I Could Totally Do That

Brain is all over the map. My students’ gave me gifts today, those of the hugging variety. Cheap but appreciated. It is the thought that counts. I was reading someone else’s post about their depression and how it affects their ability to do things they know they should be doing, and then I was thinking about the gifts other teachers at school had given me and how I couldn’t even wrap my head around that task (I’ve never been able to deal with more this time of year), and I’m having issues even dealing with gifts for my own children, and for some reason, the whole mess made me really sad…which would have been fine, but it was lunch at school and crying at school is never a good thing. I felt completely inadequate and lame and nonfunctional and sad and useless, and even writing about it, taking simple notes to remind me of how I felt for when I wrote this post later…those little notes made it a bigger issue. Brought to tears by kindness? Or the reminder that I am broken? Or do I just accept my inability and move on?

Depression is such a fucked-up mess. Thinking about it makes you more depressed, because there is no magic pill or word that makes it all go away. When you’re totally sick of being depressed, you are still depressed. In fact, it may make it worse. It’s worse when you know you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing and it still doesn’t feel better. It’s still a slog through cold mud. Someone today told me I looked great (ironic, that), and I said thank you. Because that’s what you say. And that is one positive from all this shit. I’m healthy. I’m the only non-sick person on my team at school at the moment. I haven’t been sick in the last 6 months, at least with the normal viruses etc. I’m just sick in the head. I just don’t sleep. I just don’t eat well. I just don’t give a shit. Except I do. I get up. I shower. I work. I try. I make art. I read. I work out. I try to do all the things that normal people do…the non-depressed people. The kind of person I used to be. I guess I did that for enough years that I can fake it now. Look! This is what a normal person does during Christmas! She shops! She wraps! She cooks!

Fuck that. I have three weeks off of school. I can make sure I exercise regularly. I can try to drag the monsters out on some hikes or go on some on my own. I can clean the damn house, because it’s driving me nuts. I can try to be OK…whatever that means.

I can’t be happy. I can’t be non-depressed. Those aren’t really antonyms. Happy is not the opposite of depressed. I am sad. I can’t be happy and sad, can I? Maybe…I read that you can be happy your child is going to college, but sad as well. I get that. I understand that. I don’t think there’s something that will make me happy at the moment at the same depth as my sadness, though, so sad it is. Depressed, though…depressed is a whole ‘nother island, further out to sea. There’s no getting off that island until the non-depressed boat shows up to pick you up, and he’s notoriously bad about finding the island. So here I sit.

Girlchild had a soccer game today. She did not play. I don’t like her coach. He’s kind of an idiot. Hopefully he doesn’t read my blog (it seems unlikely, unless he is a closet quilt artist). She’s having some mood-related issues because of his lameness. I’m doing a lot of huggy mommy stuff to try to make up for his shit. I graded during the game and stitched as well…

That’s a whole lot of little blue dots.

Plus she misses her dad. So I didn’t exercise tonight (ran out of time…cuddled teenaged kid instead of exercising…not as many calories burned, but good karma is better anyway I think) and I ate like shit today (not her fault). I did meditate…there was discussion of cause and effect. How does it feel to give someone something? Ironic that, considering the season and my issues above with gifts…I’m having this issue with gifts I gave that were handmade, some of which meant (mean?) quite a lot to me, and now I wish I hadn’t given them away…because I don’t believe they will be treated with respect. It’s interesting the kinds of gifts we give to loved ones…some give mostly handmade, some give all material things, devices, objects that don’t have personal meaning. I wonder if that is a gender thing or if there is some type of person that would be better for the handmade type…one who was more thoughtful. Don’t get me wrong…gadgets can be very useful…but there is a level of intimacy with a gift made specially for someone, about thinking about the person as you made the gift, that I think makes it worth more. And if that is never reciprocated, that level of feeling inserted in the gift creation, maybe that is always a mismatch? I don’t know.

I don’t have much time for things like that…for making those types of gifts any more. I used to.

Speaking of tech, here are the two tablets I’m using now…

The iPad Mini (left) has been around for almost a year and gets lots of use, mostly for reading, but all types of reading. The one on the right is the new Nexus tablet from our school district (it’s not mine to keep), which I’m supposed to use for school-related stuff. Apparently I will be able to track everything my students are doing in class on this thing and send feedback right away. I’m imagining a classroom where everyone is staring down at a device, silently tapping away, including the teacher. That has got to be so far away from reality. Here’s reality…kids doing Snapchat and Instagram in class with their phones and talking instead of getting work done, while another kid shows his table a YouTube music video that is incredibly inappropriate. Some mom complains and the teacher gets reprimanded. One thing we definitely need (besides a case for the damn Nexus so we don’t drop it and break it and have to pay for it, part of what we had to sign off on to get the damn thing) is a better agreement for parents to sign, one that actually protects teachers from stupid kid behaviors. It’s a whole different world to navigate. So I am supposed to spend part of break getting used to the beast on the right. It is not like the beast on the left. Wish me luck.

I told you I was wrapping…just very slowly and inefficiently, that’s for sure. My brain is not fully engaged (hello, can you say depression?).

Still haven’t opened the curtains from summer sun. Didn’t even notice until I saw this picture.

And meditation took place with cat on lap.

Also not particularly efficient.

We had a discussion of saggy boobs today, especially what happens to the body post-pregnancy…singing the boobs-hanging-low song (like you do), remembering a conversation with a friend about the pregnancy stretchmarks (wherever they inhabit your body) being a mark of what you had survived, a mark of the relationship that created the child that caused the marks themselves. Stretchmarks existed as a sign of the good in the relationship, medals for wounds inflicted in war. It brings to mind how we appreciate the aging and used body…the work those parts did. I found all those thoughts depressing as well. I need to go for a walk or something (probably not right now…it’s a bit late).

White Lies by Max Frost…

Heard this song this morning on the way to work. Not sure why it stuck, but it did. Up early. More soccer. More grading. More tiny blue circles (I’m fairly sure I left some on the bleachers at the high school). Hopefully she will play tomorrow. Hopefully I will get a bit up and out of this funk. Funk makes it sound like a good thing, like the music. It makes it sound like all I have to do is get out of the chair and come in and dance. I wish it were that easy, because I could totally do that.

Don’t Stop Believin’

It’s possible I should be meditating more than once a day at the moment…two or three times in a 24-hour period might be necessary. It’s really just end-of-the-year stress coupled with student mayhem and big-project chaos and stupid petty administrative crap that we shouldn’t have to deal with at all.

My desk at school at the moment…

At one point this morning, I had 5 iPods, a Nexus tablet, and a flash drive connected to 2 computers and a flash drive on a third computer, with three types of connectors in play. It’s possible my brain almost exploded with technological dealings. Sometimes I wish I could just walk out of the classroom and into a local park, sit down on a bench, and start to draw. But you don’t. You find somewhere in yourself that has some wicked large burst of teacher power and you bully through. I only had three unsolvable tech problems today, and I think one was because I don’t read Arabic…yet. I have 9 kids who had the balls to NOT turn in the assignment (out of 165, suck my…excuse me), and 4 of them were absent. The other 5…I promised them a parent phone call on Christmas Eve if they didn’t produce something by tomorrow. I am nothing if not evil.

That said, my desk is STILL a mess and I have a ton of crap to deal with tomorrow…but I WILL deal, dammit, and whatever doesn’t get done tomorrow will get done eventually. I put myself in a much better place schoolwise this year than last year going into Winter Break. I managed the bullshit, best I could, and the petty crap that sets me off will be out of my hair by 3:30 tomorrow afternoon.

It started pouring rain while I was on duty this afternoon, so I entertained myself by yelling out car color and type so the kids would know if their parent was there to pick them up. Boychild had his piano recital today…I need to upload that video so his dad (and maybe his British grandma) can see it. I managed to bring food to that and then I came home and made tonight’s dinner and then tomorrow night’s dinner (soccer game). I also wrapped a bunch of presents, mostly the stuff that needs to go to Seattle. If I’m really good, I can stop at UPS in the morning on the way to pick up donuts for the winning class of the month on the way to school. I might even be able to BREATHE somewhere in there. Seriously.

Then I noticed three presents under the tree…for Mommy. From my kids. OK, it’s the girlchild who calls me that. Boychild calls me Mother. Sweet, I know. I’m trying to get all the Christmas stuff done. Some of it just isn’t going to happen this year. Or it will happen differently. I just can’t get my head around it.

I meditated. I exercised. I did not make any art. Sometimes this holiday stuff takes precedence. I knew if I didn’t wrap the Seattle gifts tonight that I might not get them mailed until Monday…so I did it. I should have done it weeks ago. There’s no point in kicking oneself over the should-have’s though. My whole life might be about the should-have’s…or not. Maybe I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing…except I’m not really a fan of fate ruling my life, any more than I subscribe to a deity being in charge, so there we are. Life just is. And we move on.

A significant lack of sleep is not helping at the moment.

I’d like to say that tomorrow night will be better, but there are three soccer games in the next 48 hours. I know, crazy, huh? And I realized that I didn’t plan a Saturday dinner, because I forgot I would have the kids that night. I never plan a Saturday night dinner, not even now, when it’s just me…it’s just leftovers or chicken and Brussels sprouts. Or the occasional dinner out (that would be twice in the last 6 months). Sad but true. I can’t really afford to do anything nice…we are considering doing Unsilent Night again, and last year that was followed by dinner out. We’ll see. I don’t know what we will have energy for by then.

I really want to go draw right now or cut out fabric, but I’ve had two nights with less than 5 hours of sleep and I need to fix that tonight…or at least do better. I need my wits about me tomorrow…some of them. Then I can settle in to making art for hours each day and going to the gym regularly again and trying to eat right and drawing when I want to and reading more and cleaning the damn house before I go totally bonkers with the mess. And dealing with the 17 million errands that have been piling up. And sleep? Maybe? Some more sleep would be good. And at least one hike a week…three weeks off? I should be able to do that, right?

Maybe I will feel more peaceful then. Less like mosquitoes are buzzing me. Goodreads says I read 76 books so far in 2013, almost 30,000 pages. They call it a year in review, so I wonder why they don’t publish it and the stats on like January 1? It would make more sense. I could easily finish another 4 books before the New Year. I will probably finish one in the next 48 hours (it’s short). All the library books I had on hold are being delivered this week, it seems. I actually feel pressure to read more to catch up. Weird, I know. I love reading, love losing myself in someone else’s world for a while. Love reading other people’s stories. So much better than my own right now.

OK, I managed to upload the videos (which really only family care about) of the boychild’s recital…here’s the first one…

Yup. He made mistakes. All four of the teenaged players admitted to not practicing near enough. And that’s why they’re not famous.

And here’s the four of them doing that holiday favorite Don’t Stop Believin‘. No really…

Don’t ask. Someday I will remember to record video by holding the phone sideways. I don’t know when I will remember that. I did actually remember in the middle of the second video. Whoops.

My mood has wandered off. It’s tired of hanging out with me. There are pros and cons to that.

Compare and Contrast

A common school topic: compare and contrast. What things are similar; what things are different? Is there a Venn diagram in play? Christmas 2012: I was stressed, but relatively happy. I was very happy to start vacation and I got lots of art stuff done in the weeks leading up to Winter Break, as well as during Winter Break. I was happy. I even wrote that. Christmas 2013: I haven’t gotten through all of it yet, but I’m not really looking forward to anything…even sleep is kind of pointless, because when I have a chance to, I still don’t manage it. I will be making art, but I do that all the time now. It will be nice to have a break from school, and yes, I’m still stressed, but it’s all coated with sad and feeling bad, so none of it really feels like it matters. Even finishing quilts doesn’t feel like it matters. That’s lame. Definitely not happy.

So in the intersection, in the Venn as it were: stress, making art, finishing quilts. Does that mean those three things don’t contribute to my happiness? Then what does? How do I make the jump from YES, the last six months have sucked big time and you’re really sad, to a new life where I’m not sad all the time? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I know I managed technology issues this year for the big December school project way better than last year. I am a million times more organized. I only almost lost it twice, and in the end, I didn’t lose it. I breathed. Three kids survived my wrath. Seriously…sometimes teenaged behavior is beyond my understanding. There is no concept of consequences in their minds. Then again, some adults are the same way. I guess they piss me off the same way. No. That’s not true. I write off adults like that. They’re just fucking stupid. The kids still have a chance…their prefrontal cortexes are still developing and may still turn out less assholular. Empathy is part of that…there are adults with no empathy for others, no understanding of others’ lives, even when they are very different from your own. Empathy…a pretty important quality in a person, especially in a relationship. If there is no understanding of how the other exists, of how they navigate their presence on the planet, then there is no real relationship, is there? I get empathy from across the planet. Aliens are empathizing with me and I with them…I swear.

The kids and I ventured out together as a family unit to do some secret Santa and other Christmas shopping. I texted to the girlchild (on the other side of the store) about studded leggings for the niece (apparently not acceptable), while the boychild tried to pick out a stuffed animal for a girl he barely knows. Fun stuff! I did find plenty of Zombie bullets (see previous posts), so I am feeling OK about that. OK, girlchild found them. I paid for them. Nerf has gotten a lot of my money over the years…

Two more days of school…my brain has not even engaged with the concept of Winter Break. I’m so far behind on everything…it will just have to be that way this year. I suck this year. I may suck for years to come. I don’t know how not to suck at the moment. My kids are approaching adulthood and are weathering their mom’s suckitude in a great way. They are propping me up on either side. They will be there when I am old and crazy. They will make sure I’m OK in the end…they will make sure I get to make art until I’m ready to stop…if ever. I can’t imagine navigating this world without them.

And yet, despite the suck…I exercised, I meditated, I cooked dinner. I did artistic stuff…

Still cutting these fuckers out.

The pile gets bigger…almost need to just toss it out because it will make a mess soon. I’m at almost 8 hours. Four to go? Maybe? I don’t know how efficient I’m being…not very.

So the reason I was comparing the two Christmases was because I went back and read December 2012 to see how much art quilting I got done, because I am concerned about getting this complicated quilt done on time. In reality, I am much further ahead on my grading than I was last year at this time, and like I said, way more efficient about the technological parts of the projects that were due today. I will still have grading to deal with over break…that’s unavoidable…but last year was really really bad and I’m trying to avoid that this year. I did have two quilts in progress last year during December, although I was further behind in one, but the one I was cutting out had a lot fewer pieces than the Celebrating Silver quilt does. Plus I got out a week earlier than the kids last year, so I had all this time during the day and I got all the Christmas shopping done. I am having a really hard time with that this year, because I have no one around but me to do any of it…and even wrapping is impossible because they are always here. So I will need to deal with some of that at some point. I don’t know when.

As far as the quilting goes, I think I will be OK, because I do actually have a good chunk of January in which to finish, but I need to leave time for photography as well, so I’d really like them both done by the end of my Winter Break. So that’s my goal. Plus start a new large one and some smaller ones. Plus find some happiness somewhere and try it on for size.

I don’t actually believe that I can do that right now. I don’t think it’s an option. I don’t know how to get there.

Someone asked about Calli…

She is still in pain of some sort, although it is much better. We were told when she was very young to expect hip surgery (one hip at a time) when she was around 5 years old, which will be in about 6 months. I think the cold makes it worse for her. She’s definitely better than she was on Friday, but she is not necessarily good. I need to take her to the vet for that and for her belly (itchy rashy yuck), plus take Midnight and her stuffed-up grody nose, but I really don’t have any free time until…um…maybe Christmas Eve? Seriously. Sunday, but the vet’s not open. Soccer tournament, piano recital. Shoot me now. I made rice krispies treats tonight for the recital tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I have to make dinner for tomorrow AND Friday, because the soccer game goes until like 7:30 or something and I won’t have time beforehand and suspect exhaustion by the time I get home. I think I will just quit cooking over break and let the girlchild take over.

But then it will get a little easier as far as the schedule is concerned.

I guess the Venn diagram includes goals for break, goals for art stuff and school. Goals for exercise and healthy eating and meditation. Strangely, I am still losing weight, although it seems I shouldn’t be. My body is significantly confused. I have at least two major quilts in the planning stages for when I finish these two.

But when I compare and contrast Kathy of 12/12 to Kathy of 12/13, it’s really just depressing. There’s very little overlap. I sort of half recognize her, I realize she was me at one point, but I also know I won’t be her again. It’s like floating in space without a tether (no, I haven’t see Gravity yet…that is one of the depressing things: not going to the movies any more…everything is so expensive). I don’t know who to be. How to be. I know I want to do some things in my future, when I can…travel to the places that have always been on my list, but not necessarily other people’s lists. I want to write. I want to change jobs at some point. I want to do smaller things, like clean out my garage and finish my bathroom and the kids’ bathroom (major money issues there). I just want my bedroom decluttered. I wish I felt like I had the mental energy to do stuff like that, but it’s just way beyond my ability at the moment. It makes me want to crawl into bed and never come out.

Be kind to yourself, eh? It’s that time of year. Draw more. Comfort food. Plenty of exercise. Plan a hike with the monsters. Read a book (or 10). Clean a room. Donate some stuff. Toss some stuff out. Take some dogs for a walk. Pie for breakfast is OK sometimes. Sing a song. Dance to something. Comb a cat.

Stop looking at last year and expecting anything. There is nothing to expect.

Resting in Uncertainty…

From last night at an awful hour: “My god, I feel like I’m drowning in tears. I went to bed early because I was so exhausted, and now I am wide awake and crying. WTF? The brain and the body are so disconnected they can’t work together for a common goal: mending me.” So tonight, I’m up late, because my brain won’t wind down. It really isn’t a healthy mix of behaviors. I did go to the gym tonight…left school as early as I could (tutorial) and left a recipe and ingredients for dinner, but said I would deal when I got home. Girlchild has lots of schoolwork this week…but she was starting to cook when I got home. She really is amazingly good at it, and she’s forced me to be a better cook too…using ingredients and trying recipes I wouldn’t have tried before. It’s so strange how creativity that runs in families actually manifests itself. Maybe the next generation will include a clothing designer or a creative architect…you never know.

I forced myself to enter a show this morning; then cried all the way to school and barely got it under control crossing the parking lot. I wanted to make sure I did something art-related after last night. It was a good thing to enter. I don’t remember what made me cry…I often don’t think it’s anything logical. A piece of music, some lyrics, a reminder of something somewhere. Whatever. Logic is not in play at the moment. It’s all about emotion.

Jake keeps going to the door, expecting to be taken back to his house…looking for his daddy. Poor guy. He’s restless. He has been behaving though…no jumping up or biting. Good boy.

My school day was ruled by technology management…iPods with dying batteries, bad cords, learning iMovie on the iPod and phone and how to move files from there to here, setting up my new school computer, trying to set up my new tablet for school…you end up having multiple Google accounts, multiple YouTube accounts, just to manage school and home lives separately. It gets confusing and overwhelming. The new Mac plugs suck, by the way…the part that attaches to the laptop itself is a pain in the ass to use. When is everything going wireless? My life would be so much easier if we could charge everything wirelessly…I spend so much time plugging things in and managing plugs and charging stuff. In other Apple news, one of their commercials made me cry tonight. Then again, I cry at the drop of a hat. No, it didn’t have any jewelry in it. Those ads just annoy me…same with the car ads and the shaver ads. Christmas this year is a little rough. I need to shop for stuff, but have no free time away from kids, due to the ex being gone and multiple events that a parent should attend. No one to help at all. I think it will be a different kind of Christmas this year…I think I will just enlist the kids’ help…I know they realize I am struggling. As the girlchild told me tonight, I’m a downer. I try. They know. They are trying to keep me up. It makes me cry just to type that. Whoops. I read this morning about why some people have repeating depressive episodes and some don’t…something to do with the brain and how it works. Does it take into account the same damn shit happening to a person? Wisdom comes from experience. I will be a very wise old woman…or a just plain old crazy one.

I spent all day at school repeating “seriousness will occur.” Sometimes I wonder what the people in charge are thinking when they say things like that…seriously. We aren’t allowed to show any movies or do any celebrating of anything this week, let alone finishing the damn performance tasks, or in my case, their Project Fred is due tomorrow. No food, no parties, nothing but serious work. We’re all a little loopy, especially the teachers. There is apparently video of me dancing on one of the iPods. Hey. Whatever gets me through at the moment. But dammit, seriousness will occur. (I don’t know when, and if it does, you can’t blame it on me…I will be the goofy one with the Santa hat)

The kids found a new timesuck: Quiz Up. This app will suck up all available time if you let it. That’s the UP in the app name. I’m beating college students, though. I feel really really good about that (no I don’t). I’m really good at walking away from these types of time sucks. The boychild is reasonably good, unless it’s role-playing games (although if he has actual schoolwork, he does prioritize well…just don’t ask about college apps, because I might scream). The girlchild? She sucks at it. Seriously. These things take her down. Brain chemistry. I guess mine is ruled by the artistic bent…hers by procrastination and distraction. I wonder how much of that she will grow out of and how much she will fight for the rest of her life.

So, after yesterday…well, I always learn stuff about me after really bad days (weeks, months)…I learned that I need to make art. Every. Fucking. Day. So I did lots of it tonight to make up for the lame crap of yesterday…I cut stuff out…

mostly flesh and thorns tonight…lots of big fleshy leg pieces…

There’s all the scraps. The pile grows.

Girlchild left this lying around…

Apparently if they send all these postcards to Macy’s, they’ll donate money to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She did one card about her AP Bio grade and another about snow in San Diego for Christmas. Good luck with that, child.

I also quilted tonight…because the girlchild was in one room doing homework and I didn’t want to disturb her by watching TV and cutting stuff out, so I did the other art quilt task that is hanging over my head…

Although I did have a thought about whether it was better to have this piece be finished in January 2014 rather than December 2013…for one thing, I could show it longer…but then I would have fewer quilts finished in 2013…which wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. Who’s looking at that as a matter of my success? Well, except for me, and I can just get over it. I’ve finished 8 quilts in 2013, although two were small and none have been finished since September. It’s OK. I rarely finish anything between September and December.

The cats are all adjusting to Jake’s presence, which means Babygirl is perched up higher than normal…it’s hard to move the mouse when she sits there.

I asked her to deal with the computer backup issue, and she just stared at me.

Girlchild came to school yesterday so we could get to her soccer game. I left her alone in my classroom for 15 minutes and she started writing song lyrics on the board.

I left it up to entertain my students this morning.

I finished this book today…Blackout by Connie Willis…

It’s one of two books that I’m reading for a book club…the second one is on its way via the library system. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first, like for the first two thirds of the book. It was mostly WWII historical stuff, although it’s about time travel, but then it got more interesting when the system stopped working right. I’m not a history fan usually, and even less so of wars, but this is less about the war and more about people’s reactions to what was going on in England during WWII seen through the eyes of people from the future. The second book, All Clear, is really a continuation of the story, so we decided in the book club to read both for the months of December and January.

Meditation…it was about change…about being thrown off course and maintaining one’s position, resting in uncertainty…I think that’s what I’ve been doing for 6 months now. It doesn’t feel good, but that’s not because of the change itself…it’s because of how the change happened, which sort of created a reaction in me…this sadness, grief, depression now I think…I think it has moved into that, because I can’t shake it. I mean, I do shake, like a dog, and bits and pieces fly off, and then I get angry and pull pieces off and throw them far away from me, but there are so many clumps that are clinging to me and just hanging on and I can’t shed them. I was so much better at this post-divorce. My anger at the situation was so much stronger and I was so much stronger, and I just jumped back up and into living and forcing myself to be something. Now I just don’t have the energy or the drive for that. I don’t want to do some things over again. This is why the girlchild labeled me a downer. And my counselor says I purposely do some things to push people away, and I say, but those people that are pushed? I don’t want to deal with them anyway. I’m not going to stop being an artist to please the majority of people out there. I’m not going to start wearing makeup or high heels and cute little dresses just because people expect women to do that. I’m not going to start being like the majority of women out there just because that’s what women do. I just don’t care enough to do that. If that’s what your expectation of me is? Then fuck you. I want to make more art. I want to get into more shows. I think I might want to write a book or seven. I want to be at peace. I want to be happy. None of these will be under the Christmas tree this year. This year is all about survival…of the fittest? I’m not sure I am the fittest. I don’t seem to be. I seem to be pretty messed up. That said, I am pretty damn strong. Strong enough to keep getting up, to keep creating, to keep trying to make it better.

Resting in uncertainty…it’s an uncomfortable place.

Wash Down the Drain…

Wow. Boom. Hear that? That’s any sense of ease I had in the last few days. Exploding. It wasn’t really ease…more like resignation? Not even that, because my brain is always trying to find ways around the giant rift valley in the prefrontal cortex. I’m not resigned to anything. I keep getting up and moving, trying to figure out how to get across. Knowing there is something over there that is better than over here, and if I just keep working at it, I will get over there. Hope it’s not a grass-is-greener thing. I’d hate to get across and have it all still suck.

It is what it is.

We kamikazed to a soccer game in San Ysidro today after school, 5 miles from the Mexican border. The sky was beautiful for about 45 minutes before the game…

In all sorts of ways. I feel this incredible sense of peace when looking at the sky lately. It has so many variations, some so bright and clear, others murky and gray, and even more highly colored and vivid these days. The cynic in me blames pollution somewhere…in fact, the red is caused by scattering of light, with more water droplets and dust in the air causing the red wavelengths to scatter more, making that amazing magenta/watermelon in the sky that I’ve seen so often in the last few weeks. Was it always there in December? Did I never notice it? Is it that there is so little good going on in my brain that the skies are making such an impression? There are no good answers. It’s best to just watch the sky and enjoy it when it’s enjoyable. Notice it when it’s noticeable. Wonder why I’m so fascinated by nature and landscapes.

So yeah, there was a soccer game. One down, four to go. These days are such logistical nightmares, they require advance planning and multiple texts for completion. It’s no wonder I’m exhausted when we get home and finally get dinner made and the dishes done. I did exercise and meditate, but I didn’t manage much more than that. I wanted to, but I was too damn tired.

I didn’t grade at soccer. My school-related frustrations were high, and I refuse to let them take over my life, so I have a rule that if I leave school irritated with my job, then I don’t work that night. Yes, this could get ugly, but mostly it’s working. Honestly, will the world end if something is not graded right away? Nope. It hasn’t yet. I always seem to figure it out. I take more help than I used to. I grade less than I used to. I try to be more efficient but also more kind to myself…honestly, the frustration and upset caused by grading when I am already not happy about work is just not worth it. So I don’t make it worse.

Those are usually art nights (OK, mostly every night is art night at the moment, but I think that’s a good thing)…but tonight. Sheesh. Not an option. I did stitch at the soccer game…

I’m almost done stitching everything down on these…I think these are the August blocks, the ones that originally burned up on the stove. I was worried that all those tiny blue dots (and there are lots more of them coming) would be too difficult to stitch while sitting on bleachers, but I was wrong. They were a piece of cake. I almost lost one of the larger blue dots on the bleachers though…found it later.

I got these to this stage over Thanksgiving, I think…or some soccer game after that. Can’t remember now. Big blur…

Of wool and stuff. I actually had two men ask about these…one wanted to know what I was knitting (bang head…); the other asked if I was doing the school logo (which strangely does look kinda like the orange bird body above). People so rarely ask what I’m doing…so that was interesting. I usually sit far away from people, which is how I started out, but then I got surrounded by the male contingent of soccer parents. I don’t understand sunflower-seed-eating people who just leave all their droppings on the bleachers. What do they think will happen to them? Bizarre thought process.

When we finally got home, Jake was here…

Jake is my ex’s dog. He’s here for two weeks. He keeps going to the door, wondering where his dad is. Poor guy. And he’s really not sure about cats…

Cats seem to confuzzle him. They are just a tad bit scary and sharp and loud and hissy. I wonder if he knows the cats kinda feel the same sort of uneasy about him?

Anyway. The sad is back. Was it ever gone? I guess not. I will need to fit art into tomorrow night…it’s much harder when the kids are here full time. I wonder how much art I would be doing now if I had been married all these years? It’s hard to say what life would have been like…it doesn’t really matter, I guess, because it didn’t work out that way. This is why you stop having expectations, I guess, because then the not-happening is so difficult. There is a fine line though between no expectations and no hope. That’s the line I’m walking at the moment.

Back to the art. Set goals. Aim for getting them done. The rest will come. Maybe some of the sad will wash down the drain while I’m doing that.

I Made That…

This whole sleeping thing seems to be confusing my brain again. I don’t get tired until super late and then I can’t sleep at night and I can’t sleep in on mornings when I actually could (sleeping in meaning 8 AM) and then I yawn most of the day. That’s not how it should work. Eyelid still twitching. I don’t know if it will ever stop. Last year at the end of the school year, in June 2012, it twitched for over a month…took until about 3 days after I got out of school to stop. Maybe it will be done by Christmas.

I managed exercise (not enough), meditation (brain was barely present), and cutting out fabric (57 minutes)…

This one was fun. Yes, a spider web…in pieces. None of these pieces are easy to cut…they are all so complicated and fussy. Occupies my brain. Good thing. It was getting irritated by grading tests. Bad scores. My daughter and SIL were grading warmups for me…interesting experience for the SIL, a former teacher in a very different type of school. Maybe she has a better idea of my student population now. She made an interesting comment about holiday bonuses and teachers not getting them…she said, well don’t you get gifts from your students? Um. No. Occasionally. A candy cane sometimes. I’ve gotten mugs, a few picture frames, and a shot glass (yes, seriously), and a scorpion in a keychain. That was way cool. It’s OK. I don’t expect them…it was just funny to me that she thought we all got tons of stuff…she was in a private school in Seattle. Much different group of students.

So tonight I needed to do art stuff. The pile of pieces that are cut out is getting bigger…

Although it doesn’t feel anywhere close to done…and it’s not, at 5 1/2 hours. I suspect there’s another 6 or so hours to go. I wanted to be further along. I always want to be further along. I’m a little driven. I don’t know why. I mean, yes, there is a deadline and I have to get it and the other quilt done and photographed by a certain date, but it’s more than that. It has been for a long time. It’s worse now, like this is the only thing I have…and it has to mean something after all the shit I’ve been through. There has to be something that I can look at and say, yes, that was worth the time, the effort…because other things I have put that time and effort into? They either have failed or they don’t make me happy. At one time, the art made me happy. I hope it will again. Sooner rather than later.

And the pile of leftover bits is also getting bigger…

Usually I throw it away every night, but it’s showing me something. Progress. I need to see that at the moment. Everything else is such a crazy mess: the house, Christmas plans, school, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. At least one thing should be easy to look at and see progress.

Today was easier…spent time with the close family, my brother and his crew, parentals, and my own two monsters.

They don’t make me answer hard questions (much). Girlchild is going to be a mess tomorrow…no cousins, no dad…he flies to the UK tomorrow for two weeks. That will be hard on her more so than the rest of us. Jake will be here, for those who remember his exploits in escaping. We’ll have to see how that goes…hopefully he will curtail his awesome love for me and only jump up on me two or three times a day.

Some family member at the party yesterday gave the two male cousins each one of these…

Which of course they loved…but we decided that the TSA would NOT love them and so they were handed to me to ship to them with their (obviously going to be late) Christmas presents…which meant that my kids bogarted them as soon as we got home and proceeded to shoot each other all over the house and lost one of the bullets, but we think we can get a 30-pack, plus now I know what Santa is putting in their stockings. It was seriously dangerous around her for a while (they are nerf bullets…no real damage). I think Santa is sending extra bullets to the boys too…at least that’s what he told me.

Although he couldn’t explain this warning sticker on the guns…

These are Zombie Blasters, by the way. Apparently you shouldn’t shoot them near books. Or books are dangerous. Or you shouldn’t shoot them in libraries. Or if you shoot them, you will be attacked by books. Not sure.

Anyway. It’s a busy week. I will try to hold to exercise, meditation, and art on a daily basis. The thought of having to cook for real every night and schedule around multiple soccer games and juggle everything under the sun with no help is a little daunting, but hell…I’ve been doing it for years. Hence my stress levels. Working on that. It reminds me that I never had the help I really wanted. It wasn’t available. It’s on my list for next time, if there is one. Of course, knowing what you want and actually getting it are two separate things that rarely meet. Everything is so complicated. I think I’d rather just deal with my quilts for now. They’re complicated, but they’re MY complicated. I can handle that. I made that.

Yeah. I Know. Whatever.

Crying in the morning? Sheesh. Thanks brain. Stop repeating the same phrases over and over. You need to get through the week without all this trauma. It’s only Wednesday. You shouldn’t be panicking yet. Yes, the Have-To list is huge, scary. I hear Julie telling me to Be Brave over and over in my head, but I don’t have Brave left. I just have Survive. Survive will work for this time of year…it usually does. I remember to breathe.

Buried in meetings doesn’t help…I’m having real problems with afternoon meetings at the moment. It’s never been my best time of day…I’m fine if I’m standing, but if I sit down, my body thinks it’s time to nap. I’ve always had this issue with afternoon staff meetings. My solution was to draw…it’s the same thing I did in school when I had afternoon classes (or if the class was really boring). I drew all over the agenda, in the margins, wherever. At one point, I drew on my feet and on someone else’s jeans (high school and college). Drawing keeps enough of my brain focused so I won’t fall asleep. It entertains the part that gets in trouble otherwise.

So in today’s union meeting, while taking copious notes on the meeting so I could repeat the info to my team, I drew…

I didn’t really have a plan when I started with the turtle, and it just went from there. It kept my brain occupied for about 45 minutes (in between the notetaking). When I put the drawing away, the woman sitting next to me asked what I was drawing. OK. YOU look at the drawing above and tell me what you would have said. My answer? “Lots of things.” She was offended. Like she thought I was blowing her off. Girlchild said I should have just shown it to her, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain anything. Whatever. People have the expectation that artists want to share everything we do because we hang art up on the walls (or put it on a pedestal or suspend it from a bridge…whatever), but sometimes I’m just drawing and it’s not yours just because I’m an artist and share some of my stuff. I’m pretty private about my drawings until they’re done…or sometimes until they’re actual quilts. Ironic that I say that, because I put them on here all the time…but that’s not the same as you in person asking me about it. There’s some distance here. I’m really talking to myself anyway…because I need to spend more time doing that? Yeah. I know.

Or maybe I was just tired and misread her tone and look. I think she said, “I see.” But in that tone. I know. Whatever. Meditate your way past other people’s responses. Just deal with your own response. The drawing helped me in the moment. That’s all I needed it to do, and it was successful.

Because otherwise I would have had to say that I was drawing a turtle with a cat on its back and a bust of some woman whose hands weren’t really attached with a sunflower growing out of her shoulder and a UFO buzzing her head, as she flicks a fish out across the eyeball tree that is growing out of the turtle’s head, as a volcano erupts and a bird tries to avoid the lava and ash, and a small thorn bush grows out of a rocky landscape. And that just wasn’t going to fly. Plus I don’t think I could have said that with a straight face.

This was after a long day at school of presenting, duty, chasing down my errant computer cart (apparently reserving it is not enough). Technology frustration today as the server again crashed. The new system we’ll be using next year in February or so will not have this problem because it won’t go through the server. God knows what problems it WILL have, but that won’t be one of them. I am the Queen of Adaptation, though…we made it work. The next 5 days of school will be a lot of adaptation on my part and my students’ parts as they get a big project done for science. Fun stuff. Solving the world’s problems.

Speaking of solving the world’s problems, Sion posted a link to this video describing depression as a black dog…it’s really well done…

Mine is never a black dog. It’s a cloud or a hole…or both. I like dogs too much to saddle them with that. I usually feel like I’m in a hole. It’s cold and muddy most of the time. Sometimes it’s very quiet, but not in a comfortable way. Sometimes everything is muffled and I can’t hear anything right, let alone feel it right. Occasionally something pokes through and really hurts, but mostly it’s like being wrapped in cotton balls…again, not in a good way, but sort of a suffocating way. I wonder how long it will be like this. I do all the right things. Good Kathy. Bark.

Yeah. Whatever.

I’m managing Christmas decorations at home (I still have Halloween up at school…if it weren’t for Janet, I wouldn’t have any appropriate holiday decorations at all in my classroom) very very slowly. We got the tree and I got the lights up. I managed the mantle yesterday evening. Tonight I did 10 ornaments. At this rate, I’ll be done by January 10. Maybe some kid will stop by the tree and hang some things. You never know.

I had this discussion in my head of highlighter colors. I like orange and blue. Purple is too dark. Yellow and pink just suck, but I’d rather use pink than yellow. I used 10 colors of whiteboard marker at school today. That made my day a little better. Stupid stuff. I didn’t even know I had two shades of brown. The teacher just wants to color.

It was pajama day at school today, my favorite day of the year. So comfortable. I even went to the meeting after school with them still on.

I’m hiding from my email at the moment. Trying not to read anything from anyone. Hiding from Facebook. Hiding from school email. Can’t handle anything rocking my boat emotionally. Not feeling stable. Just feeling. Meditation says if we never acknowledge and spend time with the bad feelings, we won’t really understand the good. I do believe that. I know people who think they never feel bad, never feel cranky or irritable when they obviously do. I am less cranky now…the sad doesn’t leave much room for anything else. It’s kinda big. Encompassing. Overwhelming.

I cut out pieces tonight. I didn’t have the energy to draw the rest of last night’s drawing…

Maybe tomorrow night. I didn’t cut out very much…I didn’t have much time.

The leftovers are sometimes more interesting anyway.

We’re worried about Calli tonight. She is in pain from something…hard to tell whether it is her hips (she has a bad dysplasia and will need surgery sometime in the future) or her stomach or something else. We’ve decided to watch and wait until tomorrow morning. Trying to fit a vet visit in right now is a little crazy. I have so many things on my work/home calendar that I probably shouldn’t attempt sleep at all…until the 22nd maybe.

She couldn’t get up onto the girlchild’s bed, which is where she always sleeps. We couldn’t even lift her up…it hurt her too much. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow morning. Poor baby.

Looks like I will have a piece in Ojai, California, February-March. I had to look it up on the map. Besides knowing it was in California, I drew a total blank. More on that later…for now, I need to try to sleep. More sleep good. Maybe then I can hold off the morning weepies.

Apparently Balanced

My brain is kind of drained at the moment. All the activities of the day have sucked out any relevant thoughts for now. I had plenty of them before. I’m not sure where they went. Maybe they got bored and wandered off.

It was a really busy day. I have duty before and after school for two weeks, which tends to suck up a lot of time and energy (morning duty at the tables? Makes me want to shoot myself. It’s early, I’m not really awake, it was bloody freezing this morning, and it’s all about picking up trash and their high energy vs my incredibly low energy at that hour and temperature…they win). We had a meeting about students, then I had tutorial after school, which is like herding peeing puppies who are constantly yapping and snapping at each other. I did manage to get work out of them today, though. Miraculous. It restores my faith every time they do that…I guess that’s why I can teach, because I constantly believe they can do it if I just work hard enough to persuade them to do it…and many of them DO. Freaky. We have meetings galore in the next two weeks to deal with kids and grades etc…which sucks up a lot of time too.

After school, I booked it to the girlchild’s soccer game. I’m actually glad I was only there for the last 27 minutes, because I almost froze in that short period of time, even though I remembered boots, two sweatshirts, and gloves (two sweatshirts were not enough). Plus I was trying to sew and had to take the gloves off. Mistake.

Home to make dinner…oh no, no you don’t…back to the ex’s house to retrieve Biology book and practice shorts while girlchild tries to get her head (and nauseous stomach) ready for tons of homework. She literally has tons of homework. Realized today that with ex gone for two weeks, I will have to provide dinner EVERY NIGHT. What the fuck? Shit. Not ready for that. Can barely manage what I’m doing now. Would let the girlchild cook, but she is buried in schoolwork. Need Meals on Wheels for busy working mom.

Made dinner, had argument (discussion? is it ever a discussion with two teenagers or is it always an argument?) about sexist portrayals in fiction. Read some examples. Confirmed sexism. Don’t know if I care…the books are good so far. Did grades for a while, then onto the bike for nightly exercise, followed by meditation aka crying and breathing. At the same time. A feat unknown to man? Well sure, but woman is pretty damn good at it. Then finally…49 minutes of cutting out pieces…

I’m only 3 1/2 hours in. I’m not getting much time at night at the moment. Sucks. Not home enough. Anyway, I’m doing it. The green? Lungs. Yup. Aren’t your lungs green with pink flowers? I’m sure mine are. There are some bitchy pieces to cut out in that bin. If I’m tired, I just cut out the easy pieces and leave the hard ones for when I’m more awake. I think I’m hoping cutting fairies will come by and do those. I guess that’s unlikely.

Busy. Tired. Telling the brain to fuck off. Half of my brain says one thing, thinking logically, making plans and decisions, seeing the Big Picture. The other half is a fucked-up mess and is just flailing around in emotional crap so deep it can’t get out. It wants to draw. I almost let it tonight, but then I saw how late it was. Need to sleep. Maybe I will have time to draw tomorrow night…I’ll be minus the tutorial, the soccer game, and the grading…or will I? Huh. But I will add the gym. Another time sucker, but definitely a good cause. Trying to just sit in the emotional half of the brain and let it do what it needs to do. Either I’ll understand it more or the emotions will be less of an issue. Or something. Meditation helps. Even when I sit there thinking about 1-2 1/2 hours spent every night meditating and exercising, I wonder if that’s sustainable…it has to be. If it keeps me sane, keeps me moving, keeps me calmer, it’s worth it. So just do it. My priorities have changed. More art, less school. Less work at home. More exercise. Meditate. Fewer people (that might not be a good thing). Apparently cry…that’s a daily thing. I could do without that one. Wonder if I ever will.

This morning, as I was updating some of the website, I was feeling all cranky about only getting into 7 exhibits in 2013, but then I realized that it was 8 exhibits, and I already have pieces in 4 shows in 2014 and 2014 hasn’t even started yet. So shut up, stupid brain. You’re doing fine. Stop being such a mope about stuff. Make the work. The shows will come. And if they don’t? You will still make the work. That’s the logical half talking to the emotional half. They don’t really get along at the moment. The logic is frustrated with the emotion, and the emotion thinks the logic doesn’t listen…because hey, most of the time it doesn’t.

Here’s a video Luana Rubin of eQuilter did of the SAQA exhibits at IQF Houston, including People and Portraits…

You can decide if that quilt is truly whimsical, or just plain old disturbing. Funny that it’s about being Fully Medicated, but I keep trying to get away from meds, and I keep having to take more. I should do one called Over Medicated, except I’m not. I have this Tshirt that says USDA Organic…which is ironic, because I’m not organic…I’m full of meds that keep my systems apparently balanced because my body doesn’t know how to, even though for half the ailments I have, I was told if I lost the weight, they would all go back to normal. Fucking liars. Well, the meds are supposed to keep everything balanced, but I don’t think I’m there yet…I’m freezing again. Under Medicated also might be fun to draw.

Apparently balanced: despite all the mindfucks that are going on at the moment, I seem to have found a balance between art and work that is somewhat functional: basically do very little grading at home. Do art every night. If there’s a question about how to use my time? Art wins. That’s sustainable. I hope.

The Haiku of Exhaustion

I was too tired last night to even write the Haiku of Exhaustion. I seriously had the whole thing written in my head, but I fell asleep while meditating, and then I decided that multiple nights with less than 5 hours of sleep needed remediation. Intervention. Luckily my brain went along with it, because god knows I’ve thought that before, and my brain doesn’t always put sanity first. But I slept…hard…and well…until Kitten wanted to pee. But that was in the morning. And I had slept…the sleep of exhaustion. Meanwhile, I can’t remember the damn haiku. Maybe I dreamed myself writing it. I’ve dreamed myself writing novels before…dreamed the entire plot and outline and writing it and then woke up and lost it all. I’m probably a pretty amazing person in my dreams.

I drew tonight…

I drew at the South Park Walkabout. Yes. I went by myself. I went Christmas shopping and actually managed One Whole Item off my list. I ran into a friend and her family and got to answer the question of “are you here by yourself?” with clarifying questions twice. I held it together…although at one point I said something about being alone forever. I hope that’s not true, but it’s not off the table…that’s for sure. I did correct myself. I guess you’re never alone when you teach middle school. You’re never alone when you have kids…even when they move out. You’re never alone when you’re a cat lady in training. So there we are. Plus in my head, I might never be alone. Yes, her eyes are crooked. I was drawing in the dark…

I was drawing at the Station Tavern. One of the pluses of being alone, dammit, is that it’s easy to find somewhere to sit at restaurants where there is never room for two. The waitress asked if I was alone too (I guess I need a shirt…or a hat…or a sign…yes…yes, it’s just me…alone…thanks for reminding me). Then I got glared down by many bearded hipsters and their leather-clad vixens for taking up space at the table. Whatever, bitches. I was here first and I’m not taking up that much room.

Yes, that is Hipster Santa awkwardly flipping you off. That was what I was drawing to the glaring people. Let the old lady eat her dinner, people. It’s her treat for the month. She deserves it. Be nice.

The food was good. I brought half of it home. I felt OK. Then I got in the car and sobbed the whole way home. Whoops! Oh well. Shit happens. In my case, tears happen. Move on. I came home, built a fire in the fireplace, meditated, and started writing this post in that room (it’s warmer than this room…I’m in my office with my sweatshirt hood on my head, wishing I knew where my fingerless gloves were right now.).

So tonight was marginally better than last night…I cut out fabric pieces last night for a whopping 17 minutes (OK, that’s more than I did today). Work stuff got in the way…work holiday party. Sigh. Such a complicated thing, my work existence. Yes, the eyelid is still twitching. The last two weeks before break…brains are mush. Grades. Sigh. Wish I still had that mental buffer against work issues that I had back in September. But now our team has been approved for the first round of one-on-one computers, rolling them out in February or so. Deep breaths. I’ll get my head around it during Winter Break. We’ll have tablets for monitoring the kids and their work. And somehow magically everything I teach is going to migrate to the web. In three months or less. Yeah. And the Easter Bunny still exists. Santa too.

Today was gym, rain, soccer, rain, and errands, and yelling, and wow. Girlchild’s whole game was in a monsoon, I think.

OK, this was in between monsoonal bursts…there was one before the game even started. I went and sat in the car and graded during that one, only coming out about 5 minutes before the game started. Then we had about three downpours in the first half…

But I stitched through them.

I didn’t stitch much. My hands were cold and I was trying to keep stuff dry. I had the big umbrella, but it’s not made for rain…only sun…so it leaks. And then the rain was going sideways for a while…

It’s really a miracle I wasn’t more soaked through…

It’s blurry because of the rain. The monsoonal rain.

The girlchild made a really nice left-footed shot at the goal…she’s on the right with her leg in the air. Everyone is looking towards her, and I can’t figure out where the ball was.

It was cold and wet, but at least I wasn’t in the mud like some people.

I’m in charge of laundry. Away games they always wear white. Nice. The friend I saw at the Walkabout said Martha Stewart would have a recommendation for removing the mud stains from the socks…they do always seem to come out of the shorts, but not the socks (different materials). Sigh.

Anyway, they won. This is a pre-official-high-school season tournament…two more games next week and then semis and finals on Saturday, which ought to be interesting, since that’s the extended family party. Not looking forward to that either. Except I’ll get to grade or stitch in the car on the way up. Sometimes I have to focus on the little things that please me…like Christmas lights…

Which is my favorite part of this season. The trees and lights…

I draw those lights all the time. Seriously, they’re in lots of my quilts. I tried to explain why once, but I don’t really know why. The mood? The color? The shape? The long string of them that can be wrapped around things? Don’t know. They’re just there. I don’t think of them as sinister, but as safe. Happy even? Maybe. I don’t know that I can qualify anything as happy.

I finished a book today, The Round House by Louise Erdrich.

I’ve always liked Erdrich’s books. Most of this book was amazingly good…there was some drifting off into history or something that lost me for a while today. It deals with conflicting federal, BLM, state, and Native laws regarding rape on Native land (or land that has territory issues, as in the book, where literally take a step one way, and it’s federal law, a step the other way, and it’s not). Her books aren’t happy, but there are happy moments. There are also tragic ones and painful ones, but there is always a good dog. It was a good book.

I like to use the cover of the book I actually read when I post about books. Strangely anal, I know. Whatever. I read it as an ebook, too, so even less relevant. So that’s the cover I had. Then I saw this cover…

Interesting. The snake? The tree? The religious connection…tenuous. I do like the graphic quality.

And then there was THIS cover.

This is my favorite, although probably also not relevant. The book is about the plight of raped Native American women, but told from the perspective of a 13-year-old son of a rape victim…so the cover is good, but? I don’t know. Maybe relevant. I have now officially caught up with all the Erdrich books I had missed in the last 8 or 10 years. I need my reading app to tell me when my favorite authors have a new book out. It sort of does, but I have to remember to click through. And then I don’t like to list a bunch of books in my To-Read list…I don’t know why, really. Because I’m afraid I will end up with a giant list of books to read and no time to read them? I do have a list…it’s on my phone. It’s just not in the app. I have to think about that…consider why I’m resisting using that function. It might be really useful. Maybe.

Anyway. That tired sleep thing is back. I got no art done today. It was a lost day. Not really, because I did a lot, but the art centers me. So I will have to make time for it tomorrow. Wow. Tomorrow just laughed at me. It doesn’t think I can do it. Well, fuck you, tomorrow. I’m a stubborn old bitch and now you’ve gotten me pissed off…so there WILL be art tomorrow (hopefully more than 17 minutes of it, but you never can tell). Sleep first though.

The Expiration Date on the Milk Is All That Matters…

I only managed 9 1/2 minutes of ironing tonight…all I really have left is the owl…

I couldn’t get my head around his coloring tonight (I always think of owls as being male…strange, that), so I did the thorny bushes around the Crone’s head instead…

Red thorns…gray twigs. The box is almost full.

But I’m down to just a few pieces left to iron, maybe 25. Then it’s done and I move out of the studio into the living room to cut them all out. This quilt is progressing quickly. That’s because I have no life. Oh well. Actually, tonight, I pretended to have a life. I went to a book club meeting with total strangers. Yup. I did that. I should clarify that this group is for “geeky women” (their term) and so I wasn’t sure I belonged (I am always the alien, no matter the group). Girlchild said that because I spent over an hour worrying about whether I was a geek and googling definitions of geeks and nerds and dorks that I WAS in fact one and I should just shut up and join. Sigh. Anyway, the plus is that it’s a group of women who read A LOT and FAST, and I got about 400 book recommendations just tonight (plus TV and movies) and sat next to a woman who said something about listening to audiobooks while IRONING FABRIC and what are the odds? She does costumes, but where else do I go where that happens? (nowhere)

The book we read, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, was pretty good…it had its flaws, definitely light fiction, but I’ll read the next book in the series…

I still have questions and the character wasn’t horrible…she had issues, sure, but hell, so do I. There are some interesting characters and it’s not often you get urban fantasy AND mystery in one book.

Anyway. I ordered the next book for the January book club from the library system. And yeah? We met in a bar. Books and wine. You cannot go wrong. There was food too, but I didn’t have a lot of money. And good music, which was free.

This week is full of social events…tomorrow night is my favorite stitching people and I don’t want to talk about Friday night. Sigh. It can’t all be good. Sometimes it just has to be.

My right eyelid started twitching yesterday. I googled it (see geek reference above). I don’t know WHY I googled it…I already know what’s causing it: fatigue or stress. You know what’s interesting is that even though I am getting even less sleep than last year at this time, I’m often not tired. Weird. Some brain chemistry thing? You Don’t Really Need All That Sleep. I know that’s not true, but I still think it’s strange.

So yeah, eyelid is stress. I spent 2 1/2 hours at Children’s Hospital this morning with the girlchild and we are now taking the next step towards surgery, a CT scan. We think we can schedule surgery between the high-school soccer season and the beginning of the club season. Yes. That’s crazy. We’re also scheduling between the ACT and SAT. Really crazy. The doctor did answer all our questions and we trust him, though, so I’m hoping this is relatively easy.

At school, we are getting closer to the kids being 1:1 on technology…which is more than a little scary. What does it look like? What is the purpose of the technology? It can’t just be a toy we trot out to make admin happy…it has to serve a purpose within the content. So the thought of flipping how we do stuff in the classroom is sort of mind-boggling at the moment. My head is trying to wrap itself around it. So it was not at all amusing today when the server went down and we were on computers doing research all day, and I had to log in 22 kids in one period on a server they shouldn’t be on (don’t ask) and there were a lot of deep breaths and meditative thinking and seriously deep brain stuff about Is This Really What I Want to Do? This is what using technology is to me in the classroom right now: a management nightmare. I can’t even deal with content issues because the technology issues are so vast and varied and fucking frustrating. You always have to have a backup plan, because inevitably, something won’t work. And the kids may be digital natives, but they give up SO easily when stuff doesn’t work right the first time and they suck at LOOKING for stuff…like a tabbed menu on a website is apparently invisible to them. WHERE does it say CAUSES? I wonder. Key words. If I put them on Facebook, they could find it immediately, but the Mayo Clinic website? Completely incomprehensible. I’m thinking of rewriting the medical websites to LOOK like Facebook with status posts on some beautiful woman who has had a heart attack or has atherosclerosis, just so they will READ them, and then turn a bunch of it into Vines so they’ll watch all SIX seconds, and then only then maybe will we be getting somewhere. Training them to be observant. It can be extremely frustrating. I’ve gotten very good at it, and I kept my cool today (even after spending most of the morning at the hospital, where they were running an hour late). I blame the meditation. I can deal. My eyelid can’t deal, but the rest of me can. I have not found eyelid-specific meditation.

I just found all these Thanksgiving food pictures.

Girlchild cooked almost everything…

We had another family over, friends of ours that we’ve had Thanksgiving with for a million years…

The food was good; we played that silly word game we always play.

Everyone is getting older.

That was Wednesday (of course) and then Thursday, we went to their cabin for a spaghetti dinner (of course)…

Where there was more food (girlchild did desserts this time)…those are not just rice krispies treats…they are brown butter rice krispies treats. They make you want to curl up and die, they are so good. They are gourmet rice krispies treats. She has to really like you to make those. I rate.

And there was more talk and lots of Snapchat (not my generation…the younger).

That’s my mom and the girlchild. And it was relatively good. I still have issues with gatherings just because of my alien status…but these were people I had known for forever. They accept me. They are kind. So I’m working on it, not being a hermit. Coming out and not moping around. Some. It’s hard.

So I’m still distant, numb, probably not a bad place to be this week. I had a good book-related conversation with ten total strangers tonight and an even more focused book/fabric/life conversation with two of the women. I talked to both kids about future stuff and driving and cars and college and soccer and stupid people and whether or not I should let the girlchild take penne a la vodka to school (it does have alcohol in it, per se, although it is cooked off/down/something). I just thought about it and wondered…is this OK? Should I worry? Naw.

I would have liked more time for art, but such is life. Life and art…a balance. I can’t just have one. I need both. The art alone is very isolating, very lonely, very in my head. Sometimes I have to get out of that dark gloomy place and wander outside in the real world. I did cry, though. Still. That doesn’t seem to have wandered off. Strange. It’s still hard to exist in some moments. Lots of them still. I don’t know when that shifts…or perhaps it’s shifting so slowly that I can’t even see it.

To bed, eyelid twitching and all…tomorrow is another one of those days. From the book we read for book club tonight: “All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.” Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire.