it IS that late…

The book I’m reading has these characters, the slake-moths, which have hypnotizing wings, so to avoid being hypnotized and then eaten, essentially (they actually only suck out your dreams, leaving you a drooling lump of flesh that needs diapers), the characters have devised a way to look at the moths using mirrors, looking backwards at them, which protects them from being sucked dry…but two mirrors doesn’t work. They counteract each other. Strange concept, I know, but the thought of viewing everything through mirrors, trying to distract oneself from the hypnotizing death wings, that’s where I’m at today. How many things can I get on my plate that will distract me from the things that drag me down? Lots. I made the mistake of trying to nap (too many late nights and not sleeping enough) this evening, and finally gave up, because my brain was falling into that depressive hole and it was hurting me. So I got up and made yet another cup of tea. And here I am, again, at holy-shit-it’s-late, still awake. Brain is fucking with me.

The house destruction and reinvention is part of it, the distraction…but ironing was a good bit today…a difficult bit…and still not done. I had time in between painting tasks, so I started ironing earlier than usual…

That human figure in the middle actually has almost 200 pieces in it, I realized today. And when I numbered it originally, I forgot to number the face and hair, so although the body runs from piece 316-469, the face and hair are in the 1200s box. Hmn. The view above is the other direction from where I usually photograph the ironing, so you can see how small the space is for my butt between the ironing board and the table where I lay my pieces out. There’s a lot of stuff in this room. Scares me sometimes.

Anyway, so while I was waiting for one coat of paint to dry and for the girlchild to come home from somewhere, I started ironing the figure that’s kinda down in the water…or is she just in front of the water? Hard to say. I kind of imagine her sitting in front of a glass aquarium somewhere. Just so you know. When I drew her, that’s what I was thinking…not that she was IN the water, but that she was IN FRONT of the water. Not sure why that’s important.

Here’s the 400s laid out in groups of 10.

There’s some freakishly tiny-ass pieces in there. Piece 470 and on is an eyeball and then some tears. I haven’t ironed them together yet. I only got through 469. I ironed for about an hour or so before dinner, although I think I did two more coats of paint on the window moldings during that time period too. Girlchild cooked (oh blessed child), so I didn’t have to. She and I ate out on the deck because the kitchen table looks like this…

Actually, it doesn’t look like that any more. We managed to paint the whole dining area today and put some of the furniture back. Because the next step is carpet, we can’t really put everything back. It will be chaos here for a few weeks more, whether we like it or not. Boxes everywhere. Boychild is watching some weirdo webcomic that’s kind of a gif/video thing as well, so he hid in the computer room for dinner while we were sociable. Sort of. As much as any of my people ever are.

Girlchild helped for about 40 minutes before she had to go out. She dances and sings while she paints…

Can you tell? Unfortunately, it does not make her a better painter. Boychild pitched a fit about painting near the asbestos ceiling, so I did that…he did edges and corners and bottom…so that wasn’t bad. The next step is the main part of the living room, probably in two sections, because of the mirrors and the stuff next to the fireplace that needs work. I think the drapes are coming down and out. I never use them, I hate them, the color sucks. If I sell the house later on, I’ll deal with it then. Or I’ll buy some crazy purple stuff and hang it with beads or something. Whatever. Boychild hates them too! It’s not just me.

We may not be the most efficient painters in the world, but we get it done. It’s a 3-day cycle: Day 1-remove and pack stuff up. Day 2: spackle and wash. Day 3: paint. Rinse and repeat for the next section. Two sections done; two to go. At least in this iteration.

After dinner, I did my exercising and then my SIL called. She was driving to her parents’ house back east and it was really late and I think I kept her entertained for two hours on the road. I ironed while talking, which was nice…

I don’t have a lot of adult interaction during the summer. This is really harder this year than previous years…well, last year was bad too. I need to remake my life. This really has been a bitchy section to iron…probably won’t be the last (as I blaspheme against the designer yet again)…

Yes, I am the designer. Ironing always makes me angry at the designer…OK, not angry, just irritated. Couldn’t I have done a better job of drawing this? Wasn’t there a better order for numbering? What the fuck is my problem with the tiny pieces? Do they really add to the final piece? I can’t answer that. I draw it the way it’s supposed to be. Everything else is just fate.

The whole body is done, minus the head (I did actually finish the hand later). Lots of fussy pieces in this section. I’m about 6 hours into the ironing and about a quarter of the way done with the whole thing, so my original estimate of 18 hours of ironing pieces together seems a little low…it’s hard to say, though, because this was a significantly fussy section and I was on the phone as well, and I know I’m not as efficient with ironing when I’m talking on the phone. I get distracted…distracted from the distraction! Didn’t I say I wanted to be done with ironing by the weekend? Yeah. That’s not happening. I always set these goals that I don’t achieve…but I find I am better when I set some goals than when I don’t set any at all.

I’ve also been writing; I’m up to a few thousand words on my story, most of which will probably be edited out, but that’s OK. It’s a start, and that’s all I need. If I write a little every day, then there will be something substantial in existence by the end of the summer…and that will be a good thing.

So I entered an art show last week and was all proud of myself, but it came back yesterday short of postage, and now it’s too late to send it out again. It needed a postmark date. Dammit. I even weighed it though and checked amounts online, so I’m not sure what happened with that. It motivated me to get another entry in today, though (online! much easier than the mail…y’all should pay attention to that if you’re putting on a show). I will be entering shows all summer. It’s good to get the work out there into the public.

OK. Tomorrow? Life drawing, more cleaning/furniture moving, plus ironing I hope. I’m being purred at right now. Surely that’s a sign that it’s bedtime (it truly is. don’t look at the clock. it IS that late).

Demolition Day

Today was all about demolishing things that have been driving me nuts for the last 16 years. Seriously. And then I ironed. So that’s like putting things back together. Plus I need more fabric.

No really, first I went to a meeting, kind of a pre-installation of an exhibit that will be up for 2 months in the fall…it was interesting, and I have tons of ideas rambling around my head right now, but I really do need more fabric. And a drawing. And some wire. I was just at Home Depot (yes, again…it’s currently a daily occurrence). Forgot the damn wire. The drawing? Maybe this weekend.

I did iron tonight…

I love to write about what I did backwards. It makes sense as I think about the day backwards. What did I just do? What did I do before that? This is probably more than you need to know about my brain and its lack of function. Seriously, I’ve screwed up payments this week and postage, and god knows what else. My brain has wandered off again. I forgot to eat too. Luckily, my blood sugar reminds me of that, kind of boisterously, honestly. Yo! Bitch! Eat! Now! It’s kinda rude.

So I ironed more on the big quilt. I quit doing everything else (there was plenty to do, trust me) and just walked in the studio and ironed, which was a damn good thing, because that’s where my head went. Into the artspace.

Out of the bad place. Into the good place. I could live there, I could. It’s peaceful and I barely think about the shitty things that shitty people do. Plus my brain is fully occupied by the ironing of tiny bits that need to fit together and numbers of pieces, and then X-Files in the background takes care of the part of my brain that would normally wander off and try to find things to upset me. It’s not allowed on Facebook any more. It just makes trouble. Really, it’s better to just give it television and let it watch.

I managed to iron all of the water down…

There is a fairly obvious human figure in the middle of all that…it will get ironed next. Plus there’s a huge eyeball. You know. Like there is.

This is where I needed to be today. In art. Making it. Letting all that poison sad shit wander off somewhere else while I accomplished something of note. Well. Accomplished something anyway.

We actually accomplished a lot today. For instance, the house is now a giant mess. Really. It is. If you thought it was messy before, now it’s a fucking disaster. But it’s a move in the right direction. I think.

Dad came over to help with that giant-ass hole in the wall, which he fixed while I demolished shutters that had never been used. And then I spackled. Or maybe I spackled first. It’s all a fucking blur, this home improvement shit. It’s all the same, day after day. What day is it? What phase am I on? I did manage to find someone who can take the mirrors out, but not until next week. I’m OK with that. Then we started looking at the mantle. The mantle and shelves to the right of the fireplace are this godawful pinky ’80s crap and it’s in totally the wrong PLACE as well, hung too high. The previous owner, the wife was an artist, but apparently she never learned not to bisect the vertical plane exactly in the middle. So it’s always bugged the crap out of me. Plus it’s fucking pink. It’s just wrong.

After telling Dad about 5 times that no, I did not want him to saw through the screws, thus leaving big metal pieces poking out of the stone of the fireplace, he and the boychild and I manhandled and pried and pulled the damn things off with pure brute strength (I am a beast at times, yes)…and then went after the paneling, which turned out to be two layers of paneling (which was better than more mirrors, which is what we found behind the first set of panels).

I must have a picture somewhere of the mantle. It’s in my driveway now. Feel free to come take it away.

You can’t really appreciate the ugly while it’s lying there.

That’s asbestos flying through the air. You think I’m joking.

So. Mirrors are still there for another week, but paneling is gone. Let’s assume I can deal with the mastic and paint that sucker, and then Dad said if I drew something up for bookshelves, he would have the boychild build it (um. Does the boychild KNOW how to do that?).

Maybe all this destruction is a good thing. I mean, at least I will be able to look over at that space and not be annoyed by it. I still need a replacement mantle, but I will deal with that eventually.

Meanwhile, I’m making art. The house is getting painted. There’s art in my head. And I found the missing cat (no idea where Babygirl was for the last 5 hours, but she just showed up…good thing…boychild would be pissed if I lost her). Fuck the rest of it.

I Am Stumbling. I Must Not Fall.*

Two places are safe at the moment: deep in a storyline like the one from the blog title, or way up in my artist’s brain, tracing or ironing something. There is nowhere else that I can be at the moment that doesn’t hurt. I’ve been divorced for a long time–the separation took place in 2002–but there are still things that can happen related to the divorce that are reminders of that stomach-dropping nausea of realization, that cut you deep and make you wonder why people behave as they do. It’s convenient, I guess, if you don’t have to consider your actions and how they relate to other people. I guess if that’s how your brain works. Mine doesn’t. I’ve spent a million years considering my actions.

So yesterday. Yeah. I read, I meditated, I traced Wonder Under…

because otherwise I would crawl into a hole of WHY? and never come out. I’m not in a good place; I know that. I’m trying. I’m staying busy, too busy probably. I am letting some things drop, just because I can’t seem to do ALL the things. My brain. It sucks.

I traced the last three birds, which were bigger and more complicated than the others, but still, I’m at about 30 minutes for the larger birds…the quickest bird I’ve traced was number 3, in just over 7 minutes. The next step is to cut out all the Wonder Under…and then I’m supposed to iron to fabrics, but I think I need to finish ironing this big quilt, which I haven’t touched in a few days. So maybe I force myself to do that today. It was overwhelming last night. I couldn’t get my head there. It’s easier to trace Wonder Under, a kind of brainless task that also engages a huge part of my brain that would otherwise wander off into rumination ruination. Tonight it will have to deal, though.

So we did finally finish painting the smaller room…two shelves ended up needing 3 coats to cover the previous layers of dirt and yucky. Then we started pulling apart the dining area…the boychild really is a slavedriver in some ways. He seems to enjoy the archaeological-dig aspect more than I do. We’re tossing and recycling a ton of stuff, and then the girlchild came home and started on her piles, so that helped. Here’s where we’re at now…

Lots of furniture moving around and books being boxed. Still need to deal with the piles on the table, but honestly could paint with all that there…but today is wash and patch day…because I need to deal with this…

this remnant of trying to find a water leak that wasn’t a leak at all in a part of the house that has no water pipes. Long story. I have the stuff to fix it, but need additional stuff, which might be coming from the Dad Store…you know what that is. It’s the pile of stuff your dad has in his garage that helps you finish your project without having to go back to Home Depot for the 10th time. I just didn’t have it in me yesterday. I went to Dixieline (closer) to get plug plates for the walls, handed them to the boychild, and he promptly broke two of them by overtightening the screws. Nice. Anyway…today I fix that hole and a bunch of smaller, less-challenging ones, and we wash walls (if you never move your furniture, you never know how disgusting it is behind it, which might be a good thing), and tomorrow we paint, because we will have three of us…although I do need to go back to Home Depot for more paint (I knew two gallons wouldn’t be enough, but I was having a hard time envisioning three…no longer having a hard time with that.).

Then the mirrors…damnit, the guy I called is flaking on me, set an appointment and then didn’t show up or return phone calls, so I guess this is one of those jobs that people don’t want to do. So I will call someone else today, but we can’t paint that last bit until we get those down…although we could do the other two walls in the main living room. Here’s the offending 1970s crap…

Yeah. I know. Wall ‘o Mirrors. Been staring at them for 16 years. They’ve been covered with kid art all that time because I really hate them. Plus the mantelpiece. Sigh. It’s going.

Anyway, speaking of going, I’m supposed to be at a temporary art install in 32 minutes, so I should go. Summer is not low stress, for sure, but hopefully I can keep my head away from yesterday’s bullshit. People suck. OK, not all of them suck, but enough of them suck that I feel like staying away from lots of them for long periods of time. With books. And art instead.

Back to my high-school epithet: Fuck the World. Not the healthiest mantra, but occasionally useful. At some point, I will replace “the world” with the names of the people responsible for my current state. And then I will kick their asses. In art, of course, not real life. Oh yeah, you piss me off? I will make unflattering art of you. Expect it. Whoops…that sounds sorta vengeful. Sorry.

*Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Send the Poison Rain Down the Drain*

Another late night. My brain refusing to shut down. It seems to need to process at the moment. Lots of that. I don’t know exactly what it’s processing. I just know it makes me feel sad a lot. Wish it would stop. Like, brain, just get OVER it. Move on. Accept the shitty stuff and find a new way to be in the world. No no no…don’t go back in the hole. I didn’t mean it. We DO like you. We DO want to be your friend…even though you’re a total downer. Look, we can fake it. We do it all the time.

Yeah. I’m faking it. Every day. Don’t get me wrong. I do like you…I just don’t know how to feel normally or even to behave normally most of the time. I just pretend.

Yes, we painted today…

Exciting picture, eh? Yeah. Well, the smaller room is mostly done…two shelves and windows need a second coat. Then we can put all the furniture back and start on the next section of this big area we call the living room. It’s less overwhelming in chunks…just like I teach, eh? But still overwhelming.

I made it to book club, a discussion of Dan Simmons’ The Fall of Hyperion, which I liked (the book AND book club, held outside in a park on a gorgeous day, what could be better?). Book club seems to help me by injecting some intellectual discussion into my life…I get some of that with the kids, but I’m not around enough people during the day, especially during the summer…I like to think about what I read and figure out what it really means. Or doesn’t. Or if it’s any good. And why? During the school year, I often read the book club selections and don’t go to the meetings, because I don’t have time to go to all of them…all of them meet on days when I have the kids, which is problematic…at least for now. But summer gives me plenty of time with the kids, plus I’m not trying to balance lesson plans and grocery shopping on Sundays with 2 hours spent talking about books, so that helps.

I decided to work on the birds tonight instead of the big quilt. The boychild was using my computer because his is under the dropcloth in the room we painted…so I needed to be in another room anyway. This room, to be specific…with the dogs…

Who needs people friends on your couches when you have dogs? It is true that there may be no ROOM for people with these dogs in the house. So instead of sharing room with the two goofballs, I worked on the light table behind Jake…tracing birds. First I numbered all of them. More importantly, first I entered all of them into my task-measuring app, because if I’m going to sell these, I need to know how much time I spent on each one, so I can come up with a reasonable price. Artists undersell themselves often, make their work worth nothing when you look at the time put into it. I find it easier to have the time totals up front, so I’m not just randomly making up a price based on my mood that day. It’s just easier.

I keep track of each task separately. It helps me to know how long each stage of the artmaking takes. What’s funny with these little pieces, though, is that some tasks take so little time that it seems like a waste of time to track it…like 30 seconds to number the pieces…in contrast to the 2.5 hours it took me to number the big quilt I’m working on now…the one I maybe should have worked on tonight? Yeah. Whatever. My motivation for getting the painted room put back together tomorrow is to get the boychild out of my office, so I can keep ironing.

Calli agrees.

Jake? Not so much.

I don’t know why they’re so sleepy. All they did all day was try to come in the room where all the white paint was.

So I started by numbering all 10 drawings, and then I began the tracing onto Wonder Under…

None of these has a lot of pieces or is particularly big. It’s kind of relaxing to trace Wonder Under…but when it’s this quick to finish, it makes it even nicer. Look! I accomplished something (really small)…

That’s 7 of the 10 traced. I decided it was getting late and it would take a significantly longer period of time to finish the last three (they are the biggest ones), so I quit. For now. I’m aiming for July 10…to have at least some of them ironed down. All of them would be nice, but I need to be realistic. I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment and trying not to drop any of them…all while my brain is doing its stupid depressoid shit, which would make anyone normal drop everything.

Just keep making. Eventually it will make you feel better. Honest.

I also stitched feet again…

The birds fill time. That’s 8 feet I finished…or 8.5. Not sure. Oh. It’s 8. What’s lame is that I was supposed to be outlining the eyeballs with the same thread as the feet, but I didn’t realize that, so now I have to go back through all the birds and do the eyeballs. There’s one bird whose feet are not that charcoal gray color. I have not figured that out.

Today’s painting session included the only ceiling that needs painting, I’m glad to say. Textured ceilings? Yikes. Super hell. Textured walls are bad enough. Tomorrow we will clear out the next room/space. Prep Tuesday, painting again on Wednesday, I think. I need the mirror guy to call back so I can deal with space number 3…because I think that will be the most challenging space to get done.

This song popped up on Pandora while we were painting today…it gave me the post title…

Which has got to be better than yesterday’s. Sad song, though…

*Elliott Smith, Miss Misery

Uninspired Title #17

Staying focused on the things that keep my head in the right place…is apparently a challenge. I hadn’t been to the gym in way too many days and my muscles have apparently all atrophied. It doesn’t seem fair that two weeks away will do that much damage, but it felt good to go back. Now to get it back on the regular calendar. I cried while I was there…too much time alone in my brain. Bad place.

I wanted to start painting the smaller room yesterday, but barely made it through washing the walls and then found more parts that needed spackle. This is the part I hate. You can’t just paint. You have to prep. And most of the prepping activities have to dry afterwards and it just takes forever, and everything lies around in chaos during that process and I just really hate it.

We’re painting today. Hopefully this morning. Then we can put the room back together tomorrow and move on to the next chaos-making space.

Yesterday I also went to a writing workshop…well, I wouldn’t really call it a workshop because there wasn’t anything planned or taught…it was more like a writing networking/critique/brainstorming event. It was interesting. I’m not sure what I’m looking for in writing support, and maybe the answer is just that I need some accountability to actually force myself to write and to complete some sort of outline. I don’t know that I need a group for that. I know I can’t go to the next meeting, but it did help me solidify a plan (sort of), so maybe I’ll just hold myself accountable. I do a pretty good job of that with my art, so one would think I could translate that into writing as well. Word count per week or something. I’m still the oldest in the group by far. And you know what? I just don’t understand electronic cigarettes. At all.

Being really tired is always part of the first week of vacation after school. It’s like I’m trying to make up for months of sleep loss. Because I am. But then it’s hard to fall asleep as well…last night I was just so sad but I wanted to go to sleep, but then I couldn’t, and crying yourself to sleep multiple nights in a row starts to really suck. Plus it messes with the dreaming and I wake up in a bad mood too and I don’t know how to make it better. I was talking to someone yesterday about the negative effects my depression must have had on my kids this year, and she reminded me that the worst I had done was cry a lot and forget a bunch of stuff…that they were fed and safe and clothed in clean clothes and I wasn’t a raging alcoholic and I didn’t attempt suicide and I didn’t stay in bed for days on end, and if that meant that they had to see their mom sad and worry about her and all that, well that wouldn’t kill them. It might make the world a bit more real for them: here’s what really happens when people treat each other like shit and someone doesn’t just bounce right back up all perky and getting a new haircut and wanting to go out and make love to the world. This is what sad looks like. And this is what you do when you feel that way. You keep going.

She’s right of course. Part of the book I’m writing is about this. It’s hard for me not to write (and draw) autobiographically, at least on some level. Here’s me and there I am on paper, in fabric. The quilt I’m working on right now, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to talk about it without crying. I’ll write a script and someone else can read it for me.

I did want to start ironing last night. I don’t want to NOT be making art just because I have to do all this other stuff. Being tired doesn’t help…but I drank some more tea and made an effort…the biggest issue was that before I could start, I had to put all the fabrics away. Ugh. Hate that. Especially since the containers are crowded at the moment…boychild actually came in a few days ago and asked if there was any possibility that I would use up all those fabrics before I died. Hmn. Probably not.

Inevitably I will need to pull some of these back out when I can’t find a piece. I’m currently missing a finger bone. It may show up…a few pieces have been in the wrong bin so far. It took about an hour to put all of these away, to find all the bins and shove stuff in best I could. I don’t really need to buy more fabric these days, except for backgrounds and backings and binding. Even backings, I try to do those from the stash, even if I have to piece them. I don’t really care what’s on the back. I might as well use up those larger pieces I bought for some bizarre reason way back when.

Then I finally started ironing around 10:30 or so, maybe later.

I really liked how the dirt fabrics were fitting together colorwise…such a complicated section, but satisfying when it all got together.

Then I added skeleton parts. This one is really broken into pieces, no ribcage or pelvis at all, hands reaching out, broken skull.

Yeah, no imagery there. Shut up, you Freudian. I use the applique sheet on top of the drawing for the big pieces, but then pull the drawing out so I can see it when I’m trying to iron stuff on top of it, like the skelly parts. I spent about an hour and a half and finished about 150 pieces. At that rate, it’ll be about 18 hours to get everything together, and then another couple of hours to iron it down. If I’m focused, I might get it done in a week…remembering that I do unfortunately have a ton of painting to do and the cleaning and stupid prep that goes with it, plus there are actually OTHER things I’m doing. Shocking, I know. I’m not looking forward to next weekend, because it’s a whole lot of soccer a long way away and I don’t have anything I can take with me, unless I get all those birds traced (huh, motivation for that?).

Anyway, at this point I am just procrastinating the painting. Of course. Here’s to hoping tonight’s mood is better than last night’s…not sure what I can concretely do to make that happen…it seems that being busy and checking tasks off a list is not enough. Neither is getting some artmaking done or meditating or exercising, all the things they say will work. Sometimes I think “they” should just go bite themselves, honestly. If any of their magic lists for pulling oneself out of depression actually worked for anyone who wasn’t just a little blue because they had a bad day, someone who had serious depression clouding their mind, well the world would be a different place, wouldn’t it? I wonder how much of the art and music that surrounds us would still be here. Is that a good trade-off? I don’t know.

Seen on a car on the way home yesterday from the writing thing…

Found it sad. Then again, I find everything sad at the moment. At least they’re taking responsibility for their actions.

When I Wake Up, Let Me Be*

In the past, summer vacation has always brought a sense of relief. Teachers and students get tired of each other, of the high expectations on either side. We need a break. It’s a lot of hours to be with a lot of kids, and for them, it’s a lot of demanding. I usually need to decompress for a bit after school gets out, just hang out and sleep in and don’t demand a lot of myself. But this summer is different than the last 12. This summer, I have to keep my brain and body out of the hole…that depression hole. I also have a ton of stuff to do. Hopefully those two needs will work together, but I also need to make sure I recharge myself this summer, which means not working myself into the ground just to keep myself distracted. I need to relax and rest and make art and get my head straight. And not slip back into a deeper depression.

Easier said than done. I try to tell the depressed part of my brain to leave me alone, to go the fuck away, to get out of here.

It doesn’t really work.

I checked out of my classroom today…took longer than usual because I had to lock up EVERYTHING so the summer school teachers and kids don’t get into the science materials. I’m not pleased about that, but I dealt.

Last night, I managed to sort all the fabric pieces for the big quilt…it took 2.5 hours… Here was the layout of boxes (with Kitten guarding them)…

That’s a lot of sorting…I use mostly shoeboxes, but then I never have enough, so there are some weird things in there, like an ice tray from my fridge, because there’s no water hookup for the fridge, so the box never lived in there. There’s also a silverware tray in there and some bins from a kids’ shelf. It’s so much easier to do this now on the light table, standing. I used to put them all on the floor and sit on a cushion and try to lean over all of them to put pieces in. On a quilt this size, my leg would fall asleep and I’d pull muscles in my back (holy crap, old lady talk there).

Kitten was in there, pissed because she likes to sit ON the light table and I wouldn’t let her up there.

Here are all the pieces and papers that came detached from each other. Most of them found their partner piece, but a few were left at the end…oh well. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Here they are, all sorted out, ready to be ironed together next. Not sure when that will happen. Starting soon. Eighteen boxes of pieces.

Kitten spent a lot of time sprawling about while I sorted.

So today, in between cleaning my classroom and waiting for the tech chick to show up so I could check out, I went to Home Depot, where I will be living this summer apparently, to get painting supplies. We are in fact painting a huge chunk of the house this summer, so I had wandered my garage (which is like a Hoarders episode all its own self) looking for painting supplies, realized the hallway had last been done in 2007 and everything else was older than that and mostly trashed (I have never painted the living room, which means it probably hasn’t been painted in over 16 years). Anyway, we had picked a color. OK, I lie. I picked a color. The kids each picked colors I didn’t like. Boychild went gray-white, girlchild went yellow-white, and I stuck with Fresh Popcorn. I couldn’t paint it a color if I didn’t like the name. So I refused to pick Predictable. Yes, that was a color name.

The coolest thing I got was a spackle that goes on pink and turns white as it dries.

It probably has chemicals in it that will hasten global warming. There’s nothing green about painting. It’s a shitload of chemicals and smells and fumes and yuck. I don’t enjoy painting. It’s a lot of prep and it annoys me. Always has. That’s why I do it so rarely. Plus it’s expensive. OK, it’s cheaper than buying a new house, but it’s not cheap. Boychild and I demolished the room we call the little living room, a smaller room that used to be an outdoor patio, but was built into a real room a million years ago. The ceiling was not flat and the moldings had gaps of almost 1/8 of an inch from the ceiling in some places, so I spackled the whole damn thing.

I’m a little wacko that way.

Boychild lives in this room, because that’s where his computer is. We had to recycle a bunch of stuff, toss a bunch of stuff, sort a bunch of stuff (girlchild isn’t here and I can’t just toss her stuff without her looking at it)…and then move a bunch of books out because the bookshelf is screwed into the wall and needs to come out for painting reasons. So we boxed all those books for now…

You don’t want to know how many books we have. And a bunch of the knickknacks the boychild had accumulated as well had to be boxed (soccer trophies etc.). If you thought the house was messy before, it’s turning into a disaster area now. Hopefully that will be shortlived. Ha! Yeah, I know. Now I have an excuse for the mess? Boychild was really helpful, a good worker. No complaints from him at all. He motivates me to keep going, because I really do hate this stuff and would totally give up if he weren’t there pushing me to do the next step. So that’s good.

Jake’s here too, so he managed to lie on the floor in all the most inconvenient places…

Anyway, tomorrow we wash walls and then hopefully start painting. This is the only part where we have to do the ceiling as well…as the boychild says, the rest is toxic and doesn’t need painting (ah, asbestos popcorn ceilings that I can’t afford to remove…). Then when the girlchild comes back, we’ll do the dining area and the rest of the living room, which needs some major work…that damn mirrored wall is coming DOWN bitches! Finally. After how many years? So.

All that seems like enough work for the summer, but I do have other plans for my time. I’ve had a couple of requests for smaller quilts focusing on some of the birds I draw, so I pulled a bunch of my drawings and found the birds and traced them separately. They’re mostly pretty small and simple, so I figure I can make some smaller quilt tops and maybe put them up for sale for a reasonable price. We’ll see how it goes.

I got these traced off, two from existing quilts and three from drawings that are in the queue.

Then turned around and noticed Kitten…

Um. That’s the rest of the pile of drawings. I’m too nice. I leave her there. For a while.

Eventually she gets bored of my staring at her and she wanders off, so I trace the rest…

I did the eyeball bird with and without the eyeball. I personally prefer the eyeball, but I can understand that most people don’t.

The next step is to number pieces and then trace onto Wonder Under. Etc. Etc.

I’m trying to take one day at a time AND plan ahead. Talk about crazy. Tomorrow is a writing workshop where I will find out if my book-writing technique is crazy stupid or just nuts. I actually wrote an entire scene in abbreviated form when I was walking the dogs with the boychild this afternoon. It took everything I had to try to pencil it down in my brain and not stop on the hike and type it into my phone. It’s OK…it came out later on the keyboard. I’m doing the whole thing in Google Docs because I want to practice using it so I can transfer all my school stuff that way. It takes some getting used to…I like parts of it and I don’t like others. Kind of a normal response to change, I think, but I’m looking forward to having access to the documents I’m using across all my devices. Anyway, I was quite pleased with how the story developed in my brain today, and I’m hoping it keeps going into something more coherent. That’s always been my issue…what’s the purpose of writing this beyond the enjoyment of writing? I actually want a product. I do. And I think I can do the drawings for it as well.

So that’s a lot of progress. I’m trying to take some satisfaction from that. Keep up the momentum. Keep me out of the hole. Avoid the crash and burn. High expectations, eh? Whatever.

*Afraid, The Neighbourhood,

On Skunks and Graduation

I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of boisterous urination outside my window…barely awake, I rolled over and tried to go back asleep, assuming whatever animal it was would go away, now that it had christened my house. No such luck. I hear sounds in the leaves, and then more rampant peeing. Kitten is flouncing about at this point, convinced the intruder will be coming in the window, plaintively warning me (who needs dogs when you have Kitten?). Finally I get up, peek out the blinds, and see a cute baby skunk gamboling in the leaves outside the window.

God Damn It. If there’s one baby skunk…and if anyone remembers the Great Skunky Stinkout of a few years back when I couldn’t even sleep in my bedroom, it smelled so bad, because someone scared a skunk right outside the window. It was like a chemical bomb went off…eyes watering, it was so bad.

Sigh. Back to bed, pillow over the head. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do about baby skunks. They’re cute, they gambol, they haven’t done anything wrong but be born skunks.

Yesterday, the boychild graduated from high school.

Yes, their colors are orange and white…yick. I’m hoping mom’s pictures are better than mine. I have a few. There were over 500 kids graduating…

and it’s a kamikaze seating event…they open the gates at 7 and people run for spots. Grandpa didn’t run, but he managed to have us in the shade for part of it, and it wasn’t too hot, so it turned out OK. Boychild’s random yearbook quote was used in the principal’s speech, which is amusing, because he had forgotten to get a good quote and doesn’t really like this one–“You can’t back into your future”–however true it might be.

You’re supposed to touch Odin’s hammer on the way down the steps (when they were freshmen, they were supposed to touch the hammer too…I’m fairly sure boychild boycotted both chances)…the school is Valhalla, the mascot is the Norseman. Odin showed up with no pants on, but I didn’t have the camera out in time. Wasn’t expecting that.

He’s in the bottom left…one of two long-haired boys in graduation. Easy to spot!

So he’s done. We did take family photos…will have to see if they’re presentable online. Probably not, knowing us. This is what we normally look like…

Well, except for the cap and gown, which we’re keeping for a Halloween costume. Midnight is the only one looking at the camera.

In typical Kathy fashion, I stitched…

I got 7.5 feet done. There are a lot of feet on these damn birds, and they’re all bullion knots. Who knew I’d be an expert on bullion knots? Not me. Next weekend’s soccer tournament could mean a lot more feet getting done.

Boychild got a quilt from Grandma…

Fabrics she picked up in New Zealand/Australia on their trip. He likes these colors…I don’t know if he’ll take it with him, but he will use it. He refused to put his face in the picture, so girlchild did instead. He also got a digital keyboard with stand and some other pedal thing for college. He’s taking it with him. He has a roommate, but this will fit under the bed and the stand folds up. He likes playing piano…has been playing for years. I guess the thought of stopping freaked him out…and this thing sounds really good. If you’re his roommate, don’t worry…he has headphones.

All in all, a pretty emotional day/week even. Apparently this is difficult for my brain…realizing he’s going to college in 2 months, especially after we spent time yesterday afternoon trying to figure out what he needed, looking at online pictures of his dorm and setup. It’s real. It’s time for him to go, and I used to look forward to this time, no more dealing with school stuff etc., but him going on to have his own life and be a grownup, and I still want all that, but it is harder to have him go now that my own future is so up in the air and messy. I know all of that is normal, but the depression makes it harder to handle…everything is right at the surface and hard to keep under control.

So today is the last day of school for me (except checkout tomorrow, which is starting to look like a clusterfuck due to the district deciding to put kids in the science classrooms over the summer without actually talking to us about chemicals and materials that can’t be locked up completely, so all of a sudden, I have about 5 hours more work than I usually do. I am so pleased about that.). I am fully in survival mode. I read a book yesterday and exercised and meditated (you mean you cried?) and then I finally…FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED cutting out the pieces for the big quilt for the summer…well, the first one at least.

It took 22 hours and 17 minutes. LOTS of tiny pieces. Some I haven’t cut out yet because they’re so small I don’t want to lose them. I’m hoping to sort them tonight, if I’m still standing. It’s always questionable after the last day.

This song caught my ear the other day…

I did start writing a book…or something. I wrote 383 words on the first day. I was tired. I don’t have a serious plot line yet. I have a general idea. I’m writing a love story. Really. Except, you know, this is Kathy talking, so not really. I figure I can write it; I have enough experience in it. I might have to break it at the end, though, because that is what always happens to me. It doesn’t to other people; I’m aware of that.

Anyway. How many words should a book have? All of them.

Going to finish off my 12th school year…well, as an adult.

He Da Man

He da man. Back in January, when the boychild turned 18 (into a manchild, but you know I will always call him the boychild), I started a post about how he was now a man. Although it’s not an instantaneous change to manhood on the date…it’s been a long slow process. Digital cameras didn’t exist (or did they?) when he was born, but my first pictures of him date from Easter 2003, age 7 (girlchild is a mere 19 months younger than him)…searching for candy was always a joy.

This was back in the day when he would still let me shave his head and would wear what I asked him to…March 2004, age 8 (girlchild has bangs because he started the cut and I had to fix them).

Yeah, she let him do it.

He posed for pictures back them, November 2004, age 8. He also loved bright colors.

He even liked his cousins: December 2004, age 8, with cousin Jensen, aged 18 months?

Although sometimes we got the sulky smirk…October 2005, age 9.

July 2006 brought tears to my eyes…age 10, with Ivy as a puppy. Still letting me shave the head.

By December 2007, age 11, you can see the hair growth.

In November 2008, age 12, the hair is even longer, but he’ll still smile for the camera.

By April 2009, age 13, we had the hat. Yes. The hat.

In December 2009, age 13, with cousins, another hat…

We briefly lost the hat in April 2010, age 14.

No hats allowed in June 2010, 8th grade graduation, age 14, with the American grandparents. And the hair. And the lack of colored clothing.

The hat returns in December 2010, age 14, still poses and actually smiles.

By June 2011 in Aberystwyth, UK, barely a smile shows, age 15.

The hat returns in November 2011, age 15, with driving! The hair is seriously long now (yes, he did have to get it cut, but it kept getting longer and longer). Fewer pictures from here on out.

In December 2012, tall, fuzzy, long hair, um…put your cousin down, age 16.

December 2012, I managed to catch him smiling, age 16.

December 2013, the family photo, he’s refusing to smile, even though this is supposed to be the goofy photo, age 17.

But sometimes he still gets caught off guard, especially with his cousins…December 2013, age 17.

December 2013, girlchild snapchats while he listens to political convo…age 17.

Spring 2014, the two of them…her 16, him 18. Adult. Longest hair ever, settled into the black shirts and jeans he lives in (I can’t really argue against that, as those who know me will attest)…he does shave, when he feels like it. He even smiles occasionally.

Tomorrow he graduates from high school, with honors. In 8 weeks, he goes to college, Cornell, a way way far away…you did good, boychild. Don’t forget to write your momma. She’s gonna miss you.

Looking for Brain Space

Yup. That was blood sugar crashing that you heard last night. I probably didn’t eat enough. And yet, I ate too much. I felt it crashing while I was exercising. I don’t think it should have crashed. But what do I know? Just the basic biology of it, and apparently my body is ignoring biology. Or something else is going on.

Just like in the real world, I never have enough money or elixir in Clash of Clans to upgrade anything. When I look at all the house and yard stuff that needs to get done this summer, I am constantly reminded of that. There is only so much I can do. I wake up at 5 AM worrying about everything that needs to get done. This morning it was grades. Grades are due today. I got most of it done last night. My son asks me if I’m ever vengeful about grades, like THAT kid was SO annoying…I do think about that kid, but I always let the points rule…the only thing that plays with me is if they were really trying and it’s close to popping up a grade. Then I’ll adjust. That’s nice, though, not vengeful. I don’t ever go the other way. That would be what my students would do…that’s why they always accuse us of hating them, because everything to them is black or white, love or hate. Somehow they tie their grades to love and hate. I tie grades to percentages, to what you actually handed in. I don’t even look at names when I grade. I just process the info and provide a score based on a rubric I set up and gave to them, so honestly, they could grade their own papers if they’d be honest about it (most of them wouldn’t…hell, most adults wouldn’t either. I am strangely honest.).

So school continues for three more days, but it’s this weird in-between world of school, where nothing counts and there is nothing you can hold against them. It’s survival of the fittest (the kids may not know that we are the fittest, but we are). Teachers are sniping at each other, because it’s the end and we’re all stressed. That’s not good, but it happens. Then we don’t see each other all summer (work friends? only?) and that 8 weeks seems to clear the brain again for starting over. I’d be OK seeing them over break, I think, but I am the one with no life. Remember?

You may not know this about me, but apparently it drives my kids nuts that I don’t eat cereal with a spoon. Or my hands. Yes, I’m strange that way. Hey, I’m the one who does the dishes. And if I were in public, I’d use a spoon. Maybe. If I felt like it. I’m caring less and less about what I look like in public. I’m not sure it matters.

Mostly I use silverware…and how does the boychild get to criticize? I barely got him to use silverware in the last 5 years, and he’s still not great at the whole knife thing. He’d rather redefine whatever it is as finger food.

I’m looking forward to some brain space in the next few days. Graduation for the boychild is tomorrow, but I see it as stitching time (seriously, it’s three hours and he’s graduating with honors, so he’ll be in the first group). Maybe I’ll read a book out there on the grass with the sun beating down on me. It wouldn’t be so bad. I should remember to bring food though. Stupid blood sugar.

The Difficult

I wonder sometimes what makes the teen years so difficult for me. I don’t seem able to communicate correctly. Honestly, I’ve spent the last two years feeling like the majority of what comes out of my mouth is just wrong, not allowed, I am misinterpreting everything, and I never say it right. There are about 15 drawings in my head coming out of that…most have tape over the mouth or the mouth is just stitched or stapled shut. I don’t know if it’s worse because I am me, and that me is depressed, or if I am alone in this, and the alone compounds the wrong feeling, or if, as the girlchild says, I am just more sensitive than most. In some conversations, the wrongness seems to swirl around in my head. I wonder what protections others have that seem to keep them whole. I feel like those are missing from my arsenal. My counselor tries to help…but what she tells me to say, the script, it angers the girlchild.

It seems I do it all wrong. I don’t think anything I’ve done in the last two years was right. Except draw…and turn those into quilts.

Is that good enough? Is the art I make good enough? Does it make up for whatever I don’t seem to be able to do right? Ask my children in 5-10 years. They may be able to answer. Maybe they will write my retrospective. My previous writer has been fired from the job for not paying attention, for falling asleep on the job, for not actually listening to what I was saying. Is it so hard to hear me?

It is just a matter of surviving these years I think. But this surviving…it is hard…harder on my own. I asked today for help. I tried to explain the things that set me off…and maybe that conversation went well…hard to say. I feel so ill-equipped for my own existence.

So. The summer: artmaking, house-fixing, room-painting, lesson-planning, sanity-finding (any chance of that?), book-reading, muscle-moving, heart-mending (not sure I believe this is possible).

Parenting is a bitch.

I cut stuff out today. I’m almost there. It’s a good thing. Progress. It’s movement…better than stagnation. I try to keep moving towards something…something healthier than what occupies my brain most of the time. Here’s where I was last night…

I did hike last night, a mere 4.5 miles; it barely felt like a walk. Fine line between what works for me and what hurts my knee. I’ll be testing it further in the next 7 days, for sure. More on that later.

Today was a giant mess of grading and managing things, but fell into this wormhole: Strong Female Protagonist…because I NEED more distractions? Naw, because it let me leave my head for a while…another troubled female trying to make sense of the world, but she can kick the shit out of robots. I bet I’d be less depressed if I could do that.

I was supposed to go to the gym, but I read instead. And I graded stuff. And then input grades. And there was the parenting thing that threw me for a loop. It doesn’t take much.

We have dinner almost every Sunday night at my parents’ house. I keep thinking it will get easier to be there on Sundays, but it is a memory of what I had that apparently I didn’t really have. Trust is an issue for me. Can you tell? I don’t even know how to draw that. Maybe when I figure that out it will get better.

I throw the ball for Calli as long as she puts it in my lap.

She makes this funny face, where part of her lip is up under her tooth. Love this dog. Love all dogs, who am I kidding? We had my parents’ dog, Katie, here this weekend…she was well-behaved but terrified of the cats (as are we all)…it was nice to have another dog here. When the girlchild goes to college, my first expense will probably have to be a dog. I don’t have one of my own and Calli will probably stay with the girlchild’s dad…we’ll see. She goes back and forth with the girlchild at the moment. My grocery bill will go down and so will the dog quotient?

Most of the year, I’m grading while she does this, but during vacations, I sew instead. And I was done grading (well, at least for a while…until all the kids who were absent dump stuff in my lap tomorrow)…so I was stitching. I managed a whopping 5 bullion stitches before I gave up. I am so far behind on this thing that it doesn’t really matter any more.

So then I came home and cut some more…

I really am almost there. And I have a plan for some smaller quilts that might go up on Etsy this summer…maybe. I want something that’s marketable. Well, as much as my stuff ever is. So watch for that. Don’t hold your breath or anything…it might be a few weeks…but I did go down into the garage and hunt around for some of the drawings that might help with that. I don’t need to remake the wheel…just re-trace something and iron it down. And see where that takes me.

Down a rabbit hole. Did I mention I am trying to write an actual novel? It will probably crash and burn, but I am starting. I have an idea…a start…a burning coal. Something might come of that. Strange that a visual artist has always wanted to write a book. Where does that come from? Words v. images. A constant war in my brain.

Yup. And then there’s Babygirl. Speaking of The Difficult. There she be.