestly, English is their 5th language and they barely understand it in the first place. So I count on the expertise at your table! Who at your table knows what they’re doing? Have them help you. But really, I end up walking around and helping about half the classroom just LOG IN. I should pay the kids who do it right. If you log in and submit within 5 minutes of my instructions? Ten bucks goes into your student account (doesn’t have to be real money…could be play money that they exchange for food or something). But I need this system to work without MY having to run it. The amount goes down over time.

The password stuff is killing me though. We put password sheets in their planners and have them write their login information, but they forget or they write it wrong, and then I have to log out of the student account and into the teacher account (I would love to be able to have two tabs open, one with each, but it logs me out of one if the other is open…there must be a way around that) to reset their password and look up their login info. So their solution? Make a new account. My 8th period currently has 41 students, even though there are only 34 on the roster. I’m spending all day today helping the kids who couldn’t turn in their assignment yesterday for whatever reason, which includes deleting all the duplicate accounts. If you think that doesn’t sound like fun, it’s because it doesn’t. Imagine not being techy and trying to do this. I get why some teachers just take a deep breath and look away from the tech. It’s too much on top of everything else.

But my goal is that by December, this is something they can just do without my help. Really. I’m putting time in now so that it’s a smooth ride later.

I want zombie stories. That’s what’s next. Gotta have a hook.

I’m not writing anything sci fi at the moment. I’d like to. I sit down at the computer and think about it, and then zombielicious brain takes over and reads blogs or there’s something else that I have to do…send a contract here, pay a bill there. It’s never-ending. Time to write? Eh. Maybe in the morning. (I actually wrote for a little while last night, but hell…this morning I feel like I was hit by a truck. I’m so tired. BALANCE. Fucking balance.)

So yeah, I’ve been thinking, and the depression is still there. It’s hard to shake. Hangs around my neck, claws in. Yeah, it’s better, but it’s still there. I feel it in meditation. I feel it in the late nights. It’s there at the gym. It hangs out in the car with me when I’m by myself after a hike or the gym, on the way home. It helps me fill the gas tank at night, standing in the gas station, alone with that stupid black cloud, almost a black fur coat stifling my heart, my core. Snug fit.

I would love to have it be gone. I wish I could just shake it off. Been saying that for over a year. I think next week it will be 14 months. Well, technically longer than that if you go back to the low-level crap, but this severe shit, the stuff where your brain messes with you, colors the pictures wrong, tries to pull the blanket out from under you, trips you up in aisles (god, I miss the movies)…that’s been 14 months. And it’s still there. Smaller. Less deadly. But there.

That’s an owl I hear hooting in the background, telling me it’s past my bedtime. I’m not finishing this post tonight. I’m not nearly coherent enough. Actually, I might be way more coherent at night (morning), than I am after 4.5 hours of sleep…which is what I get on average. No wonder I’m a little nuts. The meditation keeps me relatively calm though. Seriously though…I think the owl is currently residing in the tree right outside my bedroom. I can hear it loud and clear. It’s saying, “Go the Fuck to Bed, you Dumbass.” That was 1:23 AM. Now it’s morning and I’m trying to add/edit. The caffeine has not kicked in, though, so I’m sluggish. I just want to stay home and finish tracing. I’d be done by noon, probably. Sound good? Yeah. I know. Must go to work. Honestly, it might be easier if the zombies took my brain and ate it. I think I’d get more done.