Phoenix Island Review

I recently finished Phoenix Island by John Dixon.

This book started very dramatically and held my attention for about the first half. It’s the story of a 16-year-old kid, Carl Freeman, sent to to a disciplinary camp on Phoenix Island in the middle of nowhere. It’s a military-type camp and there is the typical hazing and bullying that goes on in these stories. Then the story changes when the boy makes a discovery about what goes on after the first month. As he grapples with his sense of ethics and Dixon introduces a new leader and set of information about the purpose of the island, the story seems to lose a little of its power and storytelling strength, unfortunately. The book ends typically, and I had a hard time imagining where it would go from there (sequel setup?).

I enjoyed most of the book; it is YA, and holds together well for that audience. It is due to release January 7, 2014, which is also apparently when the CBS TV show based on it, Intelligence, will air. I am interested enough in the premise to watch the show. This was a NetGalley book.

Out of the Dirt

I managed the gym, finished a good book (in one day…no idea how many pages it had, because the Kindle app says things like Location 405 of 3606, and I don’t know what that means), graded one period’s worth of journals (I only had one period left, so that was OK), bought thread so I can quilt up in the mountains, hung out with a friend for an hour or so, and ironed fabrics. Not a bad day. I managed it. There were some bad moments, true, but that seems to always be the case. I weathered them. I cried, but it wasn’t as bad as some Saturdays have been. I do miss going out to dinner and the movies. I wish I could go out dancing, but that seems to be out of my cost range, plus requires more people skills than I have at the moment. Doing things with other people is not my strong point. I even meditated, but my brain was like a 5-year-old with ADHD, so I just let it wander and reeled it back in over and over again. I’m not sure it was particularly helpful tonight. Oh well. It can’t always work ideally. That’s the wonder of the damn brain. It’s fucking unpredictable. Or maybe it’s predictably random.

I have about 2 1/2 hours in on the fabric choosing for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I’m about halfway into the 200s as well. I’m up and out of the dirt as of tonight. When I start up again (maybe tomorrow?), I will be in the flesh of one of the daughters…I think of the Maiden and the Mother as daughters of the Crone…not sure why. Because they’re smaller and younger? Who knows. I didn’t want to start dealing with flesh yet…too tired tonight for that. Flesh has to be a run that flows, and with a quilt like this, it might need 7 fabrics in the run. Or I might decide to do two different runs, two shades…with the daughters in a lighter, pinker shade, and the crone in a more muted, greyed shade. Who knows? I won’t know until I pick them, and I kind of feel like I need to have a fresh brain for that, and I don’t have that right now. I have late night tired brain.

All the 200s are laid out…

There’s a bird in there too. And a heart, I think. Maybe a fetus. All that before I even get to the daughter, whichever one it is. Can’t tell…maybe the Maiden. There’s only 1237 or so pieces in this thing. I’m going to be ironing for a while. It would be nice to get it done before we leave, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

My plan is to start cutting these out at my rescheduled quilt class Monday night and continue up in the mountains.

I’d like to have half of it ironed by Tuesday…more if possible. It sounds like a lot of time, but I have a hike and dinner tomorrow, then doctor, soccer, groceries for Tday, some other errands, and quilt class on Monday…and Tuesday morning is a mess. So I don’t know how far I will get. When I type all that out, the thought of getting 615 pieces ironed seems unrealistic…that’s another 400 pieces, probably another 4 hours. When I’m not tired. Ha! OK, I have a goal. I’ll do my best to meet it.

I did go through the older sketchbook and marked some of the drawings with post-its. I don’t know if I’ll get more serious about making some smaller quilts this week, but I’m trying to at least keep it in mind, since two of my smaller non-nude pieces will be in Poway starting next week, so there is a market for these. I think I’m afraid to NOT have multiple pieces in progress at the moment…I don’t want any down time. Down time leads to depressoid time, and I’m good at that without any encouragement from a nonbusy brain. Trying to keep the brain occupied is an important task.

After finishing the cross stitch I’ve been working on for my SIL for the last 3+ years, I was trying to decide what to do next and decided that the girlchild’s Xmas stocking should be next on the list…I mean, I started it before she was born and she is now 16. Seemed to make sense. So I pulled it out and stared at it for 20 minutes, trying to figure out what in hell I had stitched…

I really did think I had stitched more, but more importantly, this line of stitches didn’t appear to match anything on the pattern…until I realized I had stitched it in the wrong color. Wow. I was about 9 months pregnant with the girlchild and the boychild was about 18 months old when I started it. It’s surprising my brain didn’t just fall right out of my head. I ripped out all the stitching from over 16 years ago and will start again at my next stitching meeting. Fresh start. Funny stuff. I did tell her not to expect it until she was 21, based on how long the one for her aunt took me…it’s not that I’m a slow stitcher…I’m not. I just only work on it for about an hour and a half a month at the one meeting.

I’ve been staring at this card all day…it was sent by two good friends sending me encouragement a few months back…but I love the dog and birds. Bright colors and funky.

Much appreciated. They’re the ones who posted the article that talked about the meditation app I use, Headspace…so it’s their fault I’m calmer now. Damn them. No, not really. I did actually use it the other day with a student who was in a mood…and it worked. Welcome to the calmer Kathy…or something.

I started and finished this book today, Every Day by David Levithan.

I liked it. I thought it was well-written. I can’t remember why I read it, although it could have been as simple as seeing someone else’s review. A person (hard to tell if A is male or female) inhabits a different body every day, and one of those days, falls in love. It was nicely done. I would read another book by Levithan. Because I don’t have enough books to read? I remember the boychild worried once about what would happen when he ran out of books to read. I don’t think it’s happened yet. I have two more books on the library ebook system and another two on the Kindle app at the moment. I guess vacation is time to read.

I’m hiking tomorrow; far as I know, the hike is on…looking forward to this one…will be dispelling some head demons up there, I think. Hope. Trying to figure out if taking the sketchbook makes sense. I can’t draw and hike, but maybe I can draw in the car (mountain roads? Might be a mistake…don’t know).

Out of the dirt…into the snow.

Time Off

I didn’t post last night because I think I finally hit absolute exhaustion mode. Thursday was a bitchy day, nonstop bullshit left and right, too much to do. Counselor says I thrive on stress…but then by the end of talking to me, she had revised…she said that I had been living that way for so long that I didn’t know how to stop…that I didn’t like it, but I functioned well that way. True that. I try to reduce stress, but that’s hard to do when the world keeps throwing shit at you. The meditation is helping, but we’re going to work on the rest of it. Today feels like more of it, the stress…but I know if I can power through some of this, I can get it done and do the stuff I want to do and get more time for that.

Yesterday was two potlucks…my students were amused because I forgot to put the mashed potatoes in the microwave early enough in class (lunch is after 4th period…I was supposed to microwave them between 3rd and 4th and then put them in the slow cooker…duh), so I stomped (wearing Uggs, feet cold) into the prep room, slammed open fridge, microwave, and stomped back out…they knew they were being typical kids on the day before break, so they thought I was mad at them and was going into the prep room to get something to punish them with (wait, what? Because I do that? like what would I have in there…leftover sheep hearts? cow eyeballs to lob at them? Oh wait. I do have those things.). So that was funny.

Then we kamikazed north in that crazy East County thunderstorm last night to another potluck…it was totally dry and rainfree in North County, but flooding here. Weird stuff made for fun ride. By the time I got home and my body was trying to deal with two different potlucks of food that it wasn’t used to…I meditated…then I sat silent with my cup of tea and stared at the blackened TV, off. Too tired to do anything. But I remembered that I wanted to think about doing a few smaller pieces for shows that need them, and maybe some without nudity (same deal), so I pulled a couple old sketchbooks…

And started thumbing through them. Wow. That was a mistake. The last five years of drawings in these books is mostly at dinner and it’s really painful to look at them. I found a couple that might work for size, but not nudity. The top one isn’t even full. The bottom one is, though. I don’t know if I can open them back up though. Maybe next month.

I found another sketchbook this morning that was a little older…it might be more useful. But I really can’t do that right now…I was looking at that for December (which, yes, is only a week away) and maybe over break if I finish these two. And I already have two in line for after that. At least. Plus there’s another invitational thing to do by next November AND I want to do another big one for next summer. Because I have no life and I might as well fill it with artmaking and fuck the rest of it. It’s really my fault for documenting where I drew each one…I like the history of that process, but for future reference, sometimes history hurts. Counselor says I need to be OK with hurt at some point. I think trust also needs to come back, and neither are lurking behind the curtains waiting for me to call them out…they’ve fucking run for the hills, terrified that I’m going to kick their asses. I think I have a lot of time before I deal with either of those two things.

Or something.

There’s a hike planned for tomorrow to Cuyamaca Peak, but we know it snowed up there…ironically, the last time I went on this hike, it had just snowed too and it was freezing and there was no view. And my co-hiker was a fucking physical wimp, so it was a pain in the ass. Remind me of that in a year. We’ll see about the hike. I’m OK with going and OK with rescheduling…I have plenty to get done.

What’s really calling to me (is not the grading I have to do at school later today, once I get my butt to the gym and run errands) is this…

I want to just pick fabrics out for this quilt for the next 24 hours until it’s done. I can’t, of course, but that’s what I want.

It’s going to be an amazing quilt. I’m really happy with the drawing. I just hung it up Thursday night and I’ve been walking past, in and out of the office to do stuff for school, and every time I look at it, I get excited. That’s good. That’s healthy. Fuck the rest of it.

Calli agrees…

As long as I throw the toy.

I think my other goal this week is to get enough rest…I will be going to the doctor Monday to figure out all my test results (I’m sure she loves that I read and analyze them before I come in, but I want to be able to reduce some of my meds and so I need to know what to look for, although now it looks like I will have to ADD fucking meds for the anemia…bastard body…if you’ve seen my piece Fully Medicated, you know how I feel about being on stupid meds). Maybe some of that is related to my sleeping issues.

I must have REALLY been exhausted last night, because I did mostly sleep, although it was an interesting night, apparently…this is my sleep app from last night…

I don’t usually see peaks like that. Usually it’s more like this…

from the night before. The sleep of the dead. Lack of sleep. Yes, it’s also a work night vs a non-work night, so that helps. Anyway. I’m hoping for plenty of the good sleep and less of the awake time, and longer periods of it…to hopefully recharge for the next three weeks, which are a little chaotic, as always, but complicated by the ex being gone for the holidays this year and college applications being due and balancing my needs for art and a life that isn’t sad and depressing. I had issues with that yesterday…but was too tired to even deal with them. Drawings! There are drawings crowding my brain, but a lot of them involve warrior women taking over the world and burning shit down, so that will be fun to draw. Boychild offered to get me a spear and legal advice…such a good kid.

Fabric Soothes My Soul

I don’t know where to start. I have been all over the map today. It wasn’t good. So I saved myself in the end with fabric. It’s a temporary fix, though…it only works as long as I am tracing, cutting, ironing. It stops as soon as I stop, unless I do it for hours, and then sometimes I can hold on to the feeling of almost-peace. Tonight I earned 41 minutes of almost-peace. I wish I could bank it for later.

I’m apparently anemic. Don’t know why yet. I can interpret blood tests to a certain point and then it just gets confusing…there’s too much data. I’m hoping it’s simple, a lack of iron in my diet…there certainly probably is a lack of iron in my diet. I don’t eat red meat at all any more…well, maybe once a month…and girlchild bogarted the spinach in the freezer for her back. It’s been defrosted and refrozen too many times to eat. I keep meaning to buy more, but it’s not like food is fun for me anyway. I just eat to fuel the body. I don’t eat for pleasure. I don’t know that I do anything for pleasure…hike…read…OK, and draw. Some things. Not pleasure, but peace.

Girlchild made varsity soccer. This is a good thing. Well, except for the back thing. We’ll deal with that. She’s happy. I’m happy she’s happy…it’s a big deal to her to play in her junior and senior years. I realize I have 700 soccer games on cold metal bleachers ahead of me, but I will survive (well, I will be cold…see anemia above). I don’t have a life…I have to be pleased with the lives of my children. Don’t worry…I’m not living through them. I do have a life, I guess. It’s just limited at the moment…probably more by me than by anything else. I don’t want to interact with most of the world, so I don’t. It’s a source of pain. I try to limit my pain.

There were cookie issues this week. I brought home leftovers from a school reward and boychild apparently bogarted all of them in some bizarre logical maneuver. Basically, it comes down to his being a hungry teenaged male who does not necessarily always think about other people before scarfing food. To his credit, he did give her about 13 hours of opportunity before he ate her share, but it would be nice if he would learn to ask. So when the book club was canceled last night, I stopped by the store and bought more cookies on the way home…and then this happened…

I don’t really know how the cookie divisions played out. I don’t like chocolate chip (I’m allergic), so I think she divided them in half and then subtracted the ones he ate the other day, and then I don’t know what happened. I gave up one of my sugar cookies to my ex-husband, who I believe shared it with a very happy Golden Retriever.

Here’s the boychild’s share…

Yeah. She’s a bit vindictive at times. (It says, “who cares?” about how many of what type of cookie he gets…I’m not really sure why each bag has a count on it.)

I was joking last night about the core difference between me and my brother. My mom wants to do a family portrait. I hate them, but it’s her deal…whatever. My brother and sister-in-law do them all the time and they’re nicely done…it’s just not my thing. So we all have to dress in blue jeans and white shirts (you missed my brother’s and my emails to mom about SHADES of blue and SHADES of white and should they be skinny jeans or acid-washed or what?). This means, in my house, that two of us need white shirts (me and boychild own no such thing) and one of us needs jeans (girlchild doesn’t wear jeans…mutant child…although I only got the boychild to wear jeans as of 2 years ago, so…). Girlchild is swearing that she is wearing a dress and putting a jeans skirt on underneath and then flashing the photographer, boychild is going to use spray paint to paint an anarchy sign on his shirt, and I’m thinking that mom didn’t tell me the shirt had to be PLAIN, so what obnoxious thing can I have on the front of it (Tardis? swear words?). Meanwhile, my SIL says that she will just TELL her kids what to wear and they WILL. Hmn. That is the core difference between my brother and I right there. I’m trying to figure out how to fuck with the system and he’s doing what he was asked to do. Not really…he’s a devious beast…he just flies under the radar.

Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all work out fine. I don’t know how anyone will force all of us to be smiling though, because I don’t do that any more. It’s against my religion. Not really.

Meditation tonight was difficult. I battle myself sometimes. Well, actually, I don’t. I succumb to sadness. I don’t really fight it. I watch it. I feel it. I let it wash over me. I try to figure out where it comes from, but I don’t resist it…or do I? I don’t. Yes, it’s unpleasant, but I don’t really know HOW to resist it, which is good, because resisting it is not helpful. To be at ease with my existence, I have to note it, but not run away from it. I don’t usually run away from uncomfortable things. They suck, but they don’t go away if you run. They’re still there. I live with uncomfortable things. I hold them inside me and pet them, like they are porcupines or hedgehogs…only petting in one direction or you will get stuck. And sometimes you just get stuck and you suck it up and deal with it because you don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice. I don’t understand people who run away from their own feelings. You live with one person your whole life…there is one person you have to deal with…you can’t run from that person. So be with that person. Be as strong as you can as that person. Be as honest as you can with that person.

Mr. Meditation asks what I am getting swept away by…and does that cause discomfort? Well, sadness, duh. And yes, it does. But I don’t run from that. I watch it, I let the tears roll down my cheeks, I write about it, I draw it. I don’t criticize myself (usually) for being sad. I have good reason. And even if I didn’t, it’s still my sadness and as long as I’m not purposefully wallowing in it in a stupid way, and I don’t think I am, then this is what it is. Sad. Sad is what it is. Someday hopefully that is not what it will be. Someday it will be something else and so will I. Except I think I will always carry this sadness inside me, like I do the destruction of my marriage, like other things that are such a core part of me that I will never be free of them. I live with them, I pull them into my arms and embrace them…spikes and all. What else can you do?

He says if we’re not aware, then we’re not able to do anything about how we react to situations. I think I am doing better with that, although tonight a work thing raised its ugly head. I reached out and I think it’s under control, at least temporarily. I got support. I think I am just being paranoid (although I have good reason). I think I know how to protect myself better now.

So I went to the gym and freaked out for about 2 hours (seriously…17 texts later)…and then I came home and made beer sausage mac and cheese for tomorrow night’s potluck and real live mashed potatoes for the work potluck (no, I never do those, but two friends are in charge and I want to support their endeavors to take over the shitty climate at work, so I did my deed). And I made dinner at the same time and watched that show about the people who live out in the boonies in Alaska, and thought about how I totally couldn’t do that, but some part of my brain really does just want to run away to a homestead in Alaska and get off the fucking grid, but I couldn’t eat fish or kill bears or live out there for a long time, so that’s just silly escapist crap that doesn’t get me anywhere. Wanting to escape doesn’t mean you can or you should. Wanting to leave the town where there are so many memories…that doesn’t mean you can.

And after all that work and meditation and some shitty moments of crappiness (god, people can really be shitheads, can’t they?), I decided that even though I am tired and run down and sad and depressed and really done with the world, that the only way I would get any clarity or peace tonight was if I played with fabric. I got everything cleaned up and folded and put away that was covering the ironing board and the table (sometimes I do not know where I get the emotional strength to do such crazy things at 10:30 at night), I figured out what threads I needed to buy for quilting, and I took a deep breath and started on choosing fabrics for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

(drawing hung up on the left, Wonder Under laid out on the right; yes, my office/studio is a total disaster)

I didn’t get very far…

(the first 100 pieces laid out in 10s)

Honestly, I didn’t have a whole lot of brain power left and it was fairly strained during the dirt fabric choosing.

A good mix of batik, hand-dyed, and commercial prints.

Yes, that’s all I did. Dirt. So fuck you. What did you do tonight, eh? I mean, look at that hand-dyed fabric…and rejoice in the fact that it will be fucking awesome at the bottom of this quilt.

You’ll be able to see this quilt in Houston next year, assuming my anemia is not caused by some horrible cancer that will slay me before I finish. Not a joke. I know that happens. That’s why I’m so focused on my health. That shit terrifies me. I really really wanted some of my meds to go away (one might, maybe two). I really, I guess I really did want my diabetes numbers to come down and they didn’t, proving again that it’s not weight-related.

But fuck that shit. I got started on the fabric choosing. Hopefully I can get it all done over Thanksgiving Break and move on to the next stage…and then I can make another quilt…and another…and maybe by the time I get 10 or 12 more of them done I will not be this sad crying person any more. See, that’s my discomfort. I am not comfortable being the person who cries all the time, who is always sad. I rarely cried before. This is painful…the crying itself just wears on you. But maybe this is the new me. Who knows? I don’t. I’m just keeping my eyes on the fabric…it soothes my soul.

Wait. So This Is What You Want?

My brain betrayed me this morning. I kept waking up last night…a pattern now. I look at the phone; it tells me how much time is left. Either a sigh of relief or a sigh of suffering for not enough time. There were 30 minutes left. I can sleep for 30 minutes. Apparently, I can hit dream sleep in 30 minutes when I’m really tired. I woke to the alarm in the middle of a dream, the brain betraying me with what it wanted. I wrote this post title two months ago and then couldn’t write the post. I’m still not sure what post I was going to write for that; I just knew that it hurt. Today is a hurt day. Why? Who knows. The dream was what the brain wanted, and it took me a while to wake up enough to realize what it was saying and then again to realize that it wasn’t reality any more…but that it HAD been, but it took me a while to remember that it wasn’t any more. And in that little while, the brain felt happy. Ouch. I tried talking to the brain, reasoning with it, telling it how that wasn’t going to happen any more, listing all the logical reasons for giving up on what it wanted because it wasn’t healthy, and it just turned away, gave me that sad look, then said something about hope. And I stopped. Because that kind of hope? It’s gone. It’s not something that can be achieved any more. I tried to explain that, explain why it didn’t want what it thought it wanted, that the person didn’t really exist, that it had all been a lie, and it shook its head again, sad, crying quietly, and walked out the door, shoulders all hunched up. It wants what it wants. It wants the unicorn, the Yeti, the fire-breathing dragon. It wants magic and Santa Claus and benign ghosts watching over you. It wants love and hope and people who think about someone besides themselves (ironic, working in a middle school). It wants what it can’t have. It wants it to be different. I feel so bad for it…I want to follow it out the door, run after it and explain the world, reality, to it, but I know it’s not listening. Maybe I should just give it a hug. I have two students right now who hug me every day. One boy came to me two periods after he had me, shoelaces loose and all over the place, and said, “I forgot to get my hug.” Another boy had a sign. He had misspelled “desperate” (I don’t remember the whole sign…yes, I hugged him AFTER I told him there was a spelling issue). I can’t tell you how much those hugs save my life some days. It’s sad, so sad, to know that a hug from a 12-year-old is my salvation on a day like today. Some goofy kid needs a hug and writes a sign and that’s why I get out of bed and shower and go to school. And they don’t even know what it means, how screwed up I am, how much importance I place on that simple act of kindness. They don’t even know.

So that’s the sad I woke up with this morning, and the image is still seared on my brain, the one thing it says it wants…like a little kid watching all the pre-Christmas toy commercials and picking out some piece of crap that will break two days later and needs 17 D batteries to run. As adults, we try to persuade the kids that those toys are worthless…we may even decide not to buy any of them, or we may look at a child’s wish list at Christmas, their hope to Santa for whatever goofy thing it is, and we may just fulfill that wish. I know we did with the girlchild many times, because she was always convinced that’s what she wanted, and being divorced parents, there is always a feeling of guilt that you already fucked it all up for them…and you have to make up for that. This year she wants nothing, she says. This year, I can’t even come up with anything big for her. This year, I don’t even think there will be money for a whole lot anyway. My brain is off having its own dreams and hopes and can’t focus on trying to guess the dreams and hopes of two teenagers. My money is paying for college application fees and test-reporting fees. Lots of them. Maybe they are just wishing mom were more present, less sad. I don’t know. They would never say that to me. What do I want? Me, not the brain? Because they’re separate? (betrayed) I just want to get through…through to the other side of whatever sad hell this is…through to another place. Like walking through a wormhole onto a tropical beach, drinks with umbrellas, a quiet but purposeful massage, some music, somewhere to dance and be present with some level of calm happiness. Leaving that part of the brain behind, the part that is so damaged and caught up in all this sad and grief. Just leave it.

Not to be. Must fix.

So as I keep going through this part of the meditation series, which is focused on wanting things to be different than what they are, realizing that’s what triggered this dream (I so rarely dream these days…I used to dream all the time), maybe Mr. Meditation will help me figure out how to persuade my brain to revise its wants to something that makes sense or that might actually be beneficial to both of us. I hope so, because this isn’t good for either of us. Mr. Meditation says it’s not a bad thing to want things to be different. It’s normal (holy god, I’m normal…). He wants me to pay attention to how often that happens (holy shit. Really? Not enough fingers.), so that I can eventually “develop a sense of ease with the way things are.” He’s into a sense of ease. When he puts it that way, I’m OK with it. I need that…to be at ease with my existence, because it’s too painful otherwise. At the end of each meditation, I am more calm and clear, but I am often still very very sad, despite all that. I can’t get out of it. It’s just there. Calm and clear sadness.

I was supposed to go to a new group meeting tonight, a book club. I got all the way to the place, and found out it had been canceled. If I hadn’t been rushing around, trying to get dinner made etc., I might have checked email and known before I left. As it was, I came back, bought the girlchild cookies (day 3 of tryouts, she’s made the first cut to varsity, but her back is an issue…imagine her lying on the kitchen floor crying and you’ll know why I bought her cookies), and listened to her read me Huckleberry Finn (no, I don’t know why she was reading it to me. It doesn’t matter.).

When I left, I almost turned back to get my sketchbook, but she said no, I needed to be sociable. She said I couldn’t take it. I got in the car and realized the sketchbook is my security blanket. I felt unsafe, unprotected. Drawing as protection? I often have it with me, just in case, even though I rarely pull it out…because then I have to deal with people watching me draw or asking me questions. Aargh. Just let me draw. It’s also a stress releaser…I can draw and let some of that nervousness and anxiety go…I don’t like being around new people and trying to figure out where to go and where to sit and how to act and whether I’m allowed to use swear words or not (seriously…I considered that on the hike last weekend). They’ve rescheduled…we’ll see. That week is a bit busier than this one was…actually, this one was supposed to be busy, but everything is moving around. All of a sudden there is space where there wasn’t before.

So I was going to input grades, but then I thought…why? I’m not in the mood. I cried on the way over there, I cried on the way back, my SIL was talking to me and telling me she understood about something I was trying to explain, why hanging out with a bunch of married people right now just hurts, because it’s not that I want to be married…I just don’t want to go through this whole beginning relationship, developing relationship crap again. I don’t have the mental energy. I don’t trust anyone. At all. I don’t want to be a part of that world again. I don’t feel like I will ever fit into that, that I will ever be able to be in a relationship that works.

I know that’s negative thinking. So instead of doing grades, which honestly just shoves me back deep into negative mode, I decided to finish cutting out Wonder Under for the Celebrating Silver quilt. Art dispels some of that negative shit. Do art, not grading. Fabric saves lives.

I thought I had a whole yard left, because it was folded up on itself, but it turned out I didn’t even have a half yard left…

The one on the right is all the trash and leftover pieces. I don’t throw it away until I make sure I didn’t drop some real live pieces in there (because I do). Plus I have some where the web is releasing from the paper, so I might need to redraw/recut those, so I just hold on to that box until they’re all ironed down.

I got the whole thing cut out in about 40 minutes…

totaling 7 hours and 34 minutes for the whole quilt. Not bad. So just to give you an idea, I’m 24 hours into this quilt and I haven’t even touched fabric, unless you include choosing and washing the background fabric.

It’s over 1200 pieces, but it doesn’t look like much in the box from the side.

Then I took just under an hour to sort all the pieces into boxes by hundreds…

I love my light table…it’s so much easier to do this now than it used to be, when I did it on the floor. Can you see the dog? Top left, asleep on the couch. There’s a cat twining herself around my legs in this picture too.

It’ll take me about 12-13 hours to pick fabrics. I might start tomorrow night…if I’m not too tired. Not sure how much time I’ll have over the weekend, and part of next week, I’ll be out of town, so I can’t do fabric then, but I’m hoping to have all the fabrics picked by the end of my Thanksgiving Break…plus have the other quilt done too (which means I need to go thread shopping at some point. It doesn’t sound like much time, but it’s hard to just start and work straight through for that many hours. My brain gets tired. It’s coloring and recoloring the picture in my head, trying out colors up there before pulling them in person. There will be a lot of flesh colors in this quilt…with three bodies. I’ll probably pull those fairly early on, after I do the dirt. Do I really have to go to school tomorrow? I’d rather do this. There’s something almost exciting about starting to work with the fabric…it gets to be almost real now.

I had a ton of blood drawn this morning. I’ve seen the results. Mostly good. I think it’s funny that people ask me if my diabetes will go away now that I’ve lost so much weight. I was first diagnosed about 10 months after the divorce, when I weighed the least I had in years. I was pre-diabetic at 19, so I held it off until age 35. Now I weigh less even than I did at diagnosis, and no, it’s not gone. There’s no magic there. My pancreas is not behaving. Welcome to genetics. The thyroid also tends to be weight-based, but no, it’s not behaving either (hence my consistent chill, with a down comforter on the bed since mid-September, and this is Southern California, not Minnesota). So the diabetes meds get to stay. The thyroid meds too. Bastards. Doesn’t matter what I do. The doc told me the stress of the divorce accelerated the diabetes…but I had hoped my numbers would come down, and they didn’t. Others did, but not the diabetes numbers.

It’s disappointing, but not the end of the world. I’ve spent over 11 years dealing with the diabetes, so I will just keep on…keeping on. With the meds, with my brain, with art, with my life, whatever it looks like. I will keep on trying to make a new life, trying to find something akin to peace, maybe happiness, whatever that looks like, because I don’t remember, and the brain is just damn faulty at this point. What I want? It’s not worth thinking about right now. Less sad. Fewer tears. Health. Occasional sleep. I’m not asking for much.

Brain Overflowing

Stupid fucking hormones. Watching a benign video of hot-air balloons makes me cry? How much of that is depression and how much is fluctuating hormones?

Really? That’s cry-worthy? It’s cool and all, but I don’t know any more what sets me off. I think life, living set me off.

Batik fabrics made me cry today. Different reasons. I think. I don’t know. I picked a deep dark complicated purple for the Celebrating Silver background…

Of course, it doesn’t look really complicated or dark in this photo. Dark blues, purples…they never photograph correctly. I feel like I’m in a background rut. Maybe the next quilt needs to have a red background…or yellow (yuck. I’m not a yellow fan.). I don’t like black…it’s not deep enough. I prefer dark blue, dark green, dark purple. I picked purple because it seemed more magical, mystical, and this quilt seems like that to me.

Anyway. I’m getting close to the end of the Wonder Under…

I know. It doesn’t look any different. I only have one yard left to cut out, though…I got a whole yard plus a bit done tonight, while I was sitting there, watching TV, talking to no one. Exciting life. Really. And meditation goes on about “is there anything you want to be different?” Well, fuck yeah. Except that would mean trusting people, and I can’t do that yet. Sigh. Anyway. So I’m in a space by myself with myself. Still. It was harder to be me today. Hate days like that. I know it’s all hormones and sad and grief and even tired. They conspire against me.

I also bought this purple…I considered it for the background, but it’s way too busy.

But I still liked it enough to own it. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot of shopping time. I basically walked in and got those two and left, but while I was staring at all the batiks, I got this wash of Holy Fuck Sad over me and started crying. Really? Why? I managed to stop crying in the driveway of my house. Good thing…I don’t know that boychild knows what to do with Crying Mom. Meditation was another total cry fest. Funny, ironic, yesterday I thought I was done with the Blubbering Meditation. Apparently not. I guess I will never be able to meditate with an audience…well, besides the cats…

Who ignore me unless they’re trying to sit on me.

I’ve watched the first two episodes of Almost Human…

The main detective is the actor who plays the young McCoy in the most-recent Star Trek movie. I only say that because it’s hard to watch without seeing McCoy in the acting. That said, it’s been a relatively good show…with some highly amusing moments about his testicles. I guess I’m glad I don’t have an android assisting me in any way. I have a lot of TV saved up on the Tivo. Some shows I just can’t watch any more. The people in them are too assholular. I guess I’ve experienced too much of people being shitty to each other this year to tolerate it in my entertainment. I also have a lot of new stuff, some of which I can’t decide whether it’s any good or not. I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV, so it’s hard to clear the stuff off without just doing massive deletion sessions (which I do occasionally).

Anyway. Tomorrow, I’m venturing out into the world again. We’ll see how it goes. Tomorrow is crazy busy, actually. Sigh. Too tired for all this activity. Hoping I get to sleep some next week. Ha! If my body lets me. I have 7 hours into the Wonder Under…I’m hoping to be done in one more evening of cutting, probably Thursday. Then I can sort them and start picking fabrics over the weekend, maybe. I need to get a bunch of grading done too…if I don’t finish grading the science journals in the next three days, I’ll have to deal with it over break…don’t WANT to. You can’t MAKE me (well, you can, but…).

I also want to draw…my brain is overflowing with images it wants to spill out onto paper. I should indulge it, let it get it out of its system, vomit the garbage up onto the page, make myself feel better with a pen gliding over paper.

Have I mentioned the hormones? And the exhaustion? Sleep calls. I listen.

Making a Stand…Over and Over Again

Today. I don’t know what to think of it. It started badly…I couldn’t stay sleeping…I kept flopping and moving and checking the clock and praying it would say that I had hours of sleeptime left (nope). I have two alarms that go off (yes, I’m paranoid…why do you ask?)…which was good this morning, because I didn’t even hear the first one, and it gets louder over time (I had my pillow over my head again. I should draw that. It happens often enough). I was physically exhausted, but only a little sore from the hike (good!), and mentally wasted. I got myself up and out and cleaned up and functioning, and the morning was still painful, just one of those mornings where you’d probably be OK if you had like 2 more hours of sleep, but you don’t. Have. That. I cried on the way to work. Something set me off. It’s hormones again…they seem to hate me. Want me to drain the tearducts. Make sure I have reddened eyes wherever I go.

I knew I had multiple meetings and calls to deal with today…a long day, one of negotiating with parents and students and making a stand and having to back it up with consequences. I get tired of that sometimes. Even with your own kids, there are times when you just give up on whatever you’ve decided is important and you move on. Pick a new battle. But being a teacher means you have to REALLY do it. Like BIG. This year, we’ve been tough about homework…the thing is, if you slack off on the consequences, they figure it out quickly…there’s no learning from the experience and continuing to DO your homework. They’re always looking for the loophole, the time when I’m too lazy to write down everyone’s name who blew it off. And then taking advantage of that.

So I busted them. You don’t want to know how many of them. We’ll see how that goes. Last time, they did their homework for a while without my bugging them…like maybe three weeks. Grr. So I will do it through until Winter Break, and then I will have to restart the practice after Winter Break, because (a) they will have forgotten that I mean it and (b) Break makes them lazy.

So it was a day of making a stand.

Then I had to deal with groceries (all the stuff the girlchild was too cranky to tell me about yesterday, because she was in a mood) and picking the girlchild up from tryouts and dealing with dinner…plus, because I made a stand, I then had to make sure all the homework was checked in. Yes. I made more work for myself. Or not. I would have had to grade it SOME day…just maybe not today. I really need to learn to use my teachers’ aides…the teacher next door and I now share three of them, but I always forget to use them. Tomorrow? I use their butts. OK. Their minds. And a red pen.

I exercised. I meditated. But more importantly? I sandwiched and pinbasted the damn Love quilt.

It’s not about Love. It doesn’t know what it’s about. Yes it does. It’s about what love might be or might not be and whether certain behaviors show love or just feel like a weight on your shoulders. Sigh. This will be a fun statement to write…knowing that I drew it before all the shit hit the fan, but it’s remarkably psychic.

It’s not a huge quilt. It pinned quickly and easily. My plan is to quilt it during the time we spend at Lake Arrowhead for Thanksgiving. Girlchild cooks, boychild and grandpa read, grandma? Well. We’ll see. I quilt. And read. And hopefully cut out fabric stuff.

Of course, that means I have to finish cutting out all the Wonder Under soon on the Celebrating Silver quilt, and I’m guessing I have another 4 hours, and my Wednesday and Friday nights are already booked, so I don’t know how realistic I’m being. I want to be ironing the pieces down to fabric before we go, so I can take a bunch of that with me. One thing I do know is that if I don’t set goals for myself, I won’t get anything done. I write this blog because it keeps me focused on my goals…my art goals and my personal goals. I try to keep everything progressing…if I spend an hour a school night working on art and then some additional hours during the weekend and a shitload of hours during vacations, I get it done. I’m rocking the art this year…getting lots of it done. YES. It’s filler for a shitty-feeling, often empty-feeling life, but it’s still art and it’s good and it will save my world, even if it doesn’t save anyone else’s. That’s all I can hope for…my own salvation…from myself, honestly.

My meditation has changed its focus slightly, talking about an underlying desire to want things to be different than the way they are. Wow. Read my mind much? It talks about achieving a natural state of ease with the brain instead of always fighting it, of mastery of the brain.Yes. That. Please help. I want that. I’m already so much better with my job, with my brain at work, even though I am constantly fighting depression there, grief, waves of sadness. Frustration, yes, but I don’t carry it home any more.

By the end of the day, I had given myself time to process and create and achieve and meditate and exercise and even read for pleasure, and my brain was thankful. Still a bastard on occasion, certainly not behaving for large swathes of time tonight, having random-ass conversations with itself that do nothing but hurt. But I could look at that quilt pinned together and think…”Yes. That. That will save Kathy’s world. That is the reason. Right there.” And hopefully that will help me sleep better tonight. If not, at least I have one more instance of my ability to get out of bed in the morning and face all the stupid shit without climbing back under the covers or pitching a fit in a Starbucks or losing it in my classroom. And not just getting up, but getting up and making stuff that IS me, SHOWS me, REFLECTS me…which is a lot more than many people can do. (see, I said I was thankful without using that word.) It’s another way of making a stand. Yes, life can fuck me over, people can try to screw me up (or do it without trying, more likely), but I can make a stand and not let their shit throw me completely down…and even if it does, and it feels like it does over and over again, then I just keep getting up, planting my feet, putting my hands on my hips, and making that face, that stubborn face. This is my work. This is who I am. I will keep making art no matter what. It IS me. It SHOWS me. It REFLECTS me. Over and over again.

Hiking and the Brain

I went to sleep early last night because I knew I was going on a hike today. I shouldn’t have wasted my energy. My overactive depressoid brain woke me up two hours early and then fussed over stupid shit and wouldn’t allow me to go back to sleep. And just so you know, putting your pillow over your head works for blocking light and the noise of cats licking their nether regions, but it doesn’t do shit for shutting up an overly active brain. It’s like having a 2-year-old in the house. They don’t know it’s the one morning in the week when you can sleep in. They just know it’s morning and they’re bored.

Stupid brain. Maybe I should just take sleep off my wish list. I hope for 6+ hours a night. I rarely get it. Not by choice.

Anyway, I got all my hiking stuff ready and headed out for the meeting spot…we drove out to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to climb Stonewall Peak…

I’ve climbed this one before, at least once, maybe twice…right after the divorce, I hiked a lot with the Sierra Club local singles group. I was young then…no really, I was. This hike today was with a local women’s hiking group.

The weather was cool, but not freezing, and the day was beautiful, blue skies and bright autumnal weather.

Great views…sometimes the weather conspires against, especially this time of year, but today was perfect.

There is an 850-foot elevation gain from the parking lot to the top…

It took us an hour to do the first 2 miles…we weren’t walking super fast, but not slow either…

We weren’t even halfway through the hike at this point, but we stopped and ate, and then headed down for the back half of the trail…

Instead of going back the way we came, we went down the northern end of the peak…

Which was gorgeous, despite being full of trees that had burned in the Cedar Fire of 2003, which raged through this area…in fact, I hiked another peak in this area the week before, and then three weeks after, went through (illegally…because fires were still burning inside the trunks of some of the oak trees) and was devastated by the loss of the big oaks. I have pictures somewhere of before and after. So walking through a valley like this is a little like walking through a graveyard…

A beautiful graveyard…and then you notice these little guys…

Tiny little trees shaded and protected, growing…and you see some that were burned halfway up the trunk, but survived and seem to be thriving.

And at some point, the brain stops remembering all the stupid shit that woke you up before 6 AM and it’s just staring at the trees and the path and the oak leaves that had fallen on the ground and the patterns in the rings of the trees that had been cut to clear the trail post-fire. And the clouds in the sky and the smell of the skunkweed and the burnt log that looked like a bear and the taste of the sandwich and the sight of an expansive view. And the brain stops being such a fucking 2-year-old and starts to resemble Kathy again.

Some of the trees look dead but have new branches coming up from the trunks, surrounding the old, dead wood.

And some parts just seem completely untouched by disaster.

It’s a beautiful area, no matter what. Charcoal and all. Five miles, a little less than three hours. My brain left all the stupid behind and I communed with nature and a few humans. If I could do that and draw every day, I’d probably be almost human pretty damn quickly.

Not really a plan I can stick to at the moment…but I can certainly try to add a few hikes a month to my therapeutic plan.

I came home and rushed through school stuff and grocery shopping and we went out to dinner with mom, because dad was still in an airport in Texas…managed meditation and cutting out of Wonder Under. Midnight approves of the newly cleaned-off table (OK, I did not get everything cleared off, but quite a bit of it, plus I washed the table runner that she loves to deposit her hair on, so that’s a plus).

Meditation talked about communing with our own minds as being helpful with knowing what’s in the minds of others. I’m usually pretty good at that, although the few times I’ve been slammed by NOT knowing were particularly devastating. Mr. Meditation talked about Being There for the experience…I did that successfully this weekend, I think…mostly. I just need to translate it into my whole life, and maybe kick my brain back into a mode where sadness doesn’t overwhelm me. I had my moments today, trust me. I felt it in the post-hike exhaustion in the car…my brain crept back in and was trying to drag me down. In the grocery store. On the phone with a friend. It’s a relentless beast. But he says that I can better understand where people are coming from, empathize with them…he talked about most people conceptualizing, thinking about how they THOUGHT someone would feel, instead of KNOWING how they feel, and how this practice helps with that. I got caught in that this year…someone assuming they knew what I was thinking and feeling, and actually ignoring what I was saying and all the evidence that was there to make assumptions about what I thought and what I would do. I hate that. I do have a pretty good sense of what I think and feel, and I’m pretty good at saying it. I appreciate those who respect me enough to actually have the conversation with me before assuming they know what I would do. I had a couple really respectful, human, responsible, and mature conversations today…and it reminded me that is how they should all go…not behind my back, talking to other people, guessing at what I think. Fucking ask me, man. I’ll tell you. And you don’t have to agree with me, but if we’re talking about MY mind and how it works, I hate to tell you, I know better than any other person on the planet.

I did an hour of cutting…

Look any different? Fuck no. It will. Maybe.

I’m exhausted…physically, emotionally, whatever. I’m going to bed early again. If my brain really loves me, it will let me sleep.

Running Roughshod over Me

If Friday’s a moody bitch, Saturday’s an amusement park ride…not a carousel or an easy roller coaster…the kind that throws you up and down, and you’re never really sure whether you’re having fun or about to die. It’s never mellow and calm…and the bad is really bad, like Stephen King started to write your story. It never really gets fun…you’re either sick to your stomach or screaming with terror. You can’t possibly stop and go somewhere nice…somewhere pretty and calm. Saturday’s hijacked your life and is kicking the shit out of you, and she’s not ready to stop, even when you try to force her hand.

One of the grief books I read talks about the times when you feel the worst, the most alone, that you should try to schedule that time…by the hour, even 10- or 15-minute swathes of time. Know what you’re doing before the bad time even starts, and hopefully you’ll be able to just plod along through it and not fall into the vats of acid on either side of that path.

Sigh. Yeah right. I made multiple plans for the weekend. Because my toenail finally fell off, I figured I could handle closed-toe shoes and a hike (finally). That’s tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that goes. I actually know the woman in charge of the hike, so that helps. I also signed up for a book club thing (sigh…I am somewhat troubled by this, but I love to read and…I don’t know what and…) that’s next week. In the last two or so years of my marriage, I started doing life drawing one Saturday a month…I went to a studio space downtown and this artist I knew would hire models and we’d pay $5 to show up and draw or paint. It was great. I knew half the people there, I was semi-social, and I messed around with a variety of materials and styles, even drawing on fabric a few times (none of which have ever been finished, for a variety of reasons). I eventually stopped because Saturday mornings got filled with soccer and other stuff, and the chick in charge moved to Arizona, and I never found a replacement. Then I read about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School online somewhere and found a local…um…chapter? I don’t know what to call it. I put it on my calendar probably 5 years ago and promptly never went. It was never convenient. There were always better things to do, people I wanted to hang out with. It’s not like I wasn’t drawing on my own, and this was touted as FUN! And I’m suspicious of fun. Really. I am. Well, I’m suspicious when other people are labeling it as fun.

So even now, with Saturdays being a vast expanse of shit and hell, I couldn’t go the last two months, and even today, I had talked myself out of it. I had this to do, that to do, there simply wasn’t time.

And then there was. I was actually late, about 15 minutes, but I went. I drove to a bar in Hillcrest and I paid my money and I sat and tried to remember how to loosen up enough to do those 1-minute, 2-minute, 5-minute drawings. Even the 10-minute ones seem too short…I’m used to my big drawings taking a couple of hours (actually, the drawing for Earth Stories took me over 20 hours to complete), and even the small ones I used to do in restaurants are at least 15 minutes usually, unless they’re really simple. So it was hard.

(the model was Zoe Tantrum…no, that’s not her real name…but she was also an amazing singer, sort of conceptual opera)

But I eventually got it. It helped that it was in a bar and I could order alcohol. Actually, I can’t drink most hard alcohol…makes my heart race…but they had cherry cider…and it was good. And it helped me relax a little. And I realized…

(no, she’s not holding shoes, and she’s wearing a shitload of tulle, which is remarkably difficult to draw)

Because of meditation…because it makes me aware of how I’m feeling when my brain is semi-quiet, it lets me hear myself feel…

I realized I had relaxed. That I was sitting in that bar with about 25 total strangers while this woman held wacky poses and I was relaxed. Until I thought about it, of course, and then I tensed up again. Sigh.

So, just so you know, there’s a theme every month and the model dresses to the theme…this month was Fae, hence the pointy ears. Strangely, the book I read for book club is ALSO about the fae. I’m feeling weird about all that. The drawing above was a contest, a 50/50 contest, where I drew for the first 5 minutes and then the Brit next to me took my drawing and I took his, and we drew all over each other for the next 5 minutes. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to START drawing all over someone else’s work, but if you stop thinking of each drawing as a precious commodity, which in this situation, it definitely is not, then it’s much easier…not a single one of the pieces I did today will be used for anything…they are just good for the hand and the eye and seeing the body better after 10 years of not drawing from life. This will be my 4th (?) time going back to life drawing.

Anyway. We didn’t win the prize. I’m OK with that. On the last one, I tried to meld sketching with my personal drawing style.

The costuming made it difficult. But I still think it was a good thing, because there was one pose I just couldn’t get right, so I gave up and started Kathy drawing…

There we are. There’s the weird. She was wearing some metal hoop structure to wrap the tulle around. Yes, it really did have chains. I haven’t finished this one.

So it was a good experience. I had fun sitting there and drawing. I was relaxed. I will do it again. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not having spent the last 5 years making time for this at least once in a while. I made that mistake…but I’m having a hard time working out what would have been the solution. On the one hand, I was trying to balance a personal life, being a mom, and having a very demanding job, as well as art and going to the gym. Very difficult. And in the end, making time for the personal life was not successful…so in the future, as I try to balance the things that feel good and bad and have-to’s and want’s and should’s and all this crap…I still don’t think I have the right answer for that. I don’t think it would have helped anything for me to have been going to this for the last 5 years…but what do I know? I know nothing.

I was up very early this morning for girlchild’s last official game of the season. If they won, they would have been in 1st place.

My camera battery died before the girlchild made her team’s only goal (seriously? I suck.), but they lost anyway. It’s OK…they played really well…it was a really good game. PLUS, I got a ton of grading done. So I felt like I could do other stuff the rest of the day. Grading looms over me and makes me feel bad. I hate that.

This woman was recording her son’s game with the iPad…but what was funny is that she wasn’t watching the actual game…just the screen. Her arms must be really strong…I couldn’t do it.

Don’t think we’re done with soccer. High-school tryouts are all next week. Sigh. Of course, girlchild’s back was PERFECT today. Whatever.

I also made it to the gym today, finished a really irritating book, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner…

I kept a ton of quotes from this book, and it started really strong and I was excited to read it, but then it wandered off into history and politics and artspeak and annoying language and behavior, and I just lost it.

Here’s one of the quotes that drew me in: “I feel changed. Like, say my mind is a sweater. And a loose thread gets tugged at, pulled and pulled until the sweater unravels and there’s only a big fluffy pile of yarn. You can make something out of it, that pile of yarn, but it will never be a sweater again.” You could knit another sweater, though. Anyway. I read it because someone ELSE recommended it, but I don’t remember who…and I’m not recommending it. Well, I shouldn’t say that, because I have very particular likes in fiction, and you perhaps have different likes. So try it, and we can commiserate if you decide you don’t like it.

I also meditated. I bet Mr. Meditation didn’t have a cat trying to climb on his lap while he meditated. I had a hard time with meditation tonight. I was crying before I even started. Something about being home alone on a Saturday night, but I had spent my entertainment money for the week at the art thing and I had stuff I needed to get done and I needed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, so this was what Saturday night looked like…

And it wasn’t until I stupidly looked on the internet and realized that my life had been hijacked and put out to pasture or something (I always mix metaphors) and that the things I used to be able to do and want to do were either off the table, but just for me, or I couldn’t go because…well, because I’d have to be way more brave than I am right now, and right now, I am a scared little monkey half the time…so I cried. A lot. And when he said that I had to be willing to “sit with the mind, no matter how it is,” I lost it. I tear up even now, reading that. Silly. Sigh. It’s MY mind. Dammit. “Meditation is a skill that needs practicing.” OK. I’ve done 74 sessions. I’m better. I was aware of my feelings at the sketching place. I am usually aware of them. They are just often so overwhelming.

I even made a fire (I’ve been freezing all day).

And I tried to take care of ME. Because she’s not a bad person and even when Saturday tries to push her down, she tells her to fuck off and find another victim. I worry sometimes that I am repeating the activities from post-divorce, but then I think, well duh. Those are the things that make you happy: movies, drawing, hiking. I have to be really careful with money, so that’s an issue, but that’s why I plan.

I cut out more Wonder Under tonight. I’m making sure to take a new picture of what looks like the same thing every night I cut stuff out, so you can see my progress.

Or because I am slightly insane. You pick. (It’s NOT the same. It’s NOT. It’s NOT.) I’m about 4 1/2 hours into the cutting. I have about 2 3/4 yards of Wonder Under to go. Sigh.

As life and love run roughshod over me…I draw. And now I (hopefully) sleep.

Friday Wants a Sparkly Tree

Moody bitch, Friday. She wakes up with a hangover, even though she didn’t drink the night before. Her headache takes 5 Motrin and 2 hours to wander off. She cries on the way to work. She’s still crying in the parking lot, and she doesn’t even know why. Sometimes she just needs to cry. I manage to kick her butt eventually, dealing with job stuff, kids. Learning. You know. What teachers are supposed to encourage (we almost got there today…really). She wants a fucking donut and I say no. She doesn’t need the sugar; she’ll get a rush and they’re empty calories. It doesn’t matter how moody she is. She’ll get over it. She gets worse during lunch and one period almost takes her down, but I pull her through…by her hair…because she’s still being a bitch. Friday used to be kinda nice, a relief, because I knew the weekend would be relaxing and maybe even fun. Now it’s mostly work and sad…and Friday doesn’t care how bad she makes me feel…she knows Saturday and Sunday will be worse, so she can be as bad as she likes.

Today she is right there when the girlchild is yelling at me in the parking lot (it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that hormones and teenagedness is part of the problem, I can’t handle being screamed at by the end of the day). Friday watches me cry in the car. She watches the girlchild wander off in Target and she lets me walk to the Christmas section. Why? I have always liked the decorating part of Christmas. I like the tree, the smell, the ornaments. I love the lights. I must have had good times as a kid during Christmas. I like just sitting in the living room with all the lights off except the tree lights. There’s always one that flashes…and no one knows why.

Friday lets me stand and stare at shiny sparkly balls and garlands and cute little fuzzy things. Then she wants to buy a sparkly fake tree (really?) and bitches me out when I say no. It’s fucking pink. Not happening. There’s no money. It’s stupid. I don’t want more stuff. Luckily, there aren’t many people in the Christmas section tonight, so I can cry and no one but Friday will know. Maybe she’ll be nicer to me if she sees me cry. Isn’t that how it works?

Sigh. The Target trip just made me remember all the other errands I’ve been putting off…I made a list on my phone while I was waiting…trying to find the girlchild, who stomped off into the store without her phone. She’s not a bad kid. Really. I do love her. She’s having a rough week.

Windshield wipers. A new casserole dish with a lid. I keep breaking things (by accident). Gym clothes that fit. Fabric for the background of the next quilt. Dog food and cat food. The essentials.

The weekend…I’m trying to be brave about some stuff. We’ll see how that turns out. Julie always tells me to Be Brave. I always listen to Julie. She’s wise…and kind…and a little wacky.

I managed more cutting of the Wonder Under tonight…

Notice how it still looks the same. It’s looked the same every damn night. Seriously. This is the torturous part of Kathy quiltmaking. Why not torture myself? It keeps my brain occupied. Progress is going to look like this for a while. Lots of white stuff with pencil lines on it. Woo hoo. Yippee. My lord. When will I be done?

I’m trying to persuade my brain it’s sleepy. It’s not. It’s in overdrive. It’s drawing things. I don’t have time right now to draw things. I guess I will have to make time. I do actually have a drawing thing I could do tomorrow, like an event, but I’m not sure I want to. We’ll see. I’m trying. I really am. I can’t just be the mope on the couch. Well, I can, but that’s stupid. I’m not stupid.

Babygirl is still here. I don’t know if she’s ever leaving. We seem to have some sort of truce going on most days…

Although boychild is still her favorite (she looks bitchy in this photo…that’s because she IS). She’s kind of a goofball. I think we stretch her sense of herself. She’s a really selfish beast, but we don’t let her get away with it. Boychild’s hair is so long and nice-looking in this photo…especially with the claws embedded in it.

While I was meditating, this was the view (before I closed my eyes)…

What a freakin’ mess. Need to clean. Need kids to help. That means I need to yell and put my foot down. That’s why nothing’s getting clean, because I’m NOT doing that. I don’t have it in me.

At the far end of that view? Midnight…

in the laundry basket where laundry goes to die. Seriously, I don’t think anyone has put laundry away since summer. It just piles up in baskets until I get frustrated and dump it on someone’s bed or the couch. Babygirl is about two feet to my left at this time. Sometimes Midnight is right behind me, on the back of the couch. They growl at each other. While I’m meditating. Like I said, I don’t think Mr. Meditation deals with my shit. He seems like a nice guy. He probably thinks it should be relatively quiet and growl-free during meditation.

Friday has gone to bed. Or maybe she went out dancing. Hard to say. I’ll know tomorrow morning…at some ungodly hour, when I have to get up to deal with soccer. That’s why I really need to get tired and go to sleep.

I’m trying to have a life. I’m trying to ignore that Friday bitch. She’s been around way too many weeks. She needs a Xanax…or a martini. I don’t care which, as long as she stops messing with me. Maybe Fridays are always going to be art days from here on out. I used to grade on Friday nights. I don’t think it’s a good idea at the moment. Remaking all the schedules I used to have. The routines. In counseling, we talked about the things I wanted that I haven’t had for years. We talked about why I didn’t have those things. Apparently it’s not unrealistic for me to want those things. I can actually keep that list in my head now and know that those things are important, and because my kids are getting old enough that I don’t have to worry as much about how it might affect them…they will be leaving soon…I can make those things BE important. I don’t have to referee any more, negotiate between people who can’t figure out how to behave in a mature fashion. No one wants to be in the middle of those kinds of negotiations, between their own children and adults who should know better but don’t.

Anyway. Bad television tonight. Really bad. But it didn’t really matter. I was dealing with Wonder Under anyway. Sleep. Elusive. It will hurt tomorrow.