Prioritize the Many…

I’m debating Nanowrimo this year. Since school started, I’ve been finding it harder to find the time and mental space to write…shockingly, since I’m working full time as a teacher and trying to be a regularly working artist as well. But I wrote 1300 words last night. Just like that…Boom! In the book, it’s still Saturday. The book starts on Thursday. I’ve been writing about Saturday for 19 pages. A lot happened on Saturday. At the rate I’m going, the whole book will take maybe a week to take place. Most of it seems to be happening on Saturday…which must be like 46 hours long. Huh. Might need to deal with that issue.

I really enjoy the writing. Strange. It would be nice to make the attempt to write 50,000 words next month. I’d be almost done. Not sure I can do it, but I can make it a goal anyway.

Because I don’t have enough things I’m trying to do? I was really good today, though, despite crashing blood sugar after school (damn Minimum Day schedule fucks with me). I came home and ate (important) and did one household chore on my list and prepped for the sub I have in my classroom for two days so I can do professional development, and I dealt a little bit with grades…I’ll have to finish in the morning. Then I cooked and dealt with girlchild and animals and kitchen cleaning, and finally ironed for a while. I achieved things. I prioritized, but got most of it done. I need to finish my book…it’s way overdue (can’t renew it…there’s holds on it). It really should be a priority. But only so many things can hit the top of the list…

Last night, I started sorting fabrics out…

It took about an hour and 10 minutes to get through all of them. There were a lot of really small pieces…

Some of which I’ve already misplaced. I started ironing late last night…

I tried to number things for logical ironing. Turns out it made sense for picking fabrics, but not for ironing them together. There are arms on either side of the bases of the scales…arm one…

Holds the Earth…arm 2 holds the heart…

I’m about 200 pieces and 2 hours in. That means I can estimate about 11 hours total ironing pieces together and maybe two hours to iron it to the background. At the rate I’m going, an hour a night (not so impressive, eh?), I’ll be done on time…still aiming for the 17th, sandwiching and pinbasting that weekend. We’ll see. Ironing is difficult when you’re tired…requires too high a level of concentration for super-tired.

On Sunday, I was at a science discussion for a while, and decided to stitch on birds…

Still working on these. They take a while to do when you only work on them at night soccer games. But I find it relaxing…to sit in the park listening to people argue scientific theory and ethics and critical thinking while pulling purple sparkly thread through wool fabric. It’s not a bad place to be.

Absolutely exhausted right now. Going to take it all to bed with me. More ironing tomorrow night…because it’s still one of my top priorities…

Wax Me Gibbous

Finished cutting stuff out to the waxing gibbous moon. Which is kinda how I felt at past 1 AM. My right hand was sore from cutting…almost 4 hours yesterday. It’s still stiff today. I kept wanting to give up, but I’d look at how little was left and get fucking stubborn about it.

So yeah. Done. Thirteen hours and 38 minutes…didn’t think it would take that long, but it did. I wanted them sorted yesterday too, but that didn’t happen. It STILL hasn’t happened. In fact, I don’t know what happened to the day, although there’s grades and I went to a science talk thing and I stitched there, because I can’t sit still without something in my hands, and I know I bought groceries and ate some food and prepped independent study contracts for two kids.

I also watched the girlchild play soccer yesterday, in over 100 degrees.

She hits the ball with her head a lot. Might have scrambled brains, which would explain a lot. Yes, it’s still like summer here. Pink shirts are for breast cancer month.

They won, 5-0. Creamed them. Girlchild really wanted a goal, though…

And she tried to go through the goalie to get it. It hit the pole and bounced back…

Oct 5 14 038 small

And she went again, but apparently was offsides (her dad and I disagreed with the ref on that)…made a goal, but it didn’t count.

So there we are.

I’m completely brain dead from grading and not enough sleep and up way too late at night and the heat and just life in general and trying to negotiate shit that I don’t want to deal with. People. Anyway. The next step is ironing. AACK! Well, first I have to sort the damn pieces. Gonna go do that now. Spent too much time communing with electrons so far today. Walk away from the computer…

Must Draw.

I have all this art-related stuff going on, all these deadlines I’ve been managing really since summer, and my life is different, in that I don’t have the same situation that seemed to encourage more drawing…so I realized that some of the tense growliness that is existing in the back part of my head…it’s because I haven’t been drawing enough. Drawing literally seems to pull these big black wormy nasty bits out of my mind and plop them down on paper, and it works like meditation. I should be doing it EVERY DAY. OK, so that’s not going to happen, because I already have lots of stupid stuff I have to do every day, like eat, sleep, work, meditate, exercise, and poop. Maybe some more things too. But I do like this idea of setting time aside (damn, I need to find more time somewhere…in Clash of Clans, you can buy gems…in my life, I need to be able to buy hours) to draw. Of making a date with myself to draw.

So I picked Friday nights. And it’s not like I spent a lot of introspective time considering options and debating pros and cons of small drawings every other day or one large drawing or when do I consistently have time. I was sitting on the couch on Friday night, alone because the girlchild was watching a soccer game at UCSD. Or SDSU. I’m not sure which. And I had finished grading one section of the 700 things I need to grade this weekend, because fucking progress reports are due. Hate progress reports. Go Look at the Online Gradebook, parents! It’s all there! Anyway. My personal issues aside (I don’t really hate progress reports…I just hate doing them). And I thought, I feel squirmy in my skin. I’m exhausted from the week (it’s been a doozy!). I don’t want to be responsible and grade more stuff. I wanna. I wanna. What do I wanna? I wanna draw.

So I did. For like 2 hours.

And there she is. Meditation Pose 1. Implying there might be more (maybe not, and then when I die and someone does my retrospective catalog, y’all can discuss why I stopped with one). By the way, I don’t meditate in anything approaching this pose (or in the nude, for that matter), because my knees would protest that position. I’m all about comfortable meditation poses, because then I can focus on the brain instead of my aging body.

There’s a lot going on in this drawing, which I really like. And I’m going to try really hard to keep doing something on Friday nights, because I’m usually braindead on Fridays anyway and really shouldn’t be allowed to do anything that requires brain power at all, and the brain power I use for drawing comes from an entirely different source (THE source, I think), but I say that, and I already know next Friday will be an issue because of an art opening. Oh well. I can try. I can put it on the calendar. It would be more than I’m doing now. The last big drawing I did was the end of July (although I then continued it in September or late August, so it’s not like I’m not drawing…it’s just not so freeform). I feel like when I’m 90, I will still be rearranging my busy schedule to try to fit everything in.

Did I have TIME to draw? Fuck no. Like I said, grades are due and I haven’t finished this yet…

Fucker. I cut for over an hour last night, but it’s still a ways away from being finished. It doesn’t look like much…

but it takes time to cut all those pieces out. So I will find that time today…hopefully. Around the gym and soccer and grades. Because these are the things that make me feel better. Not the things where I have bills to pay and people to manage and papers to correct and rooms to clean. That shit just sucks. And although you have to be adult and responsible and DO some of that shit, it shouldn’t be all you do.

By the way, Babygirl just stepped on my mouse and deleted half a paragraph, and is now lying with her tail on the keyboard and her butt completely obscuring the mouse, with a surprised, yet petulant look every time I touch the mouse. “You’re touching my butt.” “Get your butt off my mouse.” Damn cats.

OK, gym. Food. Work. Art. Soccer. Not in that order. Taking care of oneself takes so much damn energy.

Need. Want.

There’s this thing in my head about choices, about feeling like you don’t have choices, about the connection between that feeling and depression, and then there’s this conversation about if you can map information on the brain, if you can map learning on the brain, could you not map a happy existence onto the brain, erase PTSD, erase abuse, erase violence, erase bad things that happen to you, a la The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (that movie completely fucked with me)…

In fact, I just watched the trailer, and even that made me cry. How many years after I saw the movie in the theaters? God DAMN it. I was OK. I was. I really was. And then one thing. It’s always just one thing. It’s a matchstick on a huge firewood pile, and that fucking little thing, it topples the pile, pulls it crashing down on my fucking head and I’m in that place again. Damn, but I need to draw something. I need to spend some time in a bar with a sketchbook and a pen and people around me completely ignoring me, except for the wait staff, who are appropriately attentive, but not overly so, and someone should buy me a drink, wave at me from across the bar as the staff delivers it and stares pointedly at them, and then they fucking LEAVE, because that’s how much social interaction I need at the moment I think.

All this after I spent a perfectly nice couple of hours with stitching friends, except I wasn’t stitching, because I am a woman on a semi-psychotic mission that seems never-ending some days. Because yes, I will finish this quilt, because I have a deadline and it’s important and it’s good, but there is another one in line, and when that one is done, there will be another one, because there always is and there is nothing else.

Is this related to the girlchild’s vomitfest from last night (let’s all hope it was food poisoning, because she ate at her dad’s, not my house, and I can’t afford days of vomit at the moment…or like ever).

FUCK.

Deep breaths. Really, universe, you keep trying, and I sit in my chair, cross my legs. flip you off calmly, and say “Bring it the fuck on. I can do it.” And then at midnight, my brain implodes into a ball of messed-up goo.

What’s left to be cut out…

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s time-consuming. Maybe tomorrow night? Maybe if it’s not a fucked-up mess like tonight?

Actually, I cut out for 2.5 hours tonight, between the meeting and home. So fuck you. Bastards. I did work.

I’m at 8.5 hours. I don’t think it’s going to take 15 total…maybe another 3?

Here’s what’s done and what’s trash…

Lots of big body pieces cut out today. It’s good. No really. Fuck you brain, it IS good.

I think I need to learn to filter better. Filter the stuff that sends me off balance. I know I could do that if conditions were right (they’re not).

Need. Want. I did a quilt about that…

One of the few sold. Need on the TV. It’s actually called Lost. But yeah. Need.

Tomorrow’s brain. It should function better than today’s.

Crazy It Is…

No real pictures today. And this will be a speedy post. Already managing school stuff without a full cup of tea in my brain (trouble). But spent a goodly amount of time last night with friends discussing vivisection and 120-year-old science and beliefs and the terrors of online dating for old ladies like me…

My book club read The Island of Dr. Moreau this month in honor of Halloween. I had never read H.G. Wells before. It’s difficult to admit that I, as an artist, had a hard time visualizing the characters in a book, but this one did it to me, and this cover Does Not Help at all. I love my geek book club…such wacky discussions from so many directions, from gene splicing to zombies to chemical dependencies and corporate structure. I go for the smart discussions, because I don’t get that very many other places. Thank god the book was short, but it’s interesting that (1) such a short book brought up so many things to talk about and (2) I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure how she felt about it. I did rate it well on Goodreads, but only because it made me think (and look up about 400 words on Dictionary.com). I have been reading a lot lately, but not posting about them here. Not sure why. Time.

Yes, I cut out pieces of fabric last night…for about an hour…interrupted by the girlchild’s food poisoning. Fun week. Really. I could use a break. But more pictures of cut-out pieces just depressed me last night…mostly because progress is really slow (of course, it helps if you get home before 10 PM). And right now, I’m trying to type this with a cranky old bitch of a cat pawing at me, purring, desperately wanting (a) my tea and (b) my full attention. So she sits on the mouse. Sigh. Hey! I’m also considering a modern-dance class for beginners (it doesn’t outright say Total Klutzes Like You, but it should). I know, crazy. But crazy seems to be my middle name these days…whether it’s trying to do way too much at one time, get all this art done, go on hikes, or just make it through the day…crazy it is.

A Bit Lost and a Lot Damaged…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation Required

I like to plan my time out. You may have noticed that. I do it all the time. I think each day about what I will get done before school, what I can get done during my prep (I like to be efficient with that time…unfortunately, I often fail at efficiency). I think about if there’s anything I can get done during class and what I will do on the way home, running errands while I’m already out and about. I plan out the evening and night, telling myself I will get an hour of grading in here so I can do art there.

I do this every day. And almost every day, something comes along and blasts my plan all to hell. You’d think I would give up on the plan, but I do know that having the plan keeps me on task with projects like this, keeps me from flailing completely at school, keeps my to-do list from taking over the world (although it often feels like it already has). Time ticks and I’m holding on to the hand as it rolls around.

So yesterday was book club, and I didn’t go. I made that decision about 2 hours after girlchild woke me up for the first time, way too early, because I had stayed up to finish ironing the night before. I had too much to do. And then I offered to help the girlchild…

who had to paint her parking space at school, a senior high-school tradition…

That she was convinced wouldn’t take very long, but she’d been at it for like 5 hours by the time I showed up (mostly spent at Home Depot buying paint, apparently). When I showed up, she had penciled in all the letters, so I started painting.

At some point, I sent her home for better brushes. I did all the words; she did the footprints.

Two hours later, we were done. Was that in my plan? Fuck no.

It is what it is. Hey, so these are the leftover pieces of separated Wonder Under that I never matched up to anything. I find that somewhat disconcerting.

But do I really care? Heck no. Move on.

I spent a lot of time grading papers yesterday too…and then I started cutting stuff out…

It’s not going to be done by tomorrow.

Today is turning into a giant clusterfuck, with a possible stolen car and other crap to worry about. I’m currently sitting in a college presentation, giving me one more thing I have to persuade myself not to worry about.

Meditation tonight is required. Not optional. Cutting stuff out too.

Here’s a Burning Man Timelapse video…because someday I will go there. Seriously.

Maintain, Dammit. Maintain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I finished the God-Damned Fucking Ironing.

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

The Vast Alone Space

I was going to post last night. I was doing OK. I went to the high school back-to-school night. I came home and exercised and ate and then I ironed. I cut stuff out when I hit the wall…the wall where I have no creativity left but I’m not tired enough to go to bed yet. I’m tired enough right now, but right now, I’m leaning up against the wall, waiting for the doors to open at House of Blues with the two teenagers I’m chaperoning to see The Kooks. I might fall asleep standing up at the rate I’m going.

So I had myself in the right brain space last night and then in a matter of seconds, I lost it, realized it was late at night and I was in this vast alone space where the cats were all asleep and would chirp listlessly at me if I petted them, and the girlchild and dog were gone, and what I really needed at 1 in the morning was a hug. A real hug. Not a side hug. But a full-on, hey, I’m here and I’m not leaving hug. Eh. Not happening. So bed and sleep ended up being miles away. Which made today even harder to survive.

Middle school on 3.5 troubled hours of sleep. Better…3.5 hours and I gave a test today and they were supposed to turn in a completed unit packet. In order. Which we’d gone over the day before. But I guess I was either speaking a foreign tongue or all those kids were absent, because yeah. Most frustrating day I’ve had this year. But I survived. And right now, I’m listening to loud music with beer in hand, debating where to try to grade papers. There’s a well-lit section of stairs with some interesting Kahlo-esque paintings. And I can still hear (and feel) the music. It’s mostly teens and 20s here, with a smattering of parent chaperones and old people who don’t seem to be with kids. My counselor says I should cut loose and dance. She might be right. I’m really tired though. And the bass was reverberating really uncomfortably in my chest downstairs, so I’m upstairs now.

Music does feel good though. I should remember that.

Last night, I couldn’t seem to remember anything but sad. hate that.

I think I have two more hours of ironing. Will try to do that tomorrow. With three acts tonight, I don’t think I’m getting home until after midnight.

Later…I did actually get home by 11:15. Good show. I danced a lot. Because I could. Because it felt good. AND I graded papers on the stairs. Because the second band was eh.

Anyway. I’m borderline exhausted and should just go to bed…but have pics from last night…here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

I’m 11 hours in and in the middle of the 800s. I’m up in the tree soon…just have to pick fabrics for the baby first.

Really, that’s about another 2 hours. I can do that. Here’s everything ready to be cut out…

I’m almost 2 hours into the cutting…

Doesn’t look like much. Never does until you iron it.

My most-common ironing companion these days…

Cup of tea plus cat. Babygirl is glad that Katie is gone…

She can relax now. Me too. Going to bed.

Hiking for Peace

Nope. Not what you think. Sure, I want world peace, but I don’t think we can make it happen with a hike. Personal peace though? Damn straight it works. Unfortunately, it takes giant bites out of my time to get art made or papers graded or apparently even sleeping well. We hiked Iron Mountain last night and had to put the headlights (ha ha headlamps) on before we even got to the top. It’s getting darker so much earlier now. And then we had homemade ice cream, smoothies, fruit, and champagne up at the top (it was someone’s one-year anniversary with the group). It was very cool.

Actually, it was hot when we started, but the cooler air coming back was really nice.

Great views from the top, but it was dark. I actually didn’t take many photos. This was at the table with the ice-cream setup etc. It was good to get outside and move around though, even though I’m feeling it this morning. I thought I would sleep better, but no!

By the way, this is what the fridge of a hiker looks like…

I needed my water to be cold, at least to start. I had packed the whole bag up and realized I wasn’t leaving for 30 minutes, so I shoved the whole thing back in there, poles and all (you should always chill your poles). What I love is that nobody in my house says a word about finding this in the fridge. Not a freakin’ word.

Anyway. The hiking does clear my mind, but it also fucks me for the rest of the night. I couldn’t eat when I got home and thought I could just skip dinner, but then I started feeling it later, too late really. But I had to eat. Diabetes Grrr. So easy to mess with your blood sugar by not following your routine. But the hike! Oh well.

So in the end, I ironed for about 30 minutes last night.

I could have gone longer, but I was SO tired. So I went to bed instead (smart choice, eh?). And then couldn’t fall asleep. And then was awakened by stalking cats and peeing dogs and who knows what else on the roof. So this morning I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Not good. Oh well. More tonight hopefully (after the high-school back-to-school night?). I’m getting close, but I’m not close enough yet. I wanted to be fully ironed by Friday night, and now I’m chaperoning girls at a concert that night, so I won’t be home until really late and you know I’m not going to be fully awake then. Oh well. There’s always Saturday night. The night that chases me around the room trying to rip flesh out. Sigh.

Mood is rough besides the hiking peace. I made it home almost OK and then had to deal with some stuff and go back out in the car and the mood tanked. I’m trying to hold on to the mental state brought on by the hike, but the 17 texts from work don’t help and stupid emails don’t help and having to clean up after everybody else’s stuff doesn’t help. But that’s what it’s always like and maybe I just don’t have the right personality for holding on to the peace. Or maybe it’s that I’ve spent the last 12 years plus trying to manage everything without a ton of help and I just suck at it. I know I was better at it for a while, but then the support disappeared and I got worse. It’s hard to know that there’s something that helps but that you don’t have it and you can’t just go get it and it kinda feels stupid that you should need it, but you do. And it’s not like I don’t have friends and family who are giving support, but it’s not the same. I don’t know why. Something stupid in my head.

Anyway. I have another drawing in my head for a piece that needs to be done by January 1 (oh yeah, baby), but should be smaller (I’m really thinking about how to do that and still have all the details I love). And I’ve almost survived September, one of the worst months of the year for school and life and soccer, and I’m not sure I was even paying attention. My to-do list is growing exponentially, but I’m still getting it done. And hopefully this quilt will turn out well. It’s all still colored in my head and I think it’s turning out OK, but I won’t know until it’s ironed, and then I can’t really show it to you until the opening. Oh well. I’ll show you details. And I’m still working on my brain. I take it on hikes and give it pen and paper and fabric and books, and it’s coming around, really awfully slowly with sometimes what feels like massive steps backwards, but it’s coming. It’s reluctant. It’s having a hard time getting out of bed. It needs lots of encouragement and mental stimulus and I try to provide, but I also know it was badly broken and damaged, so I keep glue on hand. Some of that glue is climbing up a mountain, even when it seems like you’ve got better things to do.