Dammit Seriously.

That seems to be my mantra at the moment. Or is it Damnit. Go look here. Because I am that ubergeek who googled it and then tried to decide whether ubergeek should be one word or two or hyphenated.

I got an email yesterday about a fiber show coming up and I also got my new issue of Fiber Art Now, which is an intriguing magazine…not as highbrow as the Surface Design Association magazine, but not as crafty as Quilting Arts is. I find I barely read these any more…I TRY to…really I do, usually while cooking, but sitting and reading short articles seems to work better with an electronic device these days than with a pile of pages.

Anyway, the email and the magazine sent me down a rabbit hole of shows coming up and possible entries and due dates and size requirements, so girlchild cooked dinner (late! she walked in and asked if I was planning on cooking any time soon…oops) while I bounced around websites trying to figure out if it was worth entering. I don’t mind being invited to enter a show, but when entry fees are exorbitant for a short show? That seems crazy…maybe I’m reading it wrong. I did manage to find some other shows that sounded interesting though, and I almost got excited about art for a moment there. Until I realized how late it was and that I had grades to input and my computer was being a slow-ass beast, which is another thing I need to deal with this summer, along with EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE FUCKING WORLD.

It does not look good for relaxation and mai tais by the pool. Like I ever do that. The to-do list is miles long. Plus I started reading a book about blended learning (the new code word in education) and realizing I need to get my entire curriculum onto Google Drive and Docs by the end of the summer, which is not a small task, and I won’t get paid for that, by the way, you idiot politicians who think we’re in it for the money, but I will do it ANYWAY, because it’s best for the kids, so maybe you should give me a raise, and then in a year or two’s time, I will also MAKE UP new curriculum all by myself when the science standards switch and we don’t get new textbooks until never. So. Yeah. This job. Sometimes…sometimes it’s the best thing around and exciting (it really is kind of exciting to be getting everything online and making things collaborative in a way I can track, instead of trying to figure out who wrote what, when the overachievers did the whole project while the other kid picked his nose for three days), but sometimes it is a huge drain on your brain.

In the middle of all this thinking and reading and stuff, I realized that my phone had disappeared some important notes from the Notes app (this was in the middle of riding the stationary bike), so then I had to try and find those, which meant restarting and installing a backup, which took forever (see note about screwed-up computer…you know, sometimes it’s just easier to buy a new one than figure out what the fuck is the matter with the old one, but that’s not an option, so figure it out we will). Plus the boychild was in here analyzing his yearbook at 11:45 at night (really, we are both night owls…I told him how I used to read under the covers until mom would come yell at me…he should be glad I’m his mom), which really was about analyzing his high-school career, because the twit is graduating in less than a week. GRADUATING. Fuck. And then moving out and never really coming back.

So not where I wanted to be right now. I’m a fucking mess these days really. I have spent the last two days showing one of the pregnancy videos to my students, and post-birth, I always tear up when I see someone give birth, but it’s usually OK, very controllable, because prior to a year ago, I wasn’t a CRIER. I really wasn’t. Barely ever. So I had picked the video with like 3 births in a row, and I almost lost it yesterday…over and over again…because I saw 15 births yesterday and I am not as in control of my crying tendencies as I used to be. It was a real struggle holding it together. By lunch (6 births down), I wanted to huddle in the bathroom and sob. It’s OK…today we move on to STDs. No crying there.

I know my head’s a mess, and I was hoping to MAKE art yesterday, but by the time the technology was all fixed and boychild was back in bed, it was almost 1 in the morning. My sleep app tells me I’ve averaged 4.5 hours of sleep a night this week. Um. Not good. But I’m wired at night, totally awake (unlike in the afternoon meetings). So that’s not conducive to lying down and sleeping. I try it and then my brain ransacks the emotional storage area and I end up crying myself to sleep because the SUMMER sounds overwhelming. My vacation time (vacation, ha!) sounds like it’s going to kick my ass. I’m crawling into bed on June 20 and pulling the covers over my head. Wake me up in 2017. OK, maybe I’ll get up to deal with the girlchild’s graduation.

Then this morning, the computer wants to tell me about the updates it’s installed. You don’t understand, you asshole…I don’t fucking CARE what you installed…are you working better than you were last night? Because that was a clusterfuck. The grading program was writing line by line and I just had to sit there WAITING for it to process to the alphabetical letter that I needed it to get to, and I don’t know whether it was internet or the grade server or my computer. I don’t CARE…it took forever. Just knock it off.

I’ve decided Clash of Clans (which I really do play sort of half-heartedly and then the boychild yells at me for even playing it) is a metaphor for life. I wake up every morning and my shield went down overnight and some total stranger attacked me and somehow I won. Because my defenses are OK (they aren’t really), but somehow I won without doing anything. But if I go out and attack anything, first of all, I suck at attacking…I just deploy everyone AT ONCE (GO! KILL! DESTROY!) with absolutely no strategy except to get them all running on the screen at once, little cartoon goblins and archers and barbarians (what are they all doing hanging out together anyway?), and then I get creamed. Because I suck at attacking. I go to sleep though and all this stuff happens and I wake up and I have more trophies. It feels kinda empty. So maybe entering shows will help…unless I get rejected from all of them and then that will be worse. Or maybe I won’t care. Who knows.

Yeah, I know. It’s a stupid game. I’m OK with that. I need something that doesn’t mean much, that isn’t that important, that I can do while waiting for the stupid grade program to respond.

I wish I could say that tonight will be better, and maybe it will…but it’s looking kind of fraught.

I was sitting at the union meeting last night (did I mention I didn’t even get home until almost 6 because of the union meeting?) and they had brought us ice cream, because it’s the last meeting of the year, but it was chocolate and sugar, so I’m allergic to the first, and I’m diabetic, so lots of the latter is not a good plan, and the woman next to me asks why I don’t have any ice cream, so I tell her those two things, and she says she’s diabetic too, which I didn’t know, and never would have guessed, because she had already eaten her ice cream and she always has a giant soda everywhere she goes. And I’m thinking, well, maybe it’s sugar free? But seriously? I do everything right, I lose all the weight, I exercise, I watch my diet, and I get stuck with symptoms that are worse than before, way worse, and there she is…poster child for bad diabetics, making me look bad. Dammit. Seriously.

I love this picture in the yearbook…

Yup. Those are my two. Boychild says they didn’t ask him about the words at all, and I guess if “closest of friends” includes yelling “Calm your asshole!” at the other one in the morning (that’s what I heard just before they left), then yeah, they might be. Certainly, the last part is true, and is why we will have to get a new monitor with a webcam so she can Skype him for math and science next year, because AP Physics is beyond me and Calculus makes my brain explode. Seriously, there are no spare brain cells for that stuff any more. Damn. I’m going to miss them. Seriously. I’m a mess.

Exorcising Demons

It’s interesting how angry I am at this piece. At all of them maybe. Certainly at the Earth Stories piece…I don’t ever want to see it again. I may get over that. I’m angry at myself for letting my emotional existence affect my enjoyment of making art. Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. There’s no point in being angry at myself for something I don’t really have any control over…despite all the happy shit on Pinterest that says it’s my decision to be this way. Fuck you Pinterest. Seriously. Who asked you?

Yeah right. Anyway. I’ve avoided this sucker all week…too tired to stand after work. Seriously that tired. Somehow today, when I taught just like always, then went to finish up the refi after work (this might be how I survive the summer), then came home and went directly to the gym, came home again and cooked and did dishes…plus graded papers. On a day like that, you’d expect me to just collapse on the couch, never to rise again.

Fuck that shit. I’m not going to be that person. It may kill me to keep making art when it feels so sucky to do so, but hell, it can’t be worse than sitting around and doing nothing. So I ironed…and I wasn’t sure about it at all until I saw the photograph.

Oh yes. That’s nice. That’s going to kick some butt when the fingers are all stitched down and outlined. I am liking that hand. It’s a pain in the butt to iron, of course, because the overlaps aren’t logical and nice, but I’m getting there. This is about two hours in (with the torso already ironed below). Not a lot of pieces…just a pain in the ass. Nothing new in Kathy Art world. Welcome to my ability to punish myself with my own artwork.

I also cut pieces out…

a little of both worlds tonight. I’m 16 hours into this, and probably still have at least two to three more to go. This is the biggie that will eat up a large portion of the summer. Plus the next one, which doesn’t exist. Then there are at least 3 drawings done in the last year that want to be new quilts. Plus I need to do some smaller ones for shows that don’t like boobies. Assholes.

Who needs a personal life. I’ll just keep making art and hiding in my room, coming out for work and the occasional something or other. Fuck the world. I wrote that all over my notebook in high school. FTW. Not sure my attitude’s changed much in 30 years. I guess I’m more likely to say it out loud now.

I’ve spent all week explaining to my female students that Nature isn’t fair, that there isn’t an equivalent to their 40 years of periods and giving birth for the boys…although I personally think that giving birth and nursing babies is one of the most fucking awesome things I’ve ever done (not wanting to do it again, though, and pregnancy was hell for me, like want-to-die hell). But it would be nice to not have the rest of it. They’re pissed, my girl students. They don’t think it’s fair. They want payback. I don’t blame them.

I was ironing and the cord was hanging down in front of Babygirl. Apparently she thought she needed to play with it (smart animal) and got her claws stuck in it while I was ironing…

Sigh. She is not particularly bright. So she’s semi-yowling and trying to rip her claws through an electrical cord, and I’m trying to free her from the nasty beast, and she’s trying to kill me in the process, because that’s how her tiny little brain works. I do feel sorry for her. We take in the losers and the mutants here.

The mood is still bleak. Then I look back at that ironed breast up there and smile, slightly, to myself. That’s good. Keep doing that. The smiles might stick if you do it enough. You don’t have to like them once they’re done. The Earth Stories quilt? It can travel for years. I don’t particularly want the memories of making it under duress back in my house. The quilt itself is fine…it’s all the emotional shit that’s sewed INTO it that can go fuck itself. So yeah. When you make art to exorcise your demons, it’s better if they stay gone, out, far away. Don’t let those assholes come back home.

Trying to Find the Way Out.

The boychild trying to amuse me in the morning (because he didn’t take the recycling out again): Shows me his super-expensive (required by the course) graphing calculator, which you can program to do certain functions, pushes a series of buttons and tells me to hit enter: his calculator then tells me it sees dead people. Sigh. Grin. This because last night Calli (the Golden Retriever) seemed to either be scared of her shadow in the entryway or telling me there were ghosts outside the door. Not sure which. Put her to bed so I wouldn’t have to think about it. Then thought about the fact that my protector, the dog, is hiding behind ME. Hmn.

I’m trying to control parts of my life so that the uncontrolled parts don’t feel so vast and empty. In trying to explain yesterday to one class why kids cut themselves (yes, teaching sex ed covers a wide range of topics, including suicide and depression and cutting), I tried to talk about the need for control, and how in some people, it gets messed up. That their need for control is so strong and their own lives are so out of control, that what they choose to control seems crazy to the rest of us (anorexia, bulimia as well). I left school and went and controlled some stuff (refi’d my mortgage). Then went home, where the chaos reigns, and tried to deal. I can control the errands. After that, it’s questionable.

My knee is having major problems. This is not good. I’m not hiking until it stops. I may need to deal with a doctor on this one. It sucks. I hate that the body gets in the way of treating the mind, because hiking and walking treats my mind, the depression, and I’m not going to be able to do that for a while. Not sure how long. Hate this.

Girlchild had her followup back appointment, post-surgery. She’s cleared to start soccer practice and running in two weeks. She was hoping to be cleared yesterday, so she ended up being depressed about that. Mad because I had scheduled it then and not when she would be allowed to play. I don’t think that’s how we planned it, but whatever. So it was a weird day, because I only taught half the day, but I had to get up early and deal with freeway traffic and crap.

Back to that place where it feels like the sky is pressing down on your shoulders, blocking your ability to breathe. It feels like a heavy blanket…ironic, because it is a beautifully sunny day out there, it’ll be in the mid-80s. It’s spring going into summer in Southern California…where depression feels completely out of place, because nature just laughs at you. Not only am I going to fuck your KNEE up, but I’m going to make it a beautiful day! So fuck you. Wow. I see how it is.

I try to pull myself out of these. I was dancing in 6th period to 70s funk (some of the kids know some of it). I graded a bunch of journals when I got back early from the doctor’s appointment. I can’t send my sub home early, so I might as well use that time. My goal was to not have to work last night. Turns out I didn’t have the energy anyway.

I did manage some cutting, about an hour (it’s always about an hour…).

It’s getting there. The pile in the middle, the to-be-cut pile, is getting noticeably smaller. There’s a lot of big fleshy pieces in there now, which are easier for me to cut (and deal with mentally). For some reason, the small tiny bitchy pieces just depress me. I pick up a piece with a ton of tiny pieces on it and I just feel overwhelmed. But when I pick up a huge piece that probably has just as much complicated cutting going on, it seems more doable. Makes no sense. I haven’t managed to go back to ironing the other one together either. I’m just too tired these days. Ironic. I’m sleeping more. The other side of depression? Sleep instead of wakefulness? Or something else? I’m always having to second-guess what my body is doing. And the brain. What does THIS mean? What did I do to cause this? Blood sugar, sleep, weight issues. All so uncontrollable. Maybe I will have to clean something to make it better in my head.

I enjoy some parts of journal grading. It really is a relief to grade a perfect journal…

and then some of them are so creative…

Guess which one was done by a girl and which one was done by a boy. I wish that weren’t so obvious, but it often is. Not always.

I think my mood is connected to something disappointing that happened at school, disappointing because of the kids involved and because I had just talked to them about the three results of bullying in middle and high school: 1. the kid just deals with it and moves on. 2. the kid attempts to or succeeds in killing him or herself. 3. the kid stockpiles guns and comes back to school and kills you for being an asshole. (I don’t use those exact words, but…) And then it doesn’t seem to matter what teachers say, because they still do that shit and consequences still happen. So I already know I have to go to school today and be visibly and verbally disappointed in behaviors that are totally normal in our society (our brains really are fucked-up messes) for reasons of control. Because if you feel like less of a person, then you turn around and make someone else feel worse.

It’s OK, guys. My brain is doing it FOR you. You don’t have to do a thing. I can bully myself.

I will find a way out of this shit. I swear. I don’t want to live in here. I want to live somewhere else. Like out there. Where the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I can hear them; I just can’t find the way out there. Seriously, that was last night’s dream, running around school hallways, trying to find the way out, trying to find my kids (my students). I don’t know what that’s about.

An article about the Quilt National exhibit in San Jose is here.

An article about the Earth Stories exhibit in Michigan is here.

My work is in both, but you can only see mine in the second article.

I’m Never Where I Want to Be…*

I spent over 8 hours yesterday grading. The night before, I spent about 5 hours. Today, I’ve already spent 3 hours dealing with school stuff, although not all of it grading. It’s time to pay the piper? It’s not pretty, that’s for sure. I’ve still got at least another 6 hours just in science journals probably, and I think I’m officially about to kill someone. This isn’t healthy. I am trying to get it all out of the way so I can get some art brain on this week, because I’m still wallowing in deep sad shit from hell in my brain; in fact, the responsible part of my brain just stood up from her chair, where she is quite sensibly knitting a scarf (I don’t knit) in scrubs (I don’t own scrubs), and she pulled the curtain around the bed where the rest of my brain is connected to tubes and looks quite beat up, and she told me that now is not a good time. Come back later.

Well. OK then. I need to draw. Or something. There’s no fucking time! Groceries and errands and organizing shit and someone needs to take the tux back (boychild) and I’m supposed to go to a work thing tonight and probably I should bring a gift but I don’t have a clue what and then I’m supposed to go over and pick some stuff up from my parents.

Let’s talk realistically about how much can get done in one day (not much).

Last night, black cat (hard to see) lying upside down on the couch near the pile of crap I was grading…

See that pile of notebooks? That’s one class. One of my smaller classes. I have five classes. It was a long night. And then when I finally went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep.

I did try to settle my brain before bed. I cut stuff out for a little less than an hour…

Left pile gets higher. Middle pile gets smaller. See the uterus? And I think heart parts are on top of it. Yes, I keep all the trimmings until the end. I am well known for dropping real pieces into that box by accident. Didn’t I say something about being done this week? What a joke. I’m over 14 hours.

I took breaks during the day…I did go to the gym, where I finished this…

So I’ve read both Hyperion books now (yes, I know there are more)…and I really liked them. When I didn’t hate them. When I wasn’t slogging through vocabulary and world-building that was heavy and torturous. Yup. I know. It doesn’t sound like a recommendation but it is. Just because something is challenging to read doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. These are worth it. This is a book club selection for me, and strangely, the book club organizer has set up the next meeting by saying it’s going to be about why we shouldn’t have read these. Interesting.

Then I got the boychild ready for prom and followed him somewhere to take pictures…

He went with a group of kids (this is a small portion of the group)…

And I planted some stuff that was going to die if I didn’t plant it soon. So I took breaks. But it still sucked. I’d like to say I got a lot done (and I did), but there’s still so much to do and I am just behind all the time.

I had plans for today and they all got fucked up. Sigh.

I’m trying so hard not to feel like this all the time. I have all these inner conversations that just suck, and during the last 2 minutes of meditation, when he says to let my brain go and do what it wants, it literally SCREAMS at me, at the top of its brainy little lungs, just full on screaming. That can’t be good.

So last night, as an additional break between grading, I read this…

Short. Really good. Made me cry. I guess the Wall Street Journal might make me cry right now too, but this was good. Sigh. Took me 11 days to read The Fall of Hyperion and less than 12 hours to read this one. Take what you want from that.

Boychild is mad that I’m posting that picture. He’s mad that I won’t take his tux back for him. He’s mad that I exist at the moment, although I did all the grocery shopping for him. So. Whatever. Teenagers. Sheesh. Oh yeah, and he’s only had 2.5 hours of sleep and he’s NOT cranky (my ass).

I’m cranky and I had 7 hours…really shitty hours, but mostly sleeping. Maybe.

OK. Tonight. Sigh. More art, less work. After I go to a work-related party. Yeah. I know. But these are the good people. Maybe I will leave with the brain in a better place, cuz it ain’t there now.

*Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill (Sion’s fault)

Seriously…

I have that weird weather throb in my head again. It’s been there for two days now, as the weather flip flops around from hot to cold. It means monster headaches. It means taking all the Motrin I had in my purse yesterday and gulping it all down and actually calendaring Get More Motrin on my phone so I wouldn’t forget to restock my purse stash before school today, because today we are doing microscopes and heads might roll. Seriously.

Yeah. So I’m having issues balancing blood sugar again and now I know it is at least partially (if not completely) hormonal, which sucks, because I can’t control that. So I’m having to remember to pack extra food that isn’t high in calories but will keep me from passing out at inopportune times, like when I’m teaching or driving. I’m hoping when I get out the other side of menopause that it all calms back down to the semi-normal level of blood-sugar-tending that I had to do before all this, because this is just annoying. I get so paranoid about food. You have to be obsessive about it. I envy people who just eat whenever they like, whatever they like, and don’t have to think about what it will do inside you, or worry that I’m having to go to 2 meetings after school and I need to prepare for that like I’m going camping or something. Like there will be NO Food Available (and certainly there’s the issue of you can bring food but we won’t let you eat it in here, which has been an issue in the past…I just argue medical necessity).

I don’t feel very organized at the moment, either at home or at school. Both places have too much going on and I’m getting overwhelmed. Deep breaths. Make lists. Calendar shit. Pick your battles.

So I should have graded tests last night, and I didn’t. I always have to look at the overwhelmed feelings and try to figure out what’s going to be best for me tonight. Is more grading going to make the difference? Or does it need to be exercise and meditation and artmaking? The latter is winning most nights, at least some combination of those. It’s been difficult lately to find time for all three, especially since I’ve been working really hard on getting more sleep…even an extra half hour or so a night I think will make a difference. It seems like every two or three nights, my brain pitches a fit and doesn’t want to sleep. I don’t even go to bed until my brain has capitulated, decided that the idea of sleep is not a heinous thing. I don’t want to lie awake, letting it wander. That’s when I end up back in the pit.

This morning, I woke up with the alarm, screaming in my head, “Stop it, Fuck off, Go away!” Um. OK. And adrenaline surging. Not a good way to wake up. I have no idea what was going on in my head. I was watching The Americans while I cut out pieces last night. I’m reading The Fall of Hyperion. Neither seemed relevant to the dreaming. I wanted to draw last night…maybe I should have (ran out of hours, minutes, seconds).

I only cut stuff out for 47 minutes. See, when you’re thinking about how much I get done, realize that most nights, I get an hour in. That’s it. I don’t spend a ton of time a day (wish I could). Less than an hour last night…which is why it still looks like this…

There is still a lot to cut out. I’m 9 hours into the cutting. I had estimated 12. I think I’m wrong. Who knows…but certainly I spent a good chunk of that time cutting pieces out that looked like this…

Yup, that’s full on crazy. Those are the outer parts of the octopus suckers. Technical term. Holy crap. I think they really are just called suckers. If you’re in the mood for sorta irreverent sciencey talk about octopus suckers, yet highly educational irreverence, go here. I’m not really sure how I ended up with the science leaning. Coming out of college, I was pure literature and art. There’s some really cool vocabulary in that article though, like ‘infundibulum.’ Yesterday, I taught my students ‘endoplasmic reticulum’ and told them to pull THAT out at dinner time. Earlier this year, I taught them ‘vex’ and ‘irk.’ They’re still using those words. I love that I have taught 160 middle-schoolers to say “You VEX me,” instead of all those other lame words they use.

Which reminds me, someone told me this weekend that my use of the word “DUUUDE” guaranteed my California residency (I was not actually born in California…born in an Alaskan military hospital to two California parents though).

Anyway. Another hour of cutting stuff out and I might have had some mental balance, but I had to consider the sleep component as well.

Midnight was a worthy couch companion…

She misses her mommy at night and harasses me instead.

If I’m at the computer, I get Babygirl (stupidest name EVER)…

who insists on sitting ON the mouse, or IN FRONT of the screen, or trying to drink my tea or eat my oatmeal. And then she gets all pissed off if you don’t pet her at the same time. Try resizing photos when she’s sitting there. It’s impossible.

I wanted to clear out a couple of posts-in-progress last night on hikes and Earth Stories, but girlchild needed my computer to write an essay (the computer she uses is apparently barely functional at the moment, which is unfortunate, because I’m not able to get a NEW one…she can use her brother’s when he gets his graduation laptop, whenever that happens). Then she asked for my advice, which is like asking someone to tell you if your butt is big, when you ask a writing mom with a Comparative Literature degree about your intro paragraph and she actually tries to help you, but you’re an emotional 16-year-old and holy god, why did I even open my mouth, because there were tears and it was not pretty. I should have just told her that her butt looked big. It would have been less traumatic. For both of us.

Remind me never to talk again. Seriously. I’m done with it.

Little Pieces

I’m 18 hours and 23 minutes into ironing fabric for this quilt…this quilt that does not yet have an exhibit to call home, and is probably destined to be like a couple of the other quilts I’ve made, where no one wants them in a show. Oh well. I like them to be in shows, but honestly, that’s not why I make them.

I’ve made it into the 1400s, but not very far, about 20 pieces in. So I’ve got about another 350 pieces to go. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m in the fussy little piece section now…

See all those little pieces? There’s like two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THIS gray and two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THAT gray. It’s a little piece bonanza. So it takes more time. Or maybe it’s just that this thing takes X time and X seems to be a larger number than normal. It’s still not taking as long as the Earth Stories piece. But it seems like no matter how much ironing I do each night, I still have about 4 more hours to do…I find that strange. Like time is stretching out and the fabric is breeding or the Wonder Under is undergoing mitosis.

Or I’m thinking too hard.

At least there will be no shortage of things to work on this summer (besides my sanity, a clean house, and a better yard). I have a lot of stuff in progress and a whole new quilt I have to make by November that only barely exists in a sketch in my brain.

I’m not worried. My summer is pretty empty. Well, except for soccer and working and all the other shit that will rain down upon me that I don’t even know about yet.

You know, like it does. All the little things. That’s what’s overwhelming me at the moment is all the little detailed crap that I’m supposed to be handling and getting done every day, and which is really NOT getting done because I keep doing healthy things like meditating and exercising and making dinner and then I do other things like making art, because if I didn’t do that, I don’t know who I would be. I’ve really thrown the balance up in the air this year, and I don’t know how successful it’s been. I think I need some distance from it to decide.

Here’s what it looked like last night when I was picking fabrics for the face-in-a-cloud section, which is only like 8″ square…

Each fabric had no more than 4 pieces on it…and some only had one. I’m running out of room on the ironing board.

See the face in a cloud in the top right? That’s what I was ironing.

I also ironed the headphones and cords…basically all I have left is the wolf, the iPhone, the snake, the bird, the dog, and the giant skull eyeball. It doesn’t seem like much when you realize how much I HAVE done, but it requires some mental attention. I quit last night right before the wolf, because I was too tired to think WOLF. I had done over an hour of ironing, which seems to be the right amount for working every night at the moment. In my old life, I would work on it every other night, but for longer usually. I actually didn’t usually get ironing of big projects done during the school year at all. So I guess that’s changed.

Everything’s changed.

I was going to write all this last night, but WordPress was having issues, so I went to bed (a little early!) instead. I should try to do that more often, but then I’d get even less done. It would be nice if I could get some sense of life fulfillment from my job…and you’d think as a teacher, I would, but it’s so much hard work and paper pushing that it’s hard to see the good stuff until you’re 6 months past it.

I realized how much irritation I was carrying yesterday at work, but then I remembered that we don’t have much of the school year left, and this is normal. The kids want to be on vacation already. There’s all these end-of-year pressures of awards, grades, cleaning up, preparing for next year…I have a boss who sends messages demanding meetings at certain times without ever thinking that we might already have things on our calendar. I seriously get emails that say “See me during Period 2.” or “Meet here at 3:45.” and you’re thinking, wow. Dude. I already have a parent meeting during Period 2, thanks for asking, and at 3:45, I’m doing this presentation thing. And there’s often no information telling you the purpose of the meeting, so then you’re left wondering if this is a bitchslap event or just a check-in. A decent boss emails you and says, hey, we need to talk about X, here are the times I have available. I realize you’re busy doing your job; when would be convenient for you?

I guess that is too much to hope for. I just take a deep breath these days, do a little weird dance in the hallways to make the kids laugh, or randomly yell “Dress Code!” into the hallway (that’s actually really fun to do…I’m not even dress coding anyone, but they’re so paranoid it will be THEM that they all jump). OK, yes, it’s time for vacation. Someone on last week’s hike (which is still in a picture file and not in a blog post) said they were surprised I wasn’t in a tower surrounded by a bunch of guns. Well, isn’t THAT a nice image to put alongside my teacher image.

Now you know why I exercise so much and make so much art. Otherwise I’d go even more nuts than I already am. I’m leaving the guns alone though. I do better with pen and paper. And honestly? The kids aren’t the problem…they may drive me bonkers on a regular basis with their shenanigans and laziness and moody crap and drama, but it’s the adults that cause the real trauma. I know the kids aren’t old enough to control their shit. I wish the adults remembered that they are.

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.

Quagmire

I really do need to go to sleep. I shouldn’t be up this late. I’m debating leaving this and writing the post in the morning. I could do that. I finished grades; I finished that silly essay for the damn application for a summer job (short…a little bit of money to supplement, but still leaves me time to get the quilts done that I need to get done…talk about the ultimate balance…I need money, but I also need to make art. So I don’t sleep enough and I work too much. It’s all wrong.).

I’ll type for a bit. I’m not quite tired enough yet. I like to be so tired when I go to bed that I can barely find the energy to set the alarm. That’s the best, because then I fall asleep right away and sleep straight through (well, almost). I hate waking up and evaluating my level of tiredness with the level of darkness.

I got started late today. Girlchild and I did a short stint at the gym. She’s allowed to bike and go on the treadmill now, and she’s chomping at the bit to get exercising again. Me? I just want an excuse to get serotonin going and to read a book. I love to read. I really love to read. I had a conversation on the hike this weekend wherein I tried to explain how much I like to read, and when I told them how many books I had read last year, they were a bit shocked. And then I said I read at the gym…so they said, what do you do at the library? Work out? Yeah. Well. I read a lot. I guess that makes me some sort of freak. Here’s me being a freak.

Then girlchild was nice enough to make dinner (this was after we had a screeching argument about how many years of foreign language she needed AND the data plan on her phone AND something else that I don’t remember. I’m kind of done with the part where I know nothing even though I don’t know nothing, although there are apparently lots of people who think I know nothing and most of them are under the age of 18, except for a few who are my age or so and have decided that I know nothing, that my knowledge is always wrong.).

ANYWAY. She cooked and I input grades. It was ugly. I’m not being nice this time of year. Turn the work in. Remind me over the summer to analyze the numbers of kids turning homework in this year vs last year. If it hasn’t changed by a significant amount, I’m not doing these damn detentions next year. I don’t think it’s working.

Boychild and I spent some time looking at cars online…still trying to deal with that issue. Running out of time. Then the Franchise Tax Board is still messing with me over my Head-of-Household status for one year out of the 10 or 11 I’ve claimed. Assholes. Such a waste of taxpayer dollars.

So I thought about not ironing tonight, about taking a break, but my head was swirling into the abyss…and I just don’t want to be in that place. I want some peace, dammit. Some happy. Some content. Some quiet. A portion of time when my brain isn’t berating me for bad decisions and bad people and just plain bad. A moment when I feel like I’m doing something right. That’s it. That’s what I need.

So I ironed.

Electrical thunder bolts…I finished monitor head.

Then I started on the arm I showed yesterday…with Dr. Scully looking on…

These are all the same flesh colors used in the two other smaller figures in the quilt. I’m still debating the large figure…do I make it a different set of flesh fabrics (the original plan), or do I make them all shades of gray? I kinda did that in the Earth Stories quilt, but I don’t know if I want to do that for this one. I’m still debating it. Flashing an image behind my closed eyes of the large figure in gray and then in flesh tones. Two very different images. Two very different commentaries. Flashing back and forth between the two.

I ironed pieces 626-720…

Not EVEN 100 pieces tonight. Oh well. I did the whole arm on the right of the quilt. I still need to do the DNA and then the headphones, and then I’ll be able to start ironing the larger figure…

Which should take me about a million years.

There’s the left leg. With a hand grabbing it. That hand is attached to no one in the quilt. It creeped me out when I drew it. It creeps me out now. This whole quilt creeps me out sometimes. I know where it came from, the depths of the bad shit in my head. The pieces of menopause that are scratching at me. The sense of loss and grief. The splintered mind. Trying to reconcile the brain that is sad and depressed and disconnected and hopeless with the part that makes the art, that doesn’t give up, that doesn’t stop, that is always re-evaluating and trying to find The Way Out.

Deep breaths. Making art shouldn’t make you cry. Life shouldn’t make you cry (nonstop). I showed a video in class today of a family affected by Huntington’s Disease as part of our genetics unit. The mom with HD talks about how she can’t be a good mom because of the disease, and she’s so sad and fragile. I almost lost it about 5 times today.

Am I doing it right? Are my kids going to be OK? Did I hamstring them by putting them through divorce and another bad relationship? Will they be able to do it right with absolutely no role models? Neither parent is competent in relationships, whether it’s the actual BEING in one or PICKING the right person. Either way, we both failed. Me, multiple times.

I hope not. As a parent, all you want is for your children to be happy. The boychild is so observant and aware of human interactions…I’m impressed, because I know it is a learned behavior, not built into his wiring. I did that. Girlchild? Sigh. Emotional hurricane still. She will figure it out. She’s better than she was. I pick my battles, and unfortunately, today there was more than one battle. I fought them all bravely and with minimal emotional investment. I feel it NOW, but in the moment, I was OK.

Here’s the current pile of fabrics…growing…steadily.

Sigh. I wish I could say this process is making me happy, but it’s not. I am in a quagmire. Hey, when boychild and I were in New York, we saw a real quagmire. One with a name. It’s such a lovely word, quagmire: a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. That’s kinda like my brain. Boggy and giving way.

Next step? Big body. Need a decision about color. Then it will take me a few nights…because the body is pieces 744-1347, a little more than 600 pieces. That WOULD be 6 nights, but all the fabrics will be the same for the whole figure. Let’s hope I have a better chunk of time Wednesday or Thursday.

Yeah. Sleep. She’s right there, tugging at my arm. Begging me to head down the hallway. Claiming a warm bed and trouble-free thoughts. Wish it could really do that.

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.