Blue Sky

No, I’m all still tied up in knots inside my head, still lost in some depressoid space that doesn’t seem to want to release me from its clutches. I just get tired of announcing, Oh Hey! I’m still depressed! I still cry! Everything still sucks! It gets old. I want to shed that skin…it’s Spring, I want to run free among the wildflowers like a child. Or something. I don’t know how to shed years of sad though. They just cling to you like a small snot-nosed child.

I went over to the ex’s to find my scrapbook pages (don’t even ask…just know that it involved the girlchild)…and I sat there listening to all the stuff I needed to deal with while the three of them ate dinner, directed by girlchild, cooked by my ex. Then I came home and cooked my pitiful dinner by myself.

Oh shit. So this is my life? That wasn’t good. I went to the gym, though, and I’m reading a really good book (although it’s one that brings me to the brink of tears almost every time I open it)…so I try to think of the good, to think of the positive, and I still drive away from his house with the damn scrapbook pages that I needed for some quilt thing, and I’m crying. Not a little, but a lot. This is a life? It’s an incredibly painful one.

Boychild got his financial award statement from University of California. I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended. They gave him a good chunk of money (assuming he goes there, which he probably won’t), but they gave it to him because I am “significantly low income.” Their words. I’m a teacher. A public-school teacher. With a Master’s degree…who’s been teaching for over 12 years. And I’m “significantly low income.” Should I be offended? Or relieved? I wonder how many years post-divorce before I stop living paycheck to paycheck. Not this year, for sure. I guess I am relieved. Saddened, but relieved. Now let the private schools feel the same way.

I’ve been reading what people in my past have been saying. What does it mean when people who were significant in your life make no sense to you? Is that a good thing? And yet people LIKE it on Facebook. I can’t parse the words.

I still don’t know who I am.

Art rejections. Sigh. Discouraged by them. Numerous. Doesn’t help the mood. Seriously, there’s no point in entering shows right now. I can just expect a rejection. It’s been a few months of that. And I keep making stuff, hoping that it’s not a permanent thing, that the stuff I’m making will get in somewhere. REJECT. We don’t want your art. It sucks.

The girlchild and I joke that every time I leave school, this song is on the radio…

And every time, it makes me cry. I wish I were young again and everything felt possible. OR…I am moving to Iceland soon (it could happen).

Bear trap on ankle. I remember writing this. I feel like depression is a bear trap on my ankle. It grabs it as I’m running away, trying to get away, strips the flesh down to the bone, breaks the bone, hurts like a bitch, doesn’t let go, no way to get it off.

In meditation, there is the concept of blue sky. Blue sky is always there, if you put your head up above the clouds, the blue sky is always there, even when you can’t see it. Mr. Meditation says that contentness is like that…it is always there, like the blue sky. What stops us from experiencing it? He tells me to notice the resistance and let go of it. Then there’s nothing but blue sky. Mr. Meditation has been smoking the wacky weed again. Seriously. He also wants me to put this happy pinpoint of light and warmth that spreads from the center of the chest outwards. It doesn’t work on me at all. The black vultures chomp at the pinpoint and snuff it out. I can put it on OTHER people though. I’m supposed to pick a person I respect…I have plenty of those. A person I care about. Right now? There are two. I gave birth to both of them. I can’t think beyond them. Then this week, I am supposed to pick someone outside those two realms, someone I know but don’t really care about. That’s harder. What’s interesting is that I can inflict the happiness, the warmth, the exploding pinpoint of light on ALL of them…all of them except myself.

So yeah. Meditation = crying at the moment. Hate that place.

Realized that the disruption in my life that was the surgery was messing with mood. Girlchild went back to school today and is doing much better. She was very tired when she got home, napped for like 2 hours, but she was AT school. This is a plus.

But I have been neglecting my art mind, and that is what might be causing all this emotional dippage. Or something. Fuck knows.

So I am up late again tonight. I’ve been good about going to sleep earlier, but the casualty is making art. And then I think, what’s the fucking point of making the art if you aren’t going to get into the shows with the new stuff? Fuck. I can’t think that way. I just HAVE to make the art. There’s no choice about that.

I’m reading this right now…

along with other things. It’s appropriate. I feel unlovable.

Underneath it is a birthday card from my ex, quoting Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)…

And the happy book from my mom. Not getting to the happy.

So tonight. I cut out fabric pieces. Because I needed to.

And it won’t make me happy. But. I don’t know what will.

Did I show you the scissors that were found in my driveway?

We don’t know where they came from. Is it a donation? Or some sort of religious icon left there? No one knows. People are now driving past my driveway and throwing scissors at it. Seriously. These aren’t mine.

Plus there’s Midnight. She sits behind me as I cut out fabric.

Someone should sit there.

Corte Madera Mountain

Saturday I hiked Corte Madera Mountain, otherwise known as San Diego’s Half Dome…when we started in the morning, it was foggy, cold, and damp. Here we are at the trailhead (thanks to Keith and Maritie for their group photos)…

The trail starts out on a nice, oak-shaded, fairly wide road. You do need an Adventure Pass to park out on the road for this hike.

From there, the trail opens up into a bushy valley. To the west, we could have seen Los Pinos (if it wasn’t foggy)…we originally had a plan to climb that as well…

The wildflowers were blooming…

The deer (and some other pawed animal) had been on the trail before us…

The sky looked a bit gloomy, but it didn’t rain. This part of the trail, which really looks like a creek bed, was fairly easy to walk…a few small climbs, but not hard…until the last little bit up to the other road (I’m sure it has a name; haven’t got a clue what it is…wait, there’s this thing called the INTERNET…Ah…it’s Los Pinos Road, and yes, it’s actually a road.), which is on the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos. This part was a bit steep at times.

Here we are on the saddle with Corte Madera hidden in the clouds.

There’s a sign there that marks out all the trails, some more officially than others.

This is about the only wildflower picture I took on purpose…

Here we are with Corte Madera in the distance…despite the fog, it’s starting to warm up (or we are starting to warm up because of the hiking)…

From the saddle, we took the road towards Corte Madera…apparently cars/off-road vehicles do drive this, but we didn’t see any of them.

From that road, here’s the path up to Los Pinos (which you can’t actually see, because it’s in a cloud). We did not do that hike, by the way…by the time we got back to the saddle, lots of time (and energy) had passed and there was a unanimous vote NOT to deal with this peak on this trip.

There is then a small, unmarked trail that has this raptor sign at the head…this is the one that goes up to Corte Madera. This time of year, the birds are mating and laying eggs, so there are rules about where to hike and not hike, although it was fairly difficult once we were up there to figure out where that actually was…more about that later…

At this point, the trail got narrow and sometimes climby…

The views were gorgeous though…

Lots of boulders and pine trees and tromping through manzanita that was waist- to shoulder-high. It was still cloudy/foggy at this point.

These two rocks had space between them…I have a later view of them from below.

Many of the rocks were colorful.

As was the manzanita…

Beautiful vistas stretching for miles…

You can see a raptor flying in the blue sky that is now peeking through the clouds…

We stopped around here for a snack break…with a view of Corte Madera in the background.

More raptors…I think this was a turkey vulture, actually.

I took a panorama shot here of the group eating and resting…

This is one of the hills on top of the long stretch towards Corte Madera…

The top was fairly flat, a narrow trail, but you could see forever on both sides…

This is looking back at the group coming down the trail on the other side…this was the only bit where we had to climb on the top at all.

This is to the north…toward Cuyamaca…

I think this is where I took the next panorama shot…

There were lots of stacked-rock cairns marking the trail.

Can you see the face in this rock?

Nose, eye, big chin?

This is at the top of Corte Madera, where the can is. We weren’t sure, due to conflicting maps, whether this was where we shouldn’t be, in order to protect the birds nesting, but we did a silent hike for this whole section, no noise, no talking, just in case. This is the view to the northwest…you can see all the clouds are finally clearing out.

I think this is more to the west, but I’m not positive!

We all sat and admired the view, and took lots of photos. It was very peaceful being up there, even with so many people, because we were all still silent.

There’s something to be said for hiking like that sometimes. This was taken up at the top…

This is Cuyamaca Peak in the distance (hiked it in November)…

And the group shot at the top, looking north…

On the way back, we were waiting for the other group to catch up with us…this is the valley between the two sorta peaks up there. The bushes are about waist high.

These are the two trees we had used as markers to remind us to take another trail down, instead of returning the way we came. So here, instead of going back south, we headed off to the northeast, through bushes that were often head height and very close together…

There’s a view of the Corte Madera valley and pond to the east…

The bushes are closing in! One person found a tick on their body. Many people ended up scratched from this section. We put on long sleeves and long pants for a reason…

On the far end of the long ridge, there were some rocks with iron inclusions…very pretty…

It turned out it was one of the leader’s birthdays next week, so we all brought potluck snacks for lunch and surprised him. Someone brought party favors for a goofy picture at the top. There was even cake (sort of) and candles (that kept blowing out). It was a nice birthday surprise…

Then we set off, way too full, down the back side of the mountain…there’s that pond again.

The path was difficult at times, but also there was a lot of wandering through areas like this, and one oak-covered area that was quite nice and shady.

Here’s those two rocks from below…

Lots of boulders and a wide trail at this point…

And a water barrel…that had holes in it and a bathtub at the front.

Yup. How often can you get in a bathtub with 11 other people? Not often enough apparently…

At this point, we were pretty tired…and then we realized something…we were on the wrong side of this fence…

Yeah. This one.

For the record, we never saw such a sign on the other side of our trail, and we didn’t see any patrols, but we did have to crawl through barbed wire to get out. So maybe that wasn’t the best choice for coming down the mountain.

So this is us curving back around the eastern side of the Corte Madera area, heading back to the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos…because that’s Los Pinos (not in the fog now) in the distance…

And back at the saddle, there’s Corte Madera in the bright sunshine…

And we looked back at everything we’d spent all morning climbing over…

Then went back down into the creek bed, with Los Pinos rising over us to the west…

Back through the shady oaks towards the cars…

This was a gorgeous hike, not super strenuous, didn’t need poles (though many had them). The various GPS devices said this was 8.6 miles (which includes our backwards descent into somewhere we shouldn’t have been) with about 4.5 hours of hiking time (that doesn’t count all our stops for photos and food). It took us longer than we thought it would, but I think that was the fault of the potluck more than anything else, plus a meandering trail at the end that we had never hiked before. What’s interesting is that I think I hiked this back in 2003 when I was hiking regularly…but it was about 90 degrees that day and I got mild heat stroke. Today was wonderful…started out chilly and got a little warm in the end, but the transition from foggy and cloudy to bright-blue sunny skies was definitely a plus.

You can drive up the road to where the raptor sign was and shorten your hike, which might make it very doable for families, although there’s still some scrambling and some issues with the raptor nesting dates, but otherwise, a drop-dead beautiful trail. You can access the trail off of Buckman Springs (off Interstate 8). This website gives fairly clear directions (I obviously don’t write posts to get people TO the hikes…that’s what the internet is for). He also has a bunch of other San Diego hikes at different levels of difficulty with lots of great photography.

Those Damn Monkeys

I finished numbering the giant-ass drawing. I had guessed about 1200 pieces, based on the Celebrating Silver piece, which is about the same size, but apparently, I was more of a crazy-ass on this drawing…first of all, I forgot to number this happy little face when I numbered the rest of her body, so she’s in the 400s and the 1200s…

That won’t be confusing at all. One of you needs to remind me that I did that when I start ironing pieces to fabric, because otherwise I will just be massively confused.

OK, I will be confused anyway. I think that’s why Julie sent me some spare brains…

They are very nice and brightly colored. I am sure they will be much more effective than the probably gray-and-blah brain I am using now. Plus now I have two extras.

I’m really working on significant exhaustion at the moment, which is unfortunate, because I spent many hours this afternoon working on school stuff, because when life is chaotic and you have way too much going on, it makes sense to create an entirely new lesson plan for the week that requires additional work, significant amounts of it. I am some kind of workaholic freak. But I wanted to do art stuff.

So back to the numbering. I managed to find a bunch of pieces I had missed the first time around, but I think I officially hit 1662 pieces (with at least three more numbered something-a, something-b, and something-c). That would be significantly more than the 1200 I had originally guessed. Oh well. Life goes on. At least I know I’ll have plenty to be working on over Spring Break. Can’t have down time, you know. Might accidentally get happy or something.

See that? I number everything and then I write down the total and I date everything, document the shit out of these projects. That’s the left brain trying to control the right brain. Except those concepts are faulty…at least that’s what science is saying today. Who knows what it will say next week.

Next up? 10 yards of Wonder Under probably.

Speaking of happy (was I?), girlchild finally had an almost-pain-free day, after 4 days of nonstop pain. She was so much calmer…and she ate food…and she got up and walked around and did some math homework. Hallelujah. I was starting to sorta freak out over when she might go back to school. And we timed the meds better for tonight; we’re going to try to push everything to 4:30 (yes, that’s AM) and see if she’s OK with that. Last night, they skipped one medication at 2:30 and she was awake at 3 or 4 in a lot of pain…so we’ll see how that goes. Ideally, she’ll be at school on Tuesday, moving like molasses and probably late to every class, potentially falling asleep during 3rd period because of her meds, but at least they will be able to count her snoring body as attending class. OK, that’s not ideal, but if she can stay awake for the math lectures, I think she’ll be OK. Luckily, there’s no way any teacher will look at her and question her absences…she’s obviously disabled. Plus the big black brace she has to wear all the time might signal an injury. Deep breaths.

This is the face of menopause.

Seriously. There’s so many things wrong at the moment. Stupid blood sugar. Hormones. Sleep. Aargh.

Anyway, I can start tracing Wonder Under now, or I can cut out the fabric for the two quilts sitting on the hearth waiting for me. Or I can draw. Or something. But tonight my brain is demanding sleep. I guess that’s good. It’s a change. Change can be good. Sleep can be too. It’s too bad that I usually get this tired, then go to bed, and then can’t fall asleep. How is that survival of the fittest?

Note to self: do NOT, repeat, do NOT read lists of things you can do to be happy, especially the stupid one that says that “everything will be all right because everything always is.” Wow. OK. You crazy. When will I learn to stay away from shit like that? No one knows, but probably, when I figure it out? I’ll be happy again. And then I’ll just laugh it off (no I won’t) and move on. No, I’ll probably remember how awful it felt to read those stupid lists when you were doing almost everything on them and it wasn’t working and it made you feel like even more of a failure than you already did. Because in our culture, depression is a failure. Suffering from a biological imbalance in your brain that was caused either chemically or by some shitty thing or things that happened to you that then turned into some chemical cascade, that’s a failure. You did it wrong. You suck. And that attitude doesn’t really help with depression, now does it. Ah, the vicious cycle. Even when you’re fully cognizant of what your brain is doing, you can’t make it stop doing it.

Jellybeans: why do black and white even exist? Even purple and pink are questionable. And why all the fake jellybean versions? Jelly bellies are fine; the rest are crap. Classic jellybean flavor though? Very addictive.

Yes, I’m stress-eating; why do you ask? Best thing to do when you feel stressed is to remove all food from the house that might cause you to stress eat, leaving you with carrots, brussels sprouts, and the like. I can totally stress eat sprouts and they will not hurt me. Seriously. I just bought more today. Oh my god! I’m getting dietary fiber! I’m fighting cancer! Although, after last week, this week will have to be a piece of cake. Someone should tell my twitchy eyeball that. So it can stop twitching. That would be nice.

I was lucky this weekend to have two friends who wanted me to eat. One took me out to dinner and sent me home with a ton of tasty leftovers. The other one appeared at the house with large containers of food. Score! I don’t have to cook for a few more nights this week. That’s a good thing. Plus it leaves food in the house for the girlchild, who has not been eating well and then gets dizzy and wonders why. Hmn. I know why. Food as fuel. Diabetic mantra.

Anyway, it was kindness that was appreciated.

Read it. It’s a screenshot from my work computer…

I never did see those damn monkeys. Sleep. I hear it helps with twitchy eyelids.

Trying to Find Normal

Being home from hospital and going back to work doesn’t equal normal. Work was a little crazy…apparently my guest teacher was ALSO a little crazy. I got desperate hugs from my students. I guess they missed me.

The good news is that, although girlchild doesn’t think she’s getting better (it still hurts a lot), I could see improvement just in the 20-odd hours she was with her dad. She can walk a lot further and she’s a lot more alert. So those are good things. She chose to come to my house (and walk up the stairs!) last night, and she ate a real amount of food for the first time since Monday night. Her med schedule is still fun for ALL of us. I got up at 12:30, 2:30, and 4:30 to medicate her, and then I was up at 5:30 because I’m some sort of crazy and I’m going on a hike today. I NEED to go on a hike today. So I am. So no post last night…too tired. Managed to cook dinner, exercise, meditate. Stared at artmaking supplies. Accomplished nothing. I don’t need to accomplish anything right now. It’s OK. Soon, but not right now.

Boychild is relieved that he got into one of his backup schools. There’s so much negative crap about smart white boys not getting into good schools that I think he was worried (I know I was). So we have started the acceptance/rejection round as of last night (one of each)…in another 10 days, we might know where he’ll spend the next 4 years, but as he said last night, now that he has ONE acceptance under his belt, “I can go to college!” Yay. I think he thought he would be stuck here forever. No worries kid.

More later, assuming I survive.

Expressions in Equality Exhibit

Sheila Frampton-Cooper is curating an exhibit titled Expressions in Equality, to open at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego, California, January 17, 2015, in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The idea for the exhibit comes from Sheila’s statement below:

What drives people to undermine whole populations that they deem different and therefore unacceptable? From racial, gender and sexual inequality to ageism and classism, progress has been made, yet discrimination still abounds. This show begs the questions: What are the issues we’re challenged with, and what would a perfect society look like that’s sustained by pure, unconditional love?

For those that know Sheila, it makes complete sense that this is the show she wanted to create, and I’m glad to be a part of it. Here are the participating artists she’s invited to make a piece specifically for this exhibit:

Alice Beasley

Carol Beck

Jenny Bowker

Dawn Williams Boyd

Blake Chamberlain

Hollis Chatelain

Shin-Hee Chin

Marion Coleman

Randall Cook

Ife Felix

Sheila Frampton-Cooper

Laura Gadson

Valerie Goodwin

Jerry Granata

Deborah Grayson

Sandra Hankins

Pam Holland

Sherry Davis Kleinman

Pauline Karasch Salzman

Patricia Kennedy-Zafred

Judy Levine

Kathy Nida

Mary Pal

Pam RuBert

Susan Shie

Susan Wessels

So this will be my summer project (or at least one of them), although what I show on the web will be limited, per instructions, so if you want to see the whole thing, you’ll have to either come to VAM in January/February next year, or apparently this show will be traveling for a year after that, so you may have another opportunity to see it. My plan is to start drawing over Spring Break. It is always nice to be asked to be part of an exhibit; with my subject matter, it is not often the case. I will be doing gender equality (no shocker to those who know me), and have been letting ideas percolate since I knew about this months ago…it should be good.

Recovering at Home

So I finally got the girlchild home tonight around 7 PM. It took some persuasion, but I was fairly sure she would recover faster at home away from the easy stuff at the hospital, so although she was scared to walk away from 24-hour care and access to better pain meds, we went home. Home, of course, in a divorce is a difficult concept. I did leave her at her dad’s, because he actually has a hospital bed in her room with the adjustable top and bottom (remnants of the marriage…I have one here in my garage as well, gifts from my grandmother to fill out our guest room, back when we had such a thing and she was getting rid of furniture she no longer needed). Plus I need to go back to work tomorrow and he is taking the day off to take care of her, so it makes more sense to not move her more than we have to at the moment.

Here’s where we spent the last 50-some hours…

in the Acute Care Pavilion of Children’s Hospital, the big glass building in the background. I wish I could say I wandered around and took lots of pictures of all the art that was there, but mostly I stayed in the room with her, barely able to concentrate on anything longer than a blogpost. There was some possibility after this morning that I would have to spend a third night, so midday, I went home and showered and packed another bag for tonight, thus guaranteeing that I wouldn’t have to spend the night, right? Oh well…it was better to plan for it than not, like the night before. I think I’ve been home a total of 4.5 hours in the last 50.

She finally allowed one token photo of her in the room, about an hour before she was discharged…

The painting behind her? I cannot say. I can tell you that we were on the air or sky floor, so all the paintings and art were related to the sky.

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Like this one of pigs flying…

There were lots of whimsical things going on here. It was interesting, though, to walk into the family waiting room next to her room (she was sleeping and I was on the phone with work people about the chaos I missed but still need to know about), and to look at the giant photographs in the room and realize you know the artist, that she’s in one of your art groups. Wacky.

There were a lot of mosaics, which I’ve always loved, especially the irregularly shaped ones like this spiraling ocean of life that wandered through one of the outdoor gardens…

The ex and I actually sat outside near this mosaic for most of her surgery. It was better than being inside. I’ve spent the last 3 days inside, I think. And this tile (and others like it) were in the main bathrooms scattered throughout…

The animals were happy and calm…meant to make us feel the same way (except for the terrified puppies in hot-air balloons, of course).

Anyway, I left the meds and instructions with dad, and he can be in charge for the next 24 hours…we’ll see where we’re at after that. She can walk for short distances, but it hurts. She has to wear a brace while “ambulating” (doctor’s words) for the next three months. No soccer for three months. She has a ton of schoolwork to get done, and we need to get her back to school ASAP so she doesn’t miss too much.

I’m feeling a little distant from everything. I got very little done for all that time. Couldn’t stitch or read anything long at all. I finally managed to input grades today when I knew she was coming home. There’s something about that waiting state that doesn’t allow anything decisive to happen. I’ve accepted that as lost time. Moving on now.

I came home and did some dishes and ate and exercised and meditated (the first time I’ve done the last two since Monday night), so that was a relief. Now I’m going to sleep in my own bed with enough pillows and no one coming in every 2-4 hours to check vitals or give meds. What a relief. I’m hoping to get my art/creative brain back tomorrow, or at least be able to number the newest drawing or cut out pieces…pretty brainless stuff, but still on the artmaking spectrum.

She’s home. It’s good.

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.

It’s Not Pretty

My head’s in a weird place tonight. Girlchild’s surgery is tomorrow. I’m off work for at least three days. Work is absolute chaos with Chromebooks arriving and testing starting, but the plan is still up in the air and nothing is working right…and I’m not even there to mess around and try to figure it out. I don’t know if I’m testing or when if I am or how or what. I play my entire life by ear. I know I will be staying in the hospital overnight tomorrow. I have grading, stitching, a few books…I will preload some photos for the blogpost on the hike I did Sunday. I need to deal with food too. It was an incredibly stressful day. The kids were not focusing. They channel the nervous chaos that the teachers are projecting, because we are up in the air, no plan. So that didn’t help. I drove off, thought I had left all my plans and everything set up right. Went to the post office to pick something up and realized I had left my computer and hadn’t hooked up the guest teacher computer (mine won’t work for her). Dammit. Drove back to school. Had the wrong dongle (huhuhuh…dongle…). Another teacher had one I could borrow. Set THAT up. Went and copied the two sections I fucked up on Saturday night…they worked this time…

The whole thing is about 34″ wide x 73′ high. Not a small beast. What to do next? I have two quilts to cut out (hey, I could take one to the hospital…). So I started numbering the big drawing…there’s three weeks until Spring Break. That’s enough time to trace this sucker…maybe. Have a plan, Kathryn. When you have a plan, you function better. Not normal. There’s nothing normal about my staying up until 2 AM some mornings on a work night tracing Wonder Under or ironing fabrics. It’s not a BAD thing…it’s just not normal.

Meditation right now is all about putting happiness on other people, on trying to see what other people look like when they’re happy. You’re supposed to pick someone you respect and then someone you deeply care about. I had a hard time with these at first. I would try people out in each position and see if they fit. I’ve jumped around on the people I respect. I picked women who are strong but who need support, who have talked to me about needing support. I don’t know if I really provide it, but I imagined them filling with happy warmth, like Mr. Meditation told me to. It’s finally getting easier (like 18 days into it). The other? I picked the girlchild. She needs it most at the moment. She needs to feel the happy. The boychild seems more stable, more OK with his existence. Although he’s hiding what he really thinks and feels, because that’s what he does. Hopefully he won’t do that when it’s important. I hope I’ve gotten him to think that through…to avoid what happened to his mom. God knows I’ve talked to him about it. Who knows what sinks in.

My right eyelid is twitching like a bitch. Oh yeah. There’s some stress. Damn surgery + school. I take deep meditative breaths all freakin’ day long. The only time it stopped today was when I was putting the damn drawing together and numbering it…so I started numbering.

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It’s not rocket science. There’s some thought of the order of pieces…because I lay them out in the 100s…trying to think about how I will iron pieces is kind of important…not REALLY important though.

I made it through the 500s somewhere about a 1/3 of the way up the drawing. You can see the thicker black lines where I had to transfer something I had drawn on an overlapping piece between two pages.

I’m not sure what I will do about the octopus tentacles. Those sucker pieces are freakishly tiny. They may need to be embroidery instead.

I added some stuff on the sand after I taped everything together…

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It was looking too empty down there. I’m guessing there will be about 1600 pieces. It’s not a small beast.

It’s not going to fix anything, making this quilt. It doesn’t stop me from hurting. It doesn’t bring world peace to warring nations. It won’t provide anyone with clean water. It seems kind of pointless when I look at it that way…like what is everyone else doing with their Monday evening? Did they finish all the dishes in the sink (I didn’t)? Did they straighten up the living room (I didn’t…you can see some of the messy floor in one of the pictures above)? Did they write part of the Great American Novel (is this my novel? This blog?)? Do you know that on these hikes I rarely meet people who talk about books they’ve read (I will start asking this, I think) or people who show any interest in art or people who seem to do anything but hike. And go to work. Don’t get me wrong…I love to stomp around in nature on hikes, but it’s not the biggest part of who I am. It’s not all there is. It’s a tiny piece.

I don’t know where my people are. Well, some of them are on the Interwebs. I hear from them occasionally. Pretty often.

Girlchild has spondylolysis, by the way. Hardest word in the world to spell. Genetic abnormality in the vertebrae. She has two fractures that kinda look like this…

Tomorrow, they will put two small pins in across the fractures, then put bone grafts in from her ileum, plus some growth factor to promote healing. She wears a brace for 3 months and then should be able to go back to everything she was doing before…no fusion. It’s kinda scary. But she’s been in pain for almost 3 years now and they won’t heal, so it’s time to fix them. Here’s hoping she has a pain-free senior year. Here’s hoping I don’t have a panic attack in the waiting room.

Boychild is watching for college admissions. Some of the UC schools have notified, but not the two he applied to, so we wait. These are his backup schools, so he needs to get in to at least one of them.

There is a lot of wine in my house right now. I’m sure you can see why. I wonder if the hospital has a workout room? That made me laugh. Of course they don’t have one.

Sigh. Big deep fucking sigh. I’m surviving. It’s not pretty.