Hello Monday…

Hello Monday. I was not ready for you. I finished a bunch of stuff this weekend, but not enough (it’s never enough…isn’t that a song? Of course it’s a song.). I don’t feel prepared to face what you will be throwing at me today. For one thing, my voice and throat are significantly challenged (not a good thing for a teacher on the first day of five days…it only gets worse as the week goes on). I think I am officially sick, but with some really low-level viral beast that won’t just come out and make me actually ill. It’s content to lurk in the shadows and make things feel slightly off. I have a formal teacher observation today, though, so I’m thinking through how to teach this lesson without speaking…can I do the whole thing with hand motions? I think I can. At some point, when you’ve been teaching long enough, you can do just about anything.

I worked on the male figure in the quilt last night…I wanted to get it done.

Looks a lot like the female side, eh? Thought I could do it all in one evening, because it was less complicated than the female…plus I started earlier. Here’s all the 600s laid out.

I finished the 500s and 600s and did a few of the 700s. OK. Well, I got a significant amount of him done. I balked at the hands (hands are hard. I was tired. Tired and hard do not go together.). I got his sixpack done.

So tonight I can do the hands and the briefcase and the head maybe. It’s good progress. I’m getting there. It’s moving along.

At that point, I should have been smart and gone to bed. It wasn’t super late though, and I wasn’t tired. At all. Even though it was almost midnight. So I decided to watch the rest of the episode of Star Trek that I had been ironing to, and to work on some hand embroidery until the episode was done, and then maybe I’d be tired…

Yeah. Right. Made it through a whole ‘nother episode after that before tired hit. Something to do with the cat on the back of my neck? By the way, Data appreciates the embroidery.

It still wasn’t super late, but it wasn’t early. I seem incapable of going to sleep, or even to bed, at a reasonable hour. Seriously, that damn cat is on the back of my chair right now. Gives me a crick in my neck.

We did have soccer yesterday morning too…not super early, but early enough to set an alarm.

Everybody loses to this team. They’re good, sure, but they’re also pushy…and not in a constructive way. In a hand-on-the-back kinda way.

Our girls held their own, though…still lost, but only 3-1, and as you can see above, when their girls threw themselves into ours, most of the time, ours did not fall down. I think girlchild dropped about 4 of their girls just by continuing to stand upright.

It’s amazing to me to watch 17-year-olds who are about to go to college and play soccer with big scholarships (because one of their worst offenders will probably do just that) and they’re winning by being bad sports. Play the damn game, little girl. When you get beat, you don’t run into someone because you’re pissed.

Of course, that’s not true. That is what lots of people do…and not just in soccer. You get pissed? You get hurt? You try to take the other person down.

Soccer as a metaphor for life. Damn that pink vibrates…will be glad when we get back to our normal uniform colors. And one of their parents actually had the balls to come over and tell our girls to calm down? The ref was a good guy, though, and did a good job of calling the dumbass maneuvers.

So a successful game, even if they lost. You gotta lose sometime, right? Not the green team, apparently. They tried to justify their girls’ behavior, saying “well, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Um. So when you break someone’s leg? Will it be a problem then?

So. Yeah. I’ve been sitting with Monday for a while now, and it’s still a petulant whiny beast. I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of the day with it. It’s like an immature 7th-grade boy. Ugh. I got no choice. I gotta deal.

Art Weekend

I wish it were MORE of an art weekend, like a retreat somewhere with a hot tub and a great natural outlook and lovely meals cooked by someone else and lots of creative time away from my house, which cries out to be cleaned. Because I know those exist. I also know I can’t afford them. So I take what I can get: SAQA opening Friday night. A friend’s husband said my piece at the SAQA show was the tamest thing he’d ever seen out of me. His wife said someone was looking at my quilt and mentioning mental illness, which is amusing, because HER quilt in the show IS about mental illness (it was juried into the show I created called I’m Not Crazy), and Eyeball Tree is about harvesting organs…yeah, it’s weird, but there’s no nudity and them’s the rules. And it’s NOT about mental illness.

Last night was the opening for Quilt Visions (whatever the name of the new version is), and I’ll write about that later…I’m a gonna REVIEW that sucker. Because I’m not in it. And there’s a good reason why. And then it was the second opening (my SIL says I’m not allowed to call it a Soft Opening, because that’s gross) for the Fence/Barda show with a slide show from one of the Mexican artists. So it was a busy night. Weekend. I talked to lots of people about art. Generally that’s a good thing, but my head does it’s weird-ass thing and turns it into sad. I did my best to ignore it. Came home, persuaded myself to start ironing, despite exhaustion. Seriously, I think I’m fighting off a virus. Been exhausted all week, sinuses are clogged up but not like a cold really…maybe it’s just allergies, except I don’t have those! Yeah right. It’s something. I slept a lot Friday night and then woke up and went to the gym, came home, ate and showered, and fell asleep again. That’s telling. Of course, I didn’t sleep WELL Friday night. Or last night. Can’t tell if that’s hormones or stress (can you really separate those two?). Either way, same effect. Napping…when you have time? Might as well nap. I didn’t really have time. I never do. I’m buried in papers that need grading, so I made a concerted effort yesterday and will again today. I need to get caught up before Houston, because the week after I come back, grades are due again. FUCK! And I have another unit finishing up with a test and a journal unit to be graded, which is not a small number of hours. Sigh. What life?

So it makes sense that I just scheduled a hike for next weekend. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve hiked. I’m getting the nonhiking jitters. I need to get out in my boots and pee behind a bush in the middle of nowhere (OK, you’re right…I could do that in my backyard, but it’s not the same). So this balance of sanity and crazy workaholic, school crap and art crap…it’s feeling like a rush, not a good rush, the rush of someone chasing you into a dark alley. I need it to stop. To slow down. I need some relaxation time. I need to learn to do that on my own and not depend on someone else to be the calming influence. To be the relaxation for me. Because I don’t have that and I don’t see having it in the near future…so it has to be me. I have to be able to walk into the house with all my crap and sit down and relax all on my own.

I probably didn’t fall asleep well on my own when I was a kid either (I didn’t. I actually remember that. Hours of tossing and turning and reading books under the blankets.).

So. It would help if I wasn’t chastising myself for not ironing Thursday and Friday nights. I did finally iron last night, because that voice was in my head screaming at me about blowing stuff off (see, I do it to myself…on the other hand, I get stuff DONE.). So I ironed for a couple of hours…

Still on the female figure. I’m going to do more tonight. I swear. Despite all the work crap hanging over me. Despite a really messy house. I asked the girlchild for 30 minutes of cleaning help today, and I swear she spent 30 minutes telling me why she couldn’t give me 30 minutes. Next time I should just hand her the vacuum and set a timer. No words. Let her scream at me. Maybe she’ll move the vacuum around while she’s screaming. I could push it into her hands, plug it in, and turn it on, and then run away. If I were fast enough and planned my path well enough, I could get her to vacuum the living room.

It would probably be easier to go out on the street and wave a $20 around to get someone to help. And I don’t have it this month…after I pay the Visa bill from hell, we will not be able to buy groceries for the rest of the month. Fun stuff!

I did finish the female figure last night…

Well, except for the fingers of the left hand, but that’s because they wrap around the hand of the male, and I need to iron him together before I can do that. So he’s next on the list…I’ve been ironing for a little over 7 hours and I’m around piece 570, so about halfway on pieces and halfway on my predicted time. The male will be easier. Female holding baby? That’s a lot of overlapping pieces. The male body is less complicated.

So I’m sticking to my Friday night goal of having it all ironed down. I picked Friday, because I figured I could get it sandwiched and pinbasted over the weekend, but I just realized that I have to stitch it all down first, and I don’t think I figured that into the calculations. Fuck! Seriously running out of time. Maybe if I get it all stitched down by Friday the 24th and sandwiched and pinbasted over that weekend. Then starting to quilt the week I go to Houston. Might work. Tight, though.

One of the annoying things last night is that I kept losing pieces. So I’d cut another one out, because I couldn’t find it (I think exhaustion was part of this), and then I’d find the damn piece in the wrong pile. Gaarg…

So annoying when I do that. Yes, I get annoyed by wasting that tiny piece of fabric and the tiny amount of time it took me to retrace, recut, reiron, retrim. They add up, though. It’s time I don’t have to waste.

Anyway. So I’m still trying to figure out how to pull off a REAL art weekend…not any time soon, for sure. Too many other things impinging on my time. At least there’s some progress…

Recovery

I apparently needed some recovery the last two nights. I got home from the drawing thing relatively early (well, for normal people, it would have been bedtime), and I couldn’t focus on ironing or grading (the two things that currently rule my world), so I made a cup of tea and took it to bed with a book. That is one of those things I love to do, by the way, and I rarely do it: read in bed with a cup of tea. I try to fit it in to my weekends, at least once on the two days, but honestly, sometimes it’s just not possible (like this weekend, for example). I’m feeling incredibly overwhelmed with work and life and even art, working my butt off in every realm, so it made sense to just take a break from all of it and read about somebody else’s world.

I was hoping I would be less useless last night, but ha! Oh yeah. So I went to an opening after school and counseling, not a short drive, blood sugar not great (I did not plan well…I plan better for hikes than I do for social events). The SAQA regional exhibit Shades of Passion opened officially last night at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts. It runs through October 29 and is open Tuesday through Friday from 9-5 and Saturdays from 11-3, although I suspect most people see the work when they are there for a performance or event. I think my piece might confuse a few people…

Eyeball Tree has no nudity, so it was really my only option for entry. There’s a size and content restriction, so I often struggle with finding work in my collection for this show. I do try to have a few smaller, nude-free pieces around for stuff like this. There’s another one I know is coming up next summer for Ventura’s public buildings, so I will need to think about making a few more next year (after I finish the crazy that I’m working on now). That is probably the closest I get to changing my work for upcoming shows…I go through my drawings and find the ones with no nudity and make one or two of those if I like them. Or I don’t. It’s interesting, though, that the two pieces that did get into Visions and Quilt National were both minus nudity.

It was early when I got to the opening, so there weren’t a lot of people…mostly women, some wandering around and asking if this art quilt thang was a new thang. Um. No. But thanks for coming. My pictures are crap and I didn’t even try to write artists’ names down (I blame exhaustion)…

But there is some very nice work in the show…

As always, I’m never really sure how the theme pertains to what’s hung.

But it probably doesn’t matter to those observing.

I didn’t even get pictures of all the quilts…too many people in the way.

But it gives you an idea of what’s there, in case you want to stop in and take much better photos than I did.

I have two more openings tonight, one the second soft opening of the FIG show at Art Produce and one is QuiltVisions, which I’m looking forward to, mostly to see what got in, but maybe to see people as well. Depends on how social I’m feeling. Hopefully more social than last night, after more than 8 hours of sleep.

Because what I did when I got home? I waffled. I sat down on the couch and arranged the stuff to be graded. I ARRANGED it. I did not start grading. I made a cup of tea because I was tired. Then I started reading my book. And I kept meaning to stop reading and do some grading or ironing, and then I got distracted by weird bills from Cornell that said the boychild had gone to the doctor, when he says he didn’t. Money’s tight. I’m not paying for someone else’s STD testing. (that’s not really what it was, but you can mess with the boychild pretty easily if you want about that stuff) And then the girlchild came home from Homecoming (came home from…that’s funny) and we finally got the lizard off the ceiling after three days (it’s a really high ceiling…it took a box, a bench, a stepladder, and a duster). And then I was going to try (after second cup of tea) to iron. And then I was just too damn tired. So I went to bed. And about 14 things woke me up in the night, so I am still tired now, but I obviously needed all that sleep.

I will iron today. I will grade today. I will get caught up on something. My goal of being ironed down to the background fabric by next Friday? Um. I don’t know. I’m hoping I can pull it off, but it honestly means I will probably have to get at least 4 hours done this weekend, which I can probably do, unless my brain wanders off and reads a whole book in one evening like it did last night. Stupid brain.

And all the rejection stuff in my head, because rejection is not just living in my art at the moment, I’m just pushing it off into the corner and working. Because if I get enough work done, whether it’s grading papers or ironing tiny pieces of fabric together, I think the rest of it will matter less.

A Rejected Quilt

First of all, I get rejections all the time, and not just in the art world. I’m actually pretty inured to them and take them mostly in stride, and I did this one as well. I didn’t expect to get in. The odds are against it. That said, it’s been I think 8 rejections in a row, with one acceptance that was kind of a given. The piece I’m working on now is an invitational and I was invited almost a year ago, and yes, I’ve been in shows…hell, I’ve got a piece opening in Houston in 2 1/2 weeks. But almost everything I’ve entered since January this year has been rejected.

So you do start to question what you’re doing. No, I’m not going to change and make pretty landscapes or abstract depictions of my feelings towards nature (psychedelic, man), but it’s impossible to be human and NOT say Fuck You a lot and growl a bit and complain about the universe being out to get you, even though you know that’s not really the case. And to wonder if you’re doing it right or whether you’re just wasting everyone’s time, including your own. I mean, maybe the world would be a better place if I spent all that artmaking time cleaning house instead. Or curing cancer.

And when you’re done grousing, you keep working on the fucking masterpiece that is on the ironing board right now, because it DOES have a home, an exhibit (Thank you, Sheila, for believing in me and my work. It’s much appreciated).

Meanwhile, here’s one of the quilts that Quilt National’s jurors rejected…the one I spent all summer on. The one that tears me up just to look at it.

It started out with the nickname of Menopause, because it started out being about THAT. I was having major symptoms of perimenopause, with irregular periods and hormones that were fucking with my blood sugar and my mood (I’m not sure why I’m saying WAS instead of STILL IS), and I was dealing with a severe case of depression brought on by some shitty stuff that happened that was completely unexpected and devastating and basically destroyed some part of my self in my brain, or drove it so deep that I couldn’t access it. Whatever. I’m not sure she’s all there even now, but…anyway. I started drawing in December…and continued in January…and it became this thing. This banner for who I was at the time…for who I didn’t want to be in some ways, but in others? Dammit, she’s standing strong. Leaning a bit. Not happy about it. But she’s upright.

And now, from the other side of the abyss, this quilt…it really holds so much of what I was feeling and experiencing…

That it might be a good thing it didn’t get into Quilt National, because then I would have had to try to explain it in person, on video, and I would not have been able to stand up and do that.

There’s so much sadness in this piece…

And anger. And honestly? So many pieces…

And it’s made and now I don’t know where it will ever be seen, because it’s kinda big…

And more than a little scary…

And just a bit in your face.

This is You Make Me Wanna Die…

It’s 40.5″ wide and 80″ high. And it came out of my head. And it got rejected. And it’s OK. I know it’s a fucking awesome piece. And I hope sometime in the next two or three years (before it ages out of the entry pool) that someone else figures that out.

Prioritize the Many…

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

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

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

Last night, I started sorting fabrics out…

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

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

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

Holds the Earth…arm 2 holds the heart…

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

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

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

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

Must Draw.

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

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

So I did. For like 2 hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crazy It Is…

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

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

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

A Bit Lost and a Lot Damaged…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation Required

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not going to be done by tomorrow.

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

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

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

Maintain, Dammit. Maintain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I finished the God-Damned Fucking Ironing.

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