Call Yourself What You Like…

So I entered this art show recently that wanted me to categorize my art as fiber, textile, or weaving. OK. Well, I know it’s not weaving, because I’m not fucking weaving anything. There’s no under over under over bam bam bam (I grew up with a weaver. That sound is embedded in my brain. Try watching TV with a weaver in the room.). That said, the fabric is woven. Technicality. Now I usually call myself a fiber artist if I’m not calling myself a quilt artist, because I use the methodology and techniques of quilting, but then people get their gramma’s quilts in their heads and what I do just makes their brains explode, so I call myself a fiber artist because it gives me some distance from gramma. But sometimes when I say that to people outside the fabric world, they think I mean the fiber you eat that cleans out your colon, and I’m like YES, THAT kind of Fiber. I make art with Metamucil. Yup. So then you say you’re a textile artist, but I’m not sure that’s a whole lot better, because what the fuck does that MEAN? So I ask my daughter, and she says, “Call yourself what you like.” Wow. I raised that child, didn’t I? So I start looking up the definition of fiber, which seems wrong, except in a holistic sense, more like thread, so if I were a basketweaver or a knotter maybe, so I look up textile, and it says something about weaving fibers, and fuck. I don’t freakin’ know which these are and then I wonder if I should even be ENTERING, but the description definitely says anything using textile materials or techniques, and before I run around the house ripping my clothes off and RENDING them into materials I can use in my next quilt, screaming, and rolling myself into a tiny urine-soaked ball in the corner of my incredibly messy studio that definitely needs cleaning, I click TEXTILE on all of them and thus define myself for the rest of my life.

Or not. Really. It’s hard to say. Probably I shouldn’t be allowed out though.

So. The good news is that I FINISHED QUILTING. Fuck me. I am relieved. And saddened. But I think the saddened is mostly unrelated hormones, so ignore it.

I had guessed 15 hours, but that was before some psychotic bitch took over my brain and made me do teeny tiny squiggles all over the background, so I clocked in at 17 1/2 hours instead. Yup. Two point five hours of squiggling. And last night, when I looked at the clock and said, Fuck yeah, I can do it and who the fuck needs sleep anyway? Well, then the thread broke and the bobbin thread ran out and the thread broke again and I just continued to bully through until it was done. And that was the 2.5 hours right there.

Back only. You wanna see the whole thing? Come to the opening in January at Visions Art Museum. Or hang out here until then. I’ll post it then. I promise. It’s kinda cool. Now I gotta draw the next one. Cuz I’m starting it! Like NOW! Because I keep saying yes to things and at some point that means I have to do the things I said yes to.

Sigh.

And in the hopes of continuing to drag my depressoid brain (thank you, thyroid, for being a stingy asshole) out of the mud and into something like a life, I went over 25,000 words on NaNoWriMo yesterday…which means I’m over 50,000 words for the whole book. Halfway done with both, really. And what was weird was that I just started writing and she fainted. And I didn’t even realize she was GOING to faint. It just happened, and then I thought, why is she fainting? And that answer came too, and it was part of the story, an additional point in the plot, foreshadowing leading up to tomorrow’s action, tomorrow not being today or Saturday, but tomorrow in the story, which is now today, because I got to today in the story. Confused? This is why I have comments telling me in the story what day it is, because Saturday lasted for about 40 pages. Sunday was not as long. There was more sleeping and less action. As there SHOULD be on a Sunday, right? Today is a Monday, and Mondays suck. So this one will suck too.

I haven’t actually decided whether there is a happy ending. I think there is not. I know there is no sequel. So I think it is not. Maybe it is a hopeful ending, but maybe it is an ending where a dozen young women send me hateful contact email about how I killed off their favorite person ever. (see Divergent. She had to die guys. Oops. Spoiler.)

Because that’s how I roll. Crazy. I know.

Binding on tonight. Seriously. It has to. And then I start hand-sewing it, because this thing has to be done. Which means Sunday morning, I need to figure a way to deal with where the blue batik bled. Although it’s minor on most of it, there’s one place that’s bad. It’s OK. I have a plan. Sort of. I am trained for these maneuvers. I have the technology. (Technology just means tools, by the way. Someone told me that. Tools. I got ’em.)

Boychild is texting me about Cambodia and snow! Snow! Not here. No, he’s not in Cambodia. He’s in New York. Here we have drizzle. Well, we HAD drizzle. And my feet are cold (thyroid) and I need to switch the bed over to flannel (thyroid) and there’s a shitload of things I have to get done this weekend around the two school-related things I’m doing that are totally eating up the whole weekend anyway, so there (job that takes over life). And girlchild wanted me to drop her off at the other high school for the Magic Mountain trip at…GET THIS…4:30 AM. Really? Because I probably just went to bed. I think I’d rather have her leave her car there all day and have it stolen (because it probably would be) than do that.

At least you don’t have to listen to me complain about the quilting any more.

Hermitlike

Hermit mode. Grading and ironing. Head barely comes up for air. Or communication. I’m not sure this is the healthiest place to be when you don’t have some sort of anchor at the other end of the making. I used to have that, something that pulled me up and out when I was done making for hours and hours, that would make me be out in the world and talk and make decisions that weren’t just fabric-related. Now I have to force myself to do that. It feels painful sometimes, like, dammit…I don’t WANT to try and be social with other people and make small talk and try to NOT think about the art in my head. But I know I need to do that fairly regularly, or I will be that hermit. It’s not a happy place to be. It’s too much like hard work. I’ve done a lot of hard work in the last year…

So tonight I am headed out to an activity that sounded fun, but it’s with a ton of people I don’t know. I’m OK with that. I could have played it easy and gone to the other gathering with all the people I normally hike with, but this sounded better. I picked the activity, not the people. Hmn. Not particularly healthy if I’m trying to not be a hermit. Oh well. The brain does what it wants.

I spent about 4 hours ironing things together today…

I graded in the morning too…up way too early because the girlchild had SAT subject tests. But it meant I got a bunch done in the morning and then rewarded myself with hours of artmaking time.

I’m wasting time playing Clash of Clans…I’m not very good at it and I don’t really understand it (yeah, I know), but some people from school are playing. There was a war today and I was supposed to fight two battles…I’m better at defense than offense, shockingly.

I don’t spend hours on it. I don’t spend hours on anything except for art and reading books and drawing. Maybe sleep.

Putting the lungs together was kind of a pain in the butt…lots of little overlapping pieces that tried to drive me nuts…

But eventually I got most of the torso ironed down.

Yes, those are fish on her arm.

Then I managed to make the face fit where it was supposed to fit, although I needed to add two little pieces of hair color under the ear for some reason…

The bird was the last thing I ironed together.

My real problem is that I don’t remember what I was going to use for the background. I’m not sure I ever chose a background fabric. So I might have to find something here or go shopping for something that will work. But it’s ready to iron to the background fabric. Success! Wah. Whatever. I think I am looking too hard for that feeling of fulfillment. I think I have to wait patiently until it arrives. What kind of artist am I? The tortured kind. The drawings spill out of me in some attempt to heal the breaks, the cracks, the dust of a former self, but it does not stop. It’s shattered. It hurts to finish things.

I’m almost done cutting out fabrics for the other big quilt…you can actually see the bottom of the middle box…the stuff to be cut out. So maybe another couple of hours? It’s deceptive to see that few pieces…they don’t get cut out quickly, unfortunately.

Kitten is still coming out to visit in the living room at night. It’s nice.

OK. I have to try and be sociable now. You can’t make me.

The Burning

I recently read The Burning by Jane Casey, the first in her Maeve Kerrigan series…

It was offered through NetGalley…presumably to persuade people to read the rest of her Kerrigan stories. Maeve is a detective constable in London who is helping to investigate a serial killer who is burning women. The most recent victim, Rebecca Haworth, doesn’t seem to fit the mold for these killings, and it’s Maeve’s job to figure out what’s going on.

I’m a sucker for a good forensic mystery, which this is. It’s not super-heavy lit, but it definitely held my attention and kept me reading. I would read the rest of her books; the characters are somewhat typical but their stories are interesting enough to get me to read #2. Maeve has some version of a personal life and has to deal with sexist power plays (this is the police in London), plus like any good British detective, she often breaks the rules to solve the crime.

The 4th book in the Kerrigan series will be released in the US this May, and is already out in the UK. Casey also writes crime thrillers that aren’t about Kerrigan. The older books, like this one, are also available for a good price on e-readers.

Living in a Hospital

So I’ve spent the last 36 hours in a hospital, minus two hours for a quick trip home…got a shower, some real tea, checked in with cats and boychild, emptied the mailbox. Girlchild’s surgery went well, but dealing with pain and all the other fun post-surgical stuff has been difficult. I had a deal with my ex that if there were a second night, he would deal, and he was willing to do so, but in the end, she didn’t want her dad to be the one taking her to the bathroom in the middle of the night. So I’m here on the couch again.

Unfortunately, I had by then left the overnight bag at home, but he brought most of it…and a glass or two of wine, which was a plus. I graded during the surgery, but quit when it required higher orders of thinking, because I didn’t have that available. I stitched a little bit while waiting for her to come out of recovery. But since then, all I’ve managed is blog-reading. I can’t handle a long story, I’m too tired to have enough manual dexterity to stitch. I brought back a sketchbook and haven’t touched it.

It’s kind of exhausting just being in a hospital. I’ve switched into efficient mom mode, learning how to switch off that fucking annoying alarm that indicates her IV needs something. I’ve dealt with rolling her, feeding her, medicating her, and a wide range of bodily fluids.

She’s better. I’m hoping we get out of here tomorrow. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I promised Kitten I’d be home tonight. Boychild has been on his own for days. School is a freakin’ disaster, don’t even ask.

But her back is fixed. It’s a solid fix. I’m hoping it was all worth it. I can suffer nights of barely any sleep and all that if it means she has a good final season of soccer. Pain free. Here’s hoping.

The Valley of the Moon Hike

Last weekend, I went on a hike in the The Valley of the Moon, which is about an hour east of Lakeside off of Interstate 8. The parking lot is a lonely beast right off the freeway.

There’s a “road,” if you can call it that, going up and down into the valley. It’s dirt, then gravel, then some weird concrete texturized stuff. The road is fairly awful.

We hiked up it anyway; it wasn’t particularly easy or pretty.

In the distance is an ex-volcano that blew its top a good long time ago.

The geology of the area is awesomely cool…lots of weird veins of stuff and sparkly mica with rock that cooled awfully quickly and still looks liquid.

Once you get yourself up and over the first hills, you come down into the Valley of the Moon, which is all remnants of volcanic activity mixed with wind erosion.

The valley is surrounded by rock formations…those big granite rocks were originally formed underground, pushed upwards, fractured under the pressure, and the covering sediment eroded away.

There’s plenty of desert plant life, from chollas to yucca.

This valley is nicknamed San Diego’s little Joshua Tree, as the rock formations are similar. It’s very close to the Mexican border, and is cooler than the desert below. El Cajon was in the 90s on Sunday, and I was worried about the hike at that temperature, but it was in the high 70s with a breeze, which was fairly perfect…

Enough to make you sweat but not be miserable. In about 6 weeks, it will be too warm to hike there comfortably.

These strange holes look like animal caves, but are probably formed by wind erosion.

The rock formations want me to draw them…the way the rocks slot together is really fascinating.

Everywhere you turn, there are more piles…apparently the photographers prefer those last hours of the afternoon, when the light is warm and gives the rocks their best color.

One of the guys on the hike was knowledgeable about geology and gave us info about types of rocks and formations, which was great.

I suggest everyone bring a geologist on this hike with them. We spent some time seeing things in the formations, like this cat…someone thought it looked more like a sphinx.

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If you have 4-wheel drive and can drive further in (there was a Rubicon wandering all over the valley while we were there), you could bring kids on this hike. The hardest climb is coming in.

We did a little rock scrambling at this point to get a good view of the surrounding valley and to eat lunch.

This is where my camera randomly died…I don’t really know why. I charged it the night before. So all the pictures from here on out are taken with the iPhone…not the best camera in the world.

Except this token group photo, which someone else took…we look like we’re about to draw our guns against a rival gang.

This panorama shot was taken from our lunch stop…the rock scrambling is apparently not my strong point…some people climbed higher.

The reason we did the scrambling is so we could see the valley below…

Once we’d eaten, we wandered around the valley a bit, trying to find the path to the mines. We walked through some campsites (aka, places people had obviously camped…nothing fancy).

This shot is from the path that circles the peak where the mines are located.

This was the first mine opening we came to, the evidence of copper being the green tinge to the rocks lining the opening, according to our geologist. Reading online, though, tells me this area is the now-abandoned Elliot amethyst mine.

We hiked further up to another opening, where I took this shot of three different rock layers (I tell you, this area is a geologist’s wet dream)…

And another panorama facing east and south into Mexico.

Some of our group went into this mine for a ways….

I went into this one, which required a little squat-crawling (technical term) until it opened up into this cavern with a chimney opening in the top…

Giving enough light to actually see where humans had dug out more tunnels. I’m not a fan of being in small tunnels, personally.

From there, we climbed up on this rock pile for a view to the south of Mexico.

There was a painted marker for something on the top…

Looking south…

And looking north, where we saw some black smoke from a fire. We never figured out what was burning…you can see the paths through part of the valley below.

Here’s the whole group…

And another view of the rocks to the east…

Rocks eroded to look like teeth…

And a very skinny mine opening…

The hike was about 8.4 miles and we spent about 4 hours on the trail, stopping once for food and a few times to explore rocks or mines. There were a few other people out there hiking around. You can make it as short or long as you like, due to the many trails criss-crossing the area, as long as you realize it’s a bit more than a mile of serious uphill to get in, unless you have 4-wheel drive. Rock-climbers also love this area for all the climbing opportunities.

On the way out and back, you get a good view of one of the back-country wind farms.

Oh yeah…evidence that I’m not a rock scrambler…this was from a kind of flying-squirrel maneuver I had to make to get from one rock to the next because I’m not as tall as the rest of the other hikers…

Oh well. It’s not the first time I’ve had scabby knees and it probably won’t be the last.

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.

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