Sometimes

Sometimes the body just whacks you upside the head and you have to listen. I don’t know if it’s months of tiredness catching up to me or if I’m coming down with something, or what, but last night? Everything stopped working right, so I just finally went to bed. Early. I didn’t sleep well, but I got an hour and half more than I normally do, so of course…instead of feeling better this morning, I feel really tired. Sigh. There is no win in this. I don’t know if it was blood sugar or what (because the damn battery on my blood tester was dead…yes, stop worrying, I’m going to buy a new one today), but I was spacey and dizzy and yuck. I’m hoping it’s not impending sickness because I have a cool hike tomorrow morning and I don’t want to miss it.

Anyway. So I didn’t get much done. I did do this in class yesterday…

Because teachers like to color too. What’s funny is that kids always want to copy mine…actually, that’s how I find the kids like ME in the classroom…look for who is drawing something totally different to what I did.

I also did go hang out with Julie and did some of this…

My daughter’s long-not-so-lost Christmas stocking that might be done when she’s 21. I always forget how long it takes to do cross stitch.

Then Julie gave me this…

My very own ZombieMan. She’s been making fairies and somehow I inspired her to do a Day of the Dead Frida-Kahlo-esque doll a while back, and then we got on mummies or zombies or something, and I had the skulls, so she had to think on it for a while (because zombie-making is not one of her natural-born skills), but look what I got! I like him. Julie has some talent…

Midnight agrees.

I think some of my problem last night was that I was exercising and used the wrong program on the bike, so it just kept going instead of telling me to stop, and I hadn’t eaten enough and I went for too long because I wasn’t paying attention. Once the blood sugar crashes, it takes me a long time to recover.

Anyway. I feel somewhat better this morning, so hopefully that was it. Who knows, though. Trying to suss out the body’s reactions to food/no food or sleep/no sleep and to take care of it properly when you are depressed and overwhelmed and don’t really feel like doing any of it…it makes it really difficult. I know my hormones are completely out of whack too, and I don’t know how much of this is that, and going to a doctor and having them write you off because of how old you are and the fact that you’re female is not helpful (I should interject that my own personal doctor would never do this because she is my age and smart…but some of the urgent care doctors are not so).

There were so many things I wanted/needed to do last night…now I felt like I lost hours. But that’s the way life is. You plan and plan for time to do this or that, and then life whacks you upside the head and you do what you need to do…which in my case was to sleep fitfully. Sigh.

Setting goals helps, remember? Like Julie said last night, having a list and checking things off it is good for something, even if the things you check off the list are not magical fix-alls like some people think they should be. Get rid of depression by exercising…check! Go out into nature…check! Eat healthy…check! (probably should have done more of that last night…I ate healthy but…honestly, I don’t know what the issue was) Get out of bed and shower every day…check! Fucking lists. Stupid perky people making happy lists. Try making a happy list when you’re in MY mood. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get this body and brain out of the house for anything, including groceries or work, the stuff I have to do…let alone the stuff that is supposed to fix me. Sigh.

So today. I can do today. I have lunch already made (smart use of time last Sunday to make all my lunches for the week). I need to finish grades at school so I don’t have to do them this weekend. I have counseling. I need a battery for the blood tester thingie (I’m sure it has a name…I just don’t care what it is right now). Pack up bag for tomorrow’s hike so I don’t have to rush around tomorrow morning. Get the sticky mud off my boots from last weekend. Exercise. Meditate. Eat right. THEN…draw. Or iron fabric. Or cut things out. Don’t work tonight. DO NOT WORK TONIGHT. Make art. Make it good. Make it sit in your head and banish the bad into the corners where it can rot in on itself and get swept out by the cleaners the next time they come through. Tell the shitty feelings and drag-you-down thoughts to fuck off and die. Get mad at the paper and the pen and make them work for you. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Take care.

How It Makes Me Feel

I read a status post from someone that said something about not wanting to be around a particular someone because they are always bitter and negative. I feel that way a lot, not the part about not wanting to be around someone, but the part about being the person who is not a positive person…but more on the sad and mopey side of it. I try to squash it down around other people (although I am obviously not doing that here) because I don’t want them to stop talking to me or hanging out with me because I am that SAD person, but I don’t really know how to make that stop. Sometimes I realize my anxieties are taking over and people are reacting to them, and so then I don’t talk about them for a while. It doesn’t make them go away, but…it keeps people from going away. I’ve had too much of that. I can’t magically be a happy perky person at the moment, or even the sarcastic funny person I used to be, because I don’t have it in me most of the time. In fact, if you see a remnant of the old Kathy in a conversation, it’s probably me faking it because I don’t feel it, I don’t feel like I’m that person. It feels fake to talk like her. Then again, you don’t want to hear me talking like the new Kathy, because she mostly sucks and she cries and is depressed and has very little hope and doesn’t think she will ever get out of this hole.

It’s amazing how deep I am in the hole some mornings…probably I had some dream where the same old shit happens over and over again and I have no power to control any of it and just going with the flow gets me back in the hole and I have to climb out over and over again, and sometimes I’m just too damn tired or sad to do even that.

So you get to this point where you can’t really act like yourself (whatever that is, honestly, because I don’t know who or what I am any more…I keep looking around for someone who sounds or feels familiar or safe and it just doesn’t happen), because you’re afraid someone is posting about you on Facebook, about how they can’t be around you any more because of the disease you’re fighting. Because that’s really what it’s about…that’s the super-sucky part of depression is that people who have never experienced it think that you can just snap out of it and it’s a choice to stay like this, even when they can see that the person is doing everything they can (although someone said something about taking meds, and let me tell you, you don’t get to tell someone that meds are the fix-all because they are different for everyone and being on them can be even worse than not being on them). So they say stupid-ass shit like “I can’t be friends with that person because they are a total downer,” and yes, that person probably feels the same way about herself at the moment. I know I do. I know I don’t want to be with myself a whole lot because my self isn’t fun to be with. She’s a pain in the ass and sad and I keep telling her all she has to do is just fucking snap out of it.

Yeah. See. It doesn’t work that way.

And she doesn’t really want you to have to deal with her when she’s like that either. She really wishes you didn’t ever have to see her or experience her like that. But that means never leaving the house. Never going to a social event. Never hanging out at all. And that does often seem like a viable option. Except that continues the depression and the sad, and is NOT listed on the Long List of Things That You Should Be Doing if You Are Depressed So That You Don’t Have to Be Depressed Any More. Because it’s like magic, you know. If you do the things on the list, that’s the magic. It just happens. You GET to be happy. Otherwise? You didn’t expend the effort, you suck, stay in the fucking hole bitch.

And when you post something like that about not wanting to hang with that person any more (I actually remember my mom talking about a friend of hers in a similar way, and I’m not saying she’s wrong…because they always tell you to surround yourself with BETTER people than that, right?), then every sad and depressed and down friend or acquaintance that you have thinks you are now talking about them. Because there are a lot of us. Which makes me wonder what kind of world we are living in where babies starve to death and parents beat their children and sad people are made more sad by the people who should have some level of understanding, not a level that stops after X number of days, but just plain old understanding.

I am depressing to be around. I depress myself. When I fake it and hang out with other people, I am temporarily less depressing. I have to admit, though, that the low I hit AFTER faking it? It’s way fucking lower than I was when I started. It’s Sobbing Low. It’s Holey Crap I Don’t Want to Live Like This Low. It’s not a good place to be. It’s some sort of force reaction…more force here brings the wave UP, but the resulting LOW is LOWER due to expenditure of energy HERE.

All in all, this is a seriously vicious cycle. I don’t know how to break out of it. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do.

I went back and read my blog posts from last March, and wow. Who the fuck is that person? She sounds so upbeat and perky (which is ironic, because I don’t think I was ever either of those things, but compared to how I am now? Holy shit.). I don’t know who she is. It’s sad when you don’t recognize yourself.

It was the soccer banquet tonight…I had some wine and read my book through most of it. Then came home and communed with the girlchild, because she needed to vent. Exercised. Talked to the SIL, who worries when I don’t answer my phone. Interesting. Then did some work for school (ugh). Meditated, mostly unsuccessfully. Then ironed some more…it’s taking a really long time because I don’t even start until 11.

Ah yes…hair. Trees on the fabric? Makes good hair. Normally I cut pieces out in order, but I just can’t get my head around that right now with this quilt. I’m all over the map. What that means is that I have no idea how much ironing is left…usually I can guesstimate based on how many pieces are left, but I’ve ironed a bunch in the 300s, plus most of the 100s and earlier. I don’t think I’ve done any of the 200s. Or maybe I have. I just don’t remember. I have lungs and heart and all the bits and pieces that go with them, along with the bird. Oh, and the eye and non-flesh surroundings of the eye (mostly eyelashes). It should go quickly. Says she who is taking fucking DAYS to get this done. Tomorrow night won’t be any better. I’m 3 1/2 hours in…

Oh well…the box is mostly full of parts for cutting…

I make. I create. I keep going. This is not the time to stop the artmaking. Is this me? Is this who I am? The chick who is making the art at 1 in the morning and not getting enough sleep and whose eyelid constantly twitches from not enough sleep and too much stress? Is this all I have to look forward to? The girlchild had an existential (weepy) moment in the car today on the way to the soccer banquet (which she did not want to go to…hell, neither did I)…about NOT wanting to be like her parents (what kid does?), but in terms of being happy vs unhappy. Plus a discussion of everyone being in couples but her. Yeah. I get all that. I don’t have a solution. Acceptance? It’s not really a healthy state to accept that which makes you unhappy. I don’t have any answers.

I just have a lot of fabric. And I haven’t read all the books in the world yet. And I pointed out the landscape as we drove from El Cajon down into the valley where the Sycuan Casino is located (home of said soccer banquet)…which is a beautiful valley. Gorgeous. Drop-dead. It seems strange that the mountains and rocks and native plants can give me a sense of peace where nothing people say to me can, where nothing I say to myself does. The land, sitting there, majestic, dry, half-dead with the drought. It speaks to me. I can’t explain how it makes me feel. I just know it does.

Hamlet Murdered Me…

I was thinking about artistic influences over the last three or four days…I remember being influenced by the psychedelic rock posters of the 60s and 70s (Mouse and Kelley for starters, some Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, ), but that was probably in college. I also remember being fascinated with Robert Rauschenberg, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Mary Cassatt (not quite the same as the others), and Frida Kahlo…but I think that was all more college, except for Cassatt. I remember searching for female artists…and being given Cassatt and O’Keeffe, and not a whole lot else. I also credit Dr. Suess and Richard Scarry. Seriously. I do.

And years of life-drawing classes…those were definitely a big part of my being able to draw what I draw. But what is it about my brain that makes it obsess over making art and drawing and putting together pieces that can be shown, and the brain of one of my artist friends who is content with decorating her house? We both have art degrees, but I couldn’t give a lesser shit about that stuff; the art holds me together like glue. Everything else leaves, but the art stays with me. It’s always there, sometimes lurking under the surface. It always pays attention, it never acts up, it doesn’t leave me in the lurch, doesn’t hang me out to dry, doesn’t have a midlife crisis and make me wish I lived on another planet, where humans have brains in their heads. It doesn’t make me wish I could go to sleep and wake up somewhere where everything made sense again.

It’s just mine, the art is. All fucking mine. I try to explain where my brain goes when I create. I don’t even feel like myself at the moment unless I am creating. Seriously, ironing fabric makes me feel more like Kathy than any other thing I do all day, every day. And even that is just a shadow of whomever I used to be.

I tried to do grades this evening, but either my computer or the interface between my system and the county’s grading program are just not happy with each other…I had this problem last time…it takes forever to update. I’ll have to finish at school tomorrow. There are only so many hours in the day. But grading and inputting numbers is just plain old depressing, even when you see that one kid, that one you’ve been working on for like 3 months, her grade finally pops up…she’s finally made up like 30% of her grade and she will be passing this trimester. Cry a little, happy tears, and then realize you have another 5 who are completely blowing everything off and up.

Confessions of a middle-school teacher: it’s hard to care about every kid all the time. Sometimes you have to cut your losses on some and focus your attention and energy on the kid you know will actually change their behaviors with your attention. Some kids, they’re never going to change anything…you’ve given them a 12-week window and they’re still not getting there. So I stop caring about that kid? Do I stop harassing him every day for work? Do I stop getting on his case? Of course not…I’m just not expecting much out of him.

Anyway. I graded until I started to cry. That’s sad, really, but at least I stopped there. Then I started ironing fabrics again…

Honestly, I didn’t get far. I’m tired and my head hurts and I’m in that depresso mode that doesn’t work well. It gets frustrated easily. I finished all the fleshy bits…but then I needed to make decisions about hair color, and my brain, well, it just full on creaked to a halt. Fuck. Dammit. Obviously I need to sleep on it (the problem, not my brain). I feel like I’m constantly trying to modify my mood with breathing and rethinking and exercise and reading and drawing…like I can’t just exist here on the planet…I have to work my butt off in order to exist. It’s kind of exhausting. And even more depressing.

On the way to work yesterday, I was thinking about the morning mood, which is often particularly shitty, and I thought, “Goddammit, I forgot my sketchbook. I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I don’t want to deal with grading or students or whining about a test tomorrow. I just want to take a nap and then finish my book.” Good mood to start the week.

I did finish my book, Going Bovine by Libby Bray,

About a teenager who gets mad cow disease and tries to fight it in a variety of amusing ways. It’s a good story. That said, I need to stop reading sad stuff when I’m going to be at the gym. Most of the book wasn’t sad, by the way. I will definitely read some more of her stuff.

Boychild sent me these…

He was doing an Ophelia project that required help from his sister…

It’s amazing how creative they can be. Downed eucalyptus branches from the storm, old dead roses from Christmas that I still haven’t thrown out (they made it outside), and a sign about Hamlet that is now strangely in my bathroom. I don’t think the dog was supposed to be part of it. I think he got rid of the sign for the final…it was too fucking obvious.

Speaking of not being part of it, Babygirl insists on sitting on the back of my neck tonight.

I’m getting a nasty crick, but she’s in a mood.

I understand that…I’m in a mood. I really did want all the fabric ironed tonight and it’s not. Fuck. Oh well. Progress is slow, but at least it’s progress. That’s the closest I get to hope these days. Oh good, you did 39 more minutes on this project. That’s 39 minutes closer to the next project. Maybe that’s the one that will make a difference, that will kick your brain out of quicksand and into happy mode, into satisfaction, into something approximating Kathy-normal, not to say real normal, but where I don’t feel completely WRONG. Because that’s how it feels now, like my skin doesn’t fit, like the eyeballs are in the wrong place, like everything feels wrong, fits wrong, sounds wrong. It’s just fucking wrong.

I go find my sketchbook and put it back in my work bag. Maybe it will save me.

What I Do While You Sleep…

First of all, I’m not sleeping while you’re asleep. You’re cuddling up with a pillow, all nice and warm, breathing slowing down and becoming more regular, and I’m standing for hours at an ironing board (at least that’s what I’m doing these nights…other nights, it might be sitting at a sewing machine or standing at the light table or sitting on the couch surrounded by Wonder Under). My brain isn’t slowing down, preparing my body for rest so it can then process the day and make it orderly and presentable, filing away this and that in the corners of the mind. Mine’s entering some weird alpha state, where it does slow down, but it harmonizes with something, some THING that breathes peace into my head, my heart, I can actually feel muscles in my chest and abdomen relaxing for the first time in hours.

Actually, I usually try to meditate first, and that helps even more, but meditation last night was a giant fuckwad of fucked-up-ed-ness, so that didn’t help.

I turn the iron on, and it makes that clicking noise that tells me it’s heating up. I pull the ironing board around and take off all the storage boxes that keep Babygirl from climbing on and disrupting fabric and Wonder Under piles. I start up Netflix, tuning into whatever I’m watching at the moment (I’m in Season 3 of the X Files, which yes, I’ve seen all of, so that’s why it’s easy to watch while ironing…it just distracts the small part of my brain that would otherwise fuck with my ability to pick fabrics).

I look at the drawing, hanging up on the bookcase, and I look at what pieces are next in the picking range…and I start processing the picture into color in my head. This current one is complicated enough in some small areas that I write the color progression in pencil on the drawing…this part is fabric 1, this is fabric 2, etc. Then I lay out the fabrics in progression and start finding the pieces and placing them on the fabric where they will eventually be bonded for life.

OK, the glue will get bonded…the paper is just thrown away at the ironing stage.

This piece is mostly flesh colors, and some of them are quite big. On Sunday night, I ironed everything (almost) that needed to be on the two fabrics I chose for the lightest parts of the body. I didn’t go further than that because I knew it was already late and the next step wasn’t something where I could stop halfway…I needed to get most of the way through it in one night…so it makes sense that I didn’t start until after 11 PM last night, right?

No. You’re right. It doesn’t. I can’t say I’m always making the healthiest decisions for Kathy at the moment. Let’s just say I do the best I can. I could, every night, go to bed at a reasonable hour and get much more sleep, but I would be really intensely unhappy (like more than I am at the moment…although unhappy and depressed are not necessarily synonymous) and no art would get done. So I started…

And that’s kind of what it looked like at about midnight…almost all the flesh fabrics were laid out on the fabric where they belonged…and I looked at the clock and realized (1) I wasn’t going to bed at a reasonable time, like y’all did and (2) I wasn’t getting a blogpost in last night.

I started ironing…this is one of my favorite hand-dyes at the moment, but I’m almost out of the flesh-colored part…the other half is more like dirt than flesh…

It’s OK. I do lots of dirt too. But you can see how crazy some of these pieces get…I try to fit them all efficiently together to get the least amount of wasted fabric. I think that one is number 5 in the progression.

And in the end, it was approaching 1 AM and I had everything ironed except the thousand pieces that needed to be fabric number 3…so I stopped there and put all of the 3’s into that bin on top and everything else in the one below…

And I went to bed. And didn’t sleep. Whoops. But I do have to be human today and do work, and I can’t just be a fulltime artist, although it’s a dream of mine…one that will probably never be fulfilled. I thought I had a chance at that, at that type of future, but I’m not allowed. Some days the dark depressed inside of me tells me to stop hoping and wishing for such things, because the reality of my life is such that I will always have to work uberhard to be the artist…it will always be something that I am arguing in my head about, deciding to spend the time on that rather than with other people doing normal people things…sacrificing sleep for art.

Sleep doesn’t make me happy though…and art, although it is not doing its job at the moment, certainly has a better chance of getting me to happy than another 20 minutes or an hour of zoned-out bliss in a warm bed. Of course, in the bright light of morning, I always wish I had chosen a LITTLE more sleep over art, but oh well. Honestly, I was lucky to get myself in bed when I did…my art brain wanted to iron the whole thing down last night, and it was only the tiny bit of mom brain that was in there monitoring my status that persuaded me that I was actually starting to manifest signs of TIRED that got me to turn off the iron and walk away from the fabric.

I can sleep when I’m dead.

McGinty Mountain Hike

On Sunday, I hiked to the top of McGinty Mountain in the Jamul, California, area. It’s about 5 miles round trip and is fairly strenuously uphill. It was a day after a rather large rainstorm came through the area, so mud was sticking to our boots making me about an inch taller at times. Sticky mud helps on the uphills, but you slide on the downhills. The hike goes up about 1300 feet to an elevation of 2183′. Here’s a cool link to Derek Loranger’s 100 Peaks website, with video of rain and hail on the trail (hey, that rhymed). He also talks about the excessively sticky mud, but honestly, in San Diego, that probably only happens a few times a year.

Here’s the official government website. There is a regular Hike with a Ranger event on this trail, but amusingly, the government website doesn’t forward to the calendar properly, so I’m not sure how you’d find it.

There’s a nice little dirt parking lot at the trailhead with a view of this, which is NOT McGinty Mountain…

There’s another little hill and path to the left. Honestly, the hardest part about this trail besides the fairly strenuous uphill climb is trying to figure out which is the REAL trail and which are just dead-ends.

It is not marked particularly well…although you’re unlikely to get totally lost, you may wander around a bit if it didn’t just rain so you could totally track your own footprints back. There’s a chimney sticking up on this hill.

Here’s the trailhead itself, complete with warnings, doggie poop bags, and trail map.

Although again…it’s not always easy to tell where you should be going on the actual trail.

There are lots of sweeping views of the valleys on either side, with Rancho San Diego on one side, Jamul on the other.

The trail does track along next to houses on the lower slopes, and you can see more on the hills in the distance.

There is some steep climbing at the beginning and the end.

I think the parking lot is down in those trees in the middle of the picture.

We did see some weather, but it mostly left us alone…this is the view to the north, with Cowles Mountain in the distance (not the first peak in the middle, but the paler one to the right of it.

And a bird…which one of the hikers was able to identify…all I remember is that it’s a Spotted something (because of the wings, of course).

This is the view to the south of Jamul…the mountains on the right is where I’ll be next weekend.

Bailey was our faithful companion on the hike.

There was a mine off the trail on one side…

I’m not entirely sure what they mined (the Internet says gold), but these aren’t very big holes…we saw another one on the side of a rock on part of the hike.

I did not crawl inside. We took our first group picture up here…

It was a small group, due to the weather. And I am apparently short. You can decide which view is best…

Yes. I wore shorts. What can I say? It wasn’t actually super cold…cold enough that I had two shirts on for most of it, but went down to short sleeves for part of it…until the weather wandered back in…we could see rainstorms in the distance (or not-so-far distance). I have official zip-off hiking pants somewhere…I just don’t know where.

The trail consistently moved upwards…although most of the time, it wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t talk and hike (that’s my measure of how bad IS it…can I talk? Not so bad.).

Lots of valley views and vistas with big dark clouds…

It reminds me of what I love about San Diego County…all those mountains so close to home. I would die in Kansas…too flat.

This is looking north at where my house might be if you could see through hills.

On the right is San Miguel, which I’ve hiked previously. The trail was eroded by rain, definitely, but was also pretty rocky. Bailey was a trooper.

I think this is the portion the leader called “Heartbreak Hill”…here’s where talking and breathing had a bit of a conflict…

I was not the only one taking photos…you can see my naked legs up there in shorts…

McGinty6 small

Still easier than San Miguel though…more mountain vistas, off to the east, this time.

And northeast…

I think that’s looking at San Miguel again, but I’m not really sure!

That’s definitely north again.

North…

At the top, we climbed as high as we could (that rock) and took another group photo…

And here was the big money shot…

This was on the way back, I think…easier going down, but had some issues with picking the right trail.

We didn’t have much rain in the end. The hike was just short of 5 miles in about two and a half hours (with a few stops for people to rest and/or catch up, plus playing in mines and on rocks)…I would definitely do this again, although I suspect it’s particularly difficult in the heat of summer. Apparently snakes are a real issue up there too. This is closer to home than Cowles Mountain is and definitely less populated. Strenuous? Yeah…a bit…you need to be in some sort of shape, but if you’re persistent, you could go up it even if you are a slow but steady hiker…and you don’t have to go all the way up. It’s an up and back hike, so you could stop whenever you were tired and come back. The trail does continue past the mountain peak…I didn’t really explore beyond that…maybe on another day.

That One Thing

I didn’t do too well with my goals in the last week. Too many things in my head, kinda like vines taking over newly planted flowers…choking out what I wanted to do with whatever their goal was when they took over my brain. It’s OK. It’s not like I failed or anything. I overplan so there’s no down time. There’s never a moment when I’m wondering what I could possibly do with my spare time. There are many things on the list, things of all types of creative expenditure…from drawing to ironing to sewing to simply cutting things out, which honestly doesn’t require a lot of brain power or motivation. Plus there’s always grading and cleaning and dehoarding and yardwork. I do all that on purpose. If there were nothing to keep my brain fully occupied, I might rip it out of my head and toss it in the garbage disposal. Shred that puppy.

So I did some of what was on the list. Saturday. Sigh. Well, Saturday was different…and yet the same. I’ve been there before, not to that particular place, which was quite beautiful…

Made me wish I had lots of money and no fear about fire danger…gorgeous views. Quiet. Neighbors forever far enough away. But that’s not my life. SOOO not my life.

That was followed by this…

OK. Well. I’ll be dead. Although this did foster a funny drawing in my head that never made it onto paper. Oh well. There is no shortage of drawings in there. I’m not sure drawings of Kathy’s version of God should be a part of this world.

I hiked this morning…another post on that later. It was good. The rain held off…just a few sprinkles. Which reminds me, I only had 6 eucalyptus branches down and they all missed the house, but the pool pump died in the storm (after I went out to try to clean it out)…so the continuing hits to my financial stability are in fact, well, continuing. They are all out of my control, so I will have to deal. I’ve told the boychild we can be a mother-son pizza-delivery team. He’s not amused.

Speaking of not amused, during Friday’s soccer game, girlchild headed the ball by slamming her forehead into another girl’s head and got this cute little bruise…

It’s actually even more purple and darker (but less swollen) today. Should be green by the banquet (and photos) on Wednesday. Looks like eyeshadow gone horribly wrong.

Girlchild and I often text back and forth…especially when we’re not in the same place.

Yeah. I don’t know. At least we both have a sense of humor.

Wolves rock by the way.

I am amazed by this stuff…trying to figure out how to smash more natural selection into the year so I can use this as part of it.

Plus NOT audio books…I tried to listen to an audiobook the other day because many people were recommending it, and I failed miserably. I could not keep all the words in my head. I couldn’t concentrate. I will try again, maybe while quilting? Usually I listen to music when I quilt because I zone out. I tried listening to a podcast once and completely lost focus on the quilting if I listened hard and lost focus on the podcast if I focused on the quilting. Some connection in there is fried maybe. Or I am that deeply in focus when I quilt? I don’t know.

One of my goals this weekend was to start ironing fabrics on the Mammogram quilt (which by the way is a really lame name for a quilt). I really wanted to start last night, but was way too exhausted and knew I was hiking early this morning…so I went to bed early (for me) instead of getting the first steps done. I needed to straighten up a little and move Babygirl off the ironing board…

She wasn’t happy about that, but I managed it…at least for now.

This quilt doesn’t have many pieces, but it does have BIG pieces…I hang the drawing up so I can see it while I iron. I also marked the flesh pieces (which are the biggest part of this quilt) with numbers for the range of colors…I originally had 1-7, but added a subcolor to 1, because I honestly didn’t have a yard of any light-enough flesh color that would work for all the pieces that needed to be the lightest color. I usually only buy 1/2 yards. I found two that harmonized well on the light end, so split it into 1 and 1a.

Yes, my brain is somewhat convoluted sometimes. Originally I was going to go buy some fabric, but I don’t have any money to spare right now. Oh, and I haven’t really picked a background fabric yet. I just realized that. Maybe the purple is going to be it. Who knows. I’m a little unfocused at the moment. OK. A lot unfocused. Ask Mr. Meditation. I’m in the next series, the Heart series. It’s really throwing me. It’s all about feeling happiness in yourself and seeing it in others, and I can’t get there at all. What’s amazing about this app is that whatever discomfort or problem I’m having with the meditation, usually within a day of my having issues, he’s addressing that exact issue. Wow. So either I’m semi-normal or he’s psychic. Either way, I do just stick with it and at some point it will start to make more sense to me. It’s not surprising that I can’t remember being happy or doing something for someone to make them happy…the only things I can remember are so painful at the moment that my brain just literally shuts down, slams the door, and screams that she’s not coming out until I stop all that recollecting and shit.

All righty then. Moving on.

Hence the fabric-picking. It’s really another type of meditative state.

And though it doesn’t make me happy to do it, it does give me some sense of peace, some relief from the shitty mindstate in which I otherwise exist. Crappy beat-up license plate on a junker car. Yes. THAT mindstate. That above was my original run of 7 fabrics, but I added another similar light one to go with the first one…because here’s how much fabric HALF of the pieces that needed to be the lightest color took up.

Yup. So I have two now. There’s not much left of that fabric. Sometimes certain fabrics are so precious-feeling that you don’t want to do this to them, but then I think, when it’s in the drawer, I never see it…if it’s in a quilt, I might see it. But then it doesn’t really matter once the quilt is made.

Sometimes being an artist makes me feel like an alien. My brain does all this stuff and is obsessed for hours, days, weeks, months, with all this act of creation stuff and when you talk to other people about it, they don’t really know what to say. Huh. OK. Well. Yes, I’m a freak. It’s strange, I get so much fulfillment and peace from the artmaking, but it really does push me away from lots of people, just because the doing of it seems such a foreign concept to them, unless they have a friend or family member who makes art, creates something. Or there are a few people who just get it. Not many. Most give me that look and that nervous laugh. Especially when they figure out how much time and energy I spend doing this. I actually wonder what they heck they do all those hours when I’m doing this. Oh. They’re probably sleeping. Or cleaning.

Sigh.

Some of you reading here will understand this, though…the arrival of the Dharma catalog…

Be still my beating heart. You have no money. Plus you have dye stuff. You don’t need more (“need?” What is this word “need?”). I still like to read through the whole thing. Maybe there’s some tool or coloring device that will just make my day and I haven’t heard of it yet and it’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for to change my life.

Yeah. Not? Are you sure? Because I’m definitely on the lookout for that one thing I’ve been waiting for. I just don’t actually believe it exists.

Missing: Brain

Description: gray, white, pink, lots of surface area, bad attitude. Last seen: wandering the streets cluelessly, not following instructions.

I have another post I started writing this morning, but it requires brain power and I am missing significant portions of my brain tonight. They have just wandered off for a nap or a vacation or something…they muttered as they went by, so I’m not really sure what their issue is. I just know that there’s some resentment and anger, and I can’t really deal with their drama right now, so I’m just going to let them have some time to themselves and hope we can converse in a civil manner tomorrow.

I am such a tolerant brain owner.

Seriously, though, the numbness continues, but my counselor says that she has heard a real laugh out of me the last two weeks instead of just my nervous laugh (I have spent the last 7 hours trying to imagine what my nervous laugh sounds like…I cannot produce it on command and apparently have no control over my laughing). I guess that’s good. We talked about stress and how my reaction to stressful events and non-stressful events are somewhat flipped, backwards even, and I need to figure that out and switch them. But acknowledge that numbness is some version of healthy, of my brain trying to protect me or give me a rest from constant hypervigilance. It doesn’t help with the crying though. I am numb but then I cry. At the drop of a freakin’ hat. It’s so hard to be at social events sometimes because the stupidest stuff will upset me and I have to work really hard not to tear up. Not acceptable behavior…unless you’re at a funeral. Or a wedding. Neither of which do I attend with any frequency.

I drew during prep yesterday. It’s not very exciting and it’s certainly not done.

But it’s pen on paper. Blurry? Camera sucks. But drawing. Drawing good.

Girlchild had her last playoff game tonight, because they lost 0-1…

It was dark, so I’m not sure why I started taking pictures…except that she was on the field and that was kind of amazing for her coach.

And yes, it was on-and-off pouring rain. Fun stuff. She went up to head the ball and headed the other player at the same time, right above the eye…it’s all swollen and purple now. She’ll probably have a black eye. Good times.

I like to set goals for the weekends. It keeps me (sometimes) from wallowing too deeply in depressive thoughts about what I used to do on weekends and how they feel now, which is mostly like shit. I need to go to the gym and I have a hike planned, even though there’s some rain wandering around the county. It should be OK. I have a ton of grading to get done before Thursday, when the gradebook opens. I want to get a good chunk of it done this weekend, because the week is awfully full already. I want to get the big long tall drawing done…there’s not that much left to do. I want to start ironing Wonder Under onto fabrics for the Mammogram quilt. That means I need to figure out a setup to keep Babygirl off the ironing board for a few days (barbed wire? fencing around the ironing board?).

Not much. There’s a bunch of errands sprinkled in there as well, plus installing external hard drives and moving stuff around to hopefully help the computer run better. Plus some yardwork. Did I tell you two big branches came down in the storm? They missed the house luckily…last time, one spiked the roof into the bathroom ceiling. Still haven’t fixed the inside part…the outside is fixed.

Maybe I’ll even take a nap. Could happen. It would help if those pieces of the brain would come back. I kinda need their assistance.

Unacceptable…

I got an invitation to apply to a juried art competition for American women artists, art that “exemplifies the utmost in excellence in terms of composition, technique, mastery of medium and quality of design.” Then they listed “acceptable” and “not accepted” media. Um. So first of all, those aren’t antonyms really. It should be “accepted” and “not accepted” OR “acceptable” and “unacceptable.” Yes, I’m pedantic about language…but here’s the thing…acceptable means something very different here than accepted…also because what I do, fiber art, is not in the “acceptable” range. Painting is (of course), as is sculpture and drawing. Textile and fiber art are listed in the “not accepted” (unacceptable?) range.

But fiber art is almost exclusively a female art. Now they knocked photography out too, so they are obviously clinically deranged, but whatever. Also not accepted are “craft, jewelry…any work containing computer-generated elements, prints”…so basically all the art forms I have used over the years are unacceptable. My subject matter is on the fringe, and so is my medium.

I’m reading a book about art called Making Art: Form and Meaning, by Terry Barrett, and he talks about choosing your medium to fit your message. I don’t know how much I chose fabric, or whether it chose me. I don’t know when I made the decision to fully move away from screenprinting to quilt art. I know I was never a great painter…or sculptor…or photographer. I could draw though. I did all of it in school and quite a bit of it afterwards…but pen on paper and then translating that into fabric has been my preferred artistic form of communication for an awfully long time, like since 1991? OK, I probably got serious about fabric only in about 1996 or so.

Anyway, the picture I spent a lot of time staring at in that book, like for the last three days, was Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me…

an amazing painting. I think I have a bathtub drawing coming…it has to be better than George W’s version…

Yup. Our former president apparently has nothing in the water. Totally. Anyway, I think of the bathtub as this introspective place, and I think Kahlo expresses that well…that time in your head when you are floating in warm water, and you can see your toes, but all the trials and tribulations of the day are floating there in front of you (please note again the emptiness of Bush’s bathtub…a metaphor for the empty mind?). Anyway. It’s an image that has stuck with me, and then because of the title, this song has been in my head for days as well…

Sigh. The weird connections of art and emotions. And yes, Florence admits to looking at Kahlo’s painting when she wrote the song…she spoke of the ocean being “nature’s great overwhelmer.” I think kids are the great overwhelmer personally, but I don’t think Florence has had any of those yet.

The next email that came through? “Create instant happiness by injecting color into your house.” Really? Oh…so THAT’S how it works. Damn. These people have obviously never seen my house…lack of color is not the issue…and if only it were so simple to just paint a few walls and add some colorful cushions and BAM! You’re fucking happy. I mean, the wall facing my kitchen is bright red. I don’t think it’s an issue.

So I had a day. And sometimes I just pick up science journals in between classes and make the kids line up outside so I have a whole 48 seconds of silence…of breathing calmly…of preparing my head for the next onslaught. I play music. I sing to myself. Apparently today I was in Roast Mode. I don’t roast on purpose. I just state the obvious. Apparently that’s roasting. We are nearing the end of the light unit (the unit on light…not the unit that is light in content…in fact, trying to explain the difference between reflection and refraction to 7th-grade brains more interested in candy and farting…yes…farting…is remarkably difficult and not light at all). It doesn’t actually get better or easier, but talking about DNA and genetics is a bit more engaging than light…even with 400 optical illusions to show them. I think I just need a change of topic…because if one more kid tells me that the CAUSE of rainbows is ROY G. BIV? That might be the straw that breaks this camel’s back.

I got an email from the girlchild’s English teacher today (fun stuff, let me tell you), and it was RIFE with typos and grammatical errors. I refrained from marking it up and sending it back with a grade on it. Really. I did REFRAIN.

Teaching is not easy. Teaching is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done…not as hard as being a single/divorced parent…but close. You are parent, disciplinarian, hard-ass, therapist, content-expert, maid, actor, feeder of the mind (sometimes of the body as well)…and somehow you have to find sanity in all that. Sometimes that is very hard to do. I’m better at it now. I’m better at it while depressed. I don’t know what that means.

So it’s important that I find some balance…this school year more than any other has been about that balance…especially with the depression throwing me completely OFF balance, destroying motivation, fucking with my mood, messing with my ability to deal with the simplest things. I’ve dropped so many balls this year. I thought I would be in a better place by now, but I’m stuck in a sad swamp. I made myself exercise tonight, then finished a book…and treated myself with Mexican food. I don’t hardly ever eat out any more, but after the gym, my blood sugar was crashing, and the thought of having to come home and cook something that I really didn’t want to eat was SO depressing that I stopped at the local good Mexican food place. It was worth it. Calories? Yup. But I don’t think you can live like a monk all the time and not have the joy of guacamole in a burrito.

Then I came home and meditated and drew…I drew very very slowly, because (1) I’m really tired and (2) I’m not sure what’s coming next…I have to let my brain work it through. I know I want a wolf in there somewhere, but haven’t figured out how to fit it in…I thought originally that she (the chick at the bottom) was under water…

But maybe she’s not…maybe all that is behind her and she’s sitting on the ground. I don’t know.

It’s not like I’m portraying reality here. I’m pretty sure Kahlo didn’t worry about shit like that. And my stuff certainly has surrealistic tendencies. I can decide that’s the bottom of the ocean and wolves live down there…SEA WOLVES. Or not. Maybe there’s an aquarium behind her. Yeah. That’s it. She’s at the fucking aquarium. NAKED. Insert hysterical laughter here. I think I need to go hang out with some artists for a while…not sure where I will find them. It’s really alienating to never have other artists to talk to in person. I love book club, but I think I need art club. Then again, so many artists drive me bonkers with artspeak and pretentiousness. Sigh.

Oh who cares. I’m just drawing. Insight into the artist’s mind. Wish I could have read Frida’s blog. We could have gone out for a glass of wine and complained about how big of an ass Diego was. Could have been good.

So Much Wasted…

I don’t feel human when I’m numb. I woke up this morning and the numbness, it was dragging me down into a pit. That’s not good.

I go to school. I do work. I go to the chiropractor and she says oh my what’s going on with your neck and puts warming pads on me and leaves me to relax and instead I cry. That is what I do now. That is who I am now. She gives me some exercises, explains what’s happening (to my back…she doesn’t notice the crying). Asks what’s going on. Tries to suss out why it’s worse than it ever has been. Hmn. Can’t say. I come home and think about being productive. I think about what I’m doing to my back?

I can go two ways with that productive thing: (1) do some work, grading of some type or (2) start picking fabrics for a quilt.

I do neither. I have a library book due Saturday. I’m almost done with it. I sit down and read. I talk to parentals for a bit about sprinklers, but mostly I read. I didn’t actually have much time between getting home from the chiropractor and having to leave again…so it was hard to force myself to be productive.

Then it’s book club night! I liked the book a lot, and I like getting out of the house to hang out with other geeky women and talk about books and movies and whether the guy that plays Sherlock is hotter than the tenth Dr. Who. Or whatever. These are my people. I ended up talking to someone I’d talked to before briefly…turns out her current life has some similarities to mine. It was a good conversation. Plus I have more books to read. This is how geeky our group is…those of us who liked the book now vow to read everything he’s written and we get all excited about how many books he’s written. Yup. I will never be able to read all the books that I want to read. Then there’s discussion of whether the British show of this is better than the American version, and if it’s a European show, we know there will be no happy ending. Americans like happy endings. The Europeans are much more realistic. I am more Euro than US of A in character. Always have been.

I come home and exercise while talking briefly to the kids, then spend an hour plus on the phone with brother and SIL talking college and retirement and money. It’s too late to start anything artistic. I’m honestly too tired to do anything else tonight. Maybe tomorrow. There’s no rush.

I still haven’t finished the book. Too many distractions and interruptions. They’re not bad interruptions though…they’re just life. And life interruptions like that are better than wallowing in the depression pit. That pit smells bad. I don’t like hanging out there. It makes me feel bad.

Except I know I still feel empty and numb…and I feel like I didn’t accomplish anything today…and I feel like I will never feel better. And I haven’t meditated yet, so I will try to do that after I finish writing this, but will probably fall asleep doing it.

I drew at school during prep. I did a bunch of grading and I got that nasty awful feeling in the pit of my belly that tells me I should work on my mindset, so I turned the music on and started to draw. There wasn’t much time left in my prep period, so I didn’t draw for long, but it seemed to get me through the day.

I wish for so many things to be different. I didn’t want things to be like this. There are some things I can change, but so much of it is out of my control…so much is just up in the air. So much is because of my brain, which refuses to behave. Why start now? Depression takes hold, digs in. I feel like I will need to cut fingers off, sever tentacles, slice up some connecting phalanges in order to disconnect from that part of my brain, the part that is deep in hopelessness…deep in crying.

So much brain power and energy wasted on this state of mind.

So much wasted.

Maybes.

My brain is disturbingly empty tonight. I’ve been poking around the edges, looking for some insight into the emptiness, but there’s nothing. Ha. Nothing in the emptiness. Sigh. Knock knock. I don’t appear to be at home. Maybe I’m on vacation and forgot to let me know. Dammit. Stupid irresponsible brain. Never can count on it to be mature and follow through.

I went to the girlchild’s soccer game and stitched through the whole thing…

Well, except when I was trying to take about 40 blurry pictures of her because it was dark and I hadn’t quite admitted to myself yet that it was too dark to be trying to photograph anything. Did I mention my camera is currently taped together? Yeah. So I took a lot of blurry photos…

I have no idea what is going on in this photo…

And in between I stitched…

Like the only picture I got of her that wasn’t significantly blurry was because she was almost standing still. I don’t know why I work so hard at this. I got amused later when one of the parents, whom I’ve known for YEARS, told me he thought I was British…like I’d lost my accent years ago. Say what? Dude. I’m born and bred Californian…OK, by some mistake of weird geography (my dad was stationed in Alaska in the Army and I was born on an Army base there), I was not actually BORN in California, but I might as well have been. Both my parents are from California as well. I have been amused by this all night. I’m a secret agent Brit masquerading as a typical Californian artistic freak. OK, not so typical. Whatever. I embrace my British roots (well, I do have some of those…but Scottish).

They won the game. We knew they would. I’m really REALLY looking forward to the next game on Friday, because they’re predicting lots of rain and lightning storms. Yes, I will still stitch. I have that cool setup where I put the plastic-covered blanket over me and the umbrella sits in my bra (seriously, it props quite well in there), and I stitch under the umbrella. Yes, it’s a little crazy. I don’t think we’ll get past Friday’s game…we’ve played this team before and we usually lose…although we tied them a couple of weeks ago. Who knows.

I got home and didn’t have time for the gym, so I just made my dinner and ate and read a little and exercised, and then the ex called because his car broke down and he needed me to pick him up, so I did that, and then made tomorrow night’s dinner for the kids, so I can go to book club, and then I meditated and then it was time for bed. Or writing, then bed. Not very exciting. Then again, most of my nights aren’t very exciting. What’s new?

So no art. No deep thinking. Nothing really. Just empty. Seriously vacant. Wanted to draw. Wanted to pick fabrics for the Mammo quilt. Realized I didn’t have a background fabric picked out. I have a bunch of hand-dyed backgrounds I could use (probably too busy), or I have the dark purple I originally picked out for the Celebrating Silver quilt, but then rejected. I think I decided that was my best choice. And a little-old-lady cat with dandruffy skin just jumped on my lap, even though I told her it wouldn’t last long.

I finished reading this tonight, David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls…

I’m still not sure what the title means, but how could you NOT read a book with that title? It’s a bunch of essays. Some were quite interesting, some funny, some I just didn’t care about. I’m not really an essay reader…maybe because I actually read essays as part of my job…although Sedaris writes better than 99% of my students (I have had a few very funny and articulate students).

Really, the best thing for me is to take the empty brain to bed and do a restart tomorrow. Maybe after book club, I’ll be motivated to pick fabrics. Maybe I’ll feel like installing the absolutely adorable (really, they are…they are so tiny and cute) external hard drives I got to try to ameliorate the computer issues I’m having (running out of space). Maybe I’ll make dessert and eat it. Maybe I’ll make it to the gym (OK, not tomorrow night, for sure). Maybe my brain will check back in from whatever vacation it’s on at the moment and let me know something helpful, something pertinent to my healing.

Or not.