I Must Proceed…

A day. A bruise on my hand. Realizing at the gym that all the raucous music and distracting literature in the world can’t keep me from thinking. Dammit. Boychild leaves for college in 30 hours. School starts in 8 1/2 (yes, I should be asleep…I may finish this in the morning). I left school at about 1 PM today. I was done. I had stuff in my head that was unsettling me, throwing me off, and honestly, there wasn’t anything left to do. I came home and finished up what I could. I did physical therapy and the gym and meditation.

I did all the things.

And then I started in on the birds…this is number 13, Diving Bird 2.

It’s the same fabrics, but I flipped it by accident…

traced it upside down onto the Wonder Under. It’s a pain to iron then, because I can’t see the pattern through the paper as well. I did that once with an entire quilt. It was very frustrating. This one is not the same size, because it’s supposed to be 8×10 for the Art Produce show…so slightly different.

This one was the same, although…

I think the background fabric is different, because I was out of the other one.

I think. Not sure. Yeah, it’s different (you didn’t even know I clicked over to my website to look, did you?). Yes, I use my own website to figure out what I’ve done, thought, planned. So that was Bird 14, Hey Bird 2.

The last one was completely different fabrics…

because I knew I didn’t have enough to reproduce it as it was in the original. Well, that was the second version of it anyway.

And then I fussed about the background and decided on this one. It’s a little smaller than the other one. Maybe. Not sure. Won’t know until I finish it. Stitching and all. Hopefully tomorrow night I can stitch some down. Maybe? Who knows. Boychild is not packed for college, although he finally started thinking about it. It’s OK. I’ve already shipped two boxes with bedding, towels, and sundry other items, including a Horton Hears a Who plate. Because who doesn’t need that? Girlchild is already planning what she will bake to send him. He will gain the Freshman Fifteen because of his sister. Or he will be best friends with everyone on his floor. If he’s smart.

I wanted to finish watching the X-Files episode that was on Netflix, so I worked some more on the binding for the Menopause quilt…

I think I need to call my photographer and just set a drop-off date, because that will force me to finish it.

I gave boychild one piece of roomie advice, which he will probably ignore: Assume positive intent. I wish people did that with me. Because I’m really not out to get anyone, and I’m voted most likely to let you show me who you are, even if I have prior experience with you as an asshole. Yes, that has been on my mind today. Sigh. I always tell my students that I don’t care if your older brother/sister was a total asshole (OK, I don’t use that word), I will not hold it against you. You are your own person and I am waiting for you to show me who that is. Especially that kid who got 12 suspensions last year. I don’t wanna know about it. Come into my classroom clean. Start over. Clean slate.

Wish I could do that with my life. Wake up one morning with everything erased. Start over. There’s so much baggage weighing me down at the moment, I don’t even know where to start getting rid of it.

Anyway. So. School starts tomorrow and I might even be ready. I can’t get onto Google Classroom because I’m not special enough (or I am entirely too special), but I know how to use Edmodo and will do that if I need to.

Mental status? Eh. There’s so much change and shit rolling around that I’m just pushing everything into the corner again. I have a big bubble around me and I try to bounce all the unhappy and nasty off of it. I saw 5 of my girls from last year today and got hugs from all of them (let’s not tell them that I couldn’t remember their names for another 5 hours because I am that lame). So I’m sorta holding everything at bay. I cry because I realize the boy will not ever really come back. He’ll be here for vacations, but then he’ll graduate and get a job and go off into the world. I’ve been a full-time mom for so long. I expected to have a transition stage, but there was something there to transition into. I’m not sure what I’m transitioning into any more. More quiet with fabric. I don’t know if that’s good or not.

I have this sketchbook that fits in my purse and I used to carry it (or others before it) in my former life, when I went out to dinner once or twice a week, and I would always draw while waiting for dinner to come, and I would date and locate the drawing, so there’s all these names of restaurants in all these old sketchbooks. Now there are only dates, because I never really go out to dinner any more. The first few a year ago were at the movies, when I was trying to feel semi-normal and I would go to the movies on Saturday nights and sit there by myself and cry in the movie theater.

Now I just don’t go. I miss them. I can’t afford them…financially or mentally. So I just don’t go.

None of this is particularly healthy. Maybe the drawing is. I need to do more of that, I think. In between all the other stuff. Sigh. Time. Such constraints. And ALL the FEELS.

I am so not ready for the next few days. Or maybe I am ready, but ready means that I will cry. I am sad now and maybe in two days I will be all saddened out and it will be OK again. I just don’t know. I made the mistake the other night of looking at all the photos I was trying to put away, to find a home for, and there was the girlchild, not even age 2, at my brother’s wedding, and the boychild, happily wearing a button-down shirt and tie, shaved little head, big smile on his face, age 3 1/2. Girlchild holding her sippy cup and her hair isn’t even girl-length yet. It took so long for her hair to grow.

And I know I didn’t do it all wrong, because boychild is off to a good school, to Cornell, where he will be exposed to lots of smart people and hard thinking and he will come back a different person, and I know he is there because I did a good job raising him, but it still feels like I did something wrong. Like I didn’t follow the rules so I’m being punished. And I know that lots of moms (and dads) feel sad when their kids go off to college, but it feels like abandonment. I want to lecture him on all the diapers I changed and how long I nursed him and how long it took him to potty train, and dammit, call your mom occasionally and send some pictures of your roomie and where you live and don’t forget that she was there for you. Eh? OK? I see him rolling his eyes from here.

Yeah. I think I’m just gonna be surviving the next few days. Weeks.

I must proceed.

Yes, that’s e. e. cummings he’s talking about. I read Barron Storey’s blog, well, look at his drawings anyway. Must Proceed…

Managed

I spent pretty much all day on a soccer field today, which explains the dehydration, the sunburn (despite multiple applications of sunscreen and the use of an umbrella), the 65 pictures of soccer playing, and my mood in the evening. Girlchild can be difficult to manage when she’s hot, tired, sweaty, etc., and all of those things happened today. I weathered most of it, but it wore me down, and by the end of the day, there wasn’t any strength left in me.

I had some moments of depressoidness today, moments when it was quiet and I wasn’t distracted enough from the inner workings of my disturbed little mind, the bit that keeps nattering on about all the things I’ve done wrong and how none of them will ever be right…you know, the standard depression fare.

I spent the hour before the first game and part of that game writing…writing this weird-ass science fiction story that just spills out of me when I turn it on, sputtering like a barely used faucet, words flowing out in big gouts of semi-literate paragraphs. I wrote about 1500 words in that hour plus. We’re out of the woods and back into the city, storywise. It’s good.

OK. I don’t actually know if it’s good. I’m just writing until I’m done, and then I’ll put the editor hat on and go back in and kick its ass. Then and only then will I read it for story. Actually, I’ll probably let other people read it then. It could really suck. Who knows.

The team lost the first game. It was very hot out there. The picture above, the girl on the other team was hooking her arm through the girlchild’s elbow, and when the girlchild swung her around as she got the ball, the other girl tried to get the ref to call a foul. He did. On her. BOOM. We then spent an hour in a chilly Panera. Much nicer, except for all the noisy people. I read. I wrote a little more. We went and bought water. I got yelled at, but not seriously.

Then we sat on the field waiting for game number two. Still hot. Sleepy. Napped a bit. Read. This is where the brain started wandering. It started thinking about life a few years ago and what it was like and all the stuff I’m missing and that I’ll never have again and trip! There you are. In the damn hole. Drag yourself back out. Tell yourself to be in the fucking moment. Watch the weird seed pods floating balletically (it is TOO a word) across the soccer field, feel the (ultra) warm breeze waft across your face (and dry your eyes out). Deep breaths. Traffic on the south Interstate 5 is finally clearing up, so we might get home in a reasonable time frame. POSITIVE FUCKING THINKING BABY.

Then girlchild made a goal, which was good, because she is more likely to be in a decent mood if she is successful at something (shocker, that. Must be genetic.). The photo above is right before the goal…she actually had to kick it past the goalie and then come around with her left foot and bend it (not like Beckham) into the goal. Which she did.

I stitched during the second game. Not a lot. I really wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes it all seems very pointless.

I talked to people. I tried to be sociable. I tried to shut up the bad parts of my brain with all the wondrous seed pods and warm breeziness. SIGH. And then I got yelled at in the car on the way home. So I turned the music up and cried a bit all the way home.

And after dinner, after I heard the litany of why girlchild is so stressed, which I can’t possibly understand (seriously, she said that), I decided to do what I wanted. Yes, I’m fully aware that school starts in four days and my house is a disaster and my lesson plans are questionable. I know all of that. I also know that BALANCE is what I need and that means the only really good thing I learned last year is that even if I am so depressed I barely function, I can do my job and come home and make some sort of art every night and I will survive. So I should keep doing that part. I should not bury myself in my job, because although it can be very fulfilling, it also sucks my soul out of my body and spits it out in a sewer. Art? Not so much. It tends to be much kinder. It is a better place to be.

I’ve got 5 birds to get done by September 1. Well, two birds HAVE to be done by then…here’s the first, another one of the doves…

I pulled the original picture up on the iPad, but couldn’t figure out what fabrics I’d used, so I winged it.

Because there’s a shortage of fabric in my room? Yeah. I didn’t think so.

The dove and a new version of the diving bird will be at the Fence/Barda exhibit that I’m involved with at Art Produce Gallery in North Park (San Diego), which opens September 13.

Both will be for sale at that venue…which means I need to finish them slightly differently and not spend too much time on them, because I don’t get all the money.

I got this one cut out too, but it should already have a home…

Two more to do tomorrow. I did this one slightly differently too. Can’t always find the original fabrics. Lots of fabric in here.

Anyway, I think I fought off most of the depressoid stuff…at least, if I go to bed now, I have a good chance of leaving it here instead of bringing it to interrupt my sleep, which is what happened this morning. I could have used the extra hour of sleep, but no…my brain does not allow it. Anyway. I’m trying. Know that I’m always trying.

Looking Back…

So the bird quilts were a success, thanks to friends and family and groupies and the like (there is some overlap between the categories). There are three left for sale, and tomorrow (which is actually today; I just haven’t gone to sleep yet…) I will move them over to the Recent Work page. I’m also doing one more as a commission, once I finish the obligations I do have for this month. Which I was supposed to work on today, but today ended up being errands and house-cleaning, because I currently have a houseful of teenaged girls. OK, there are only 3, but that’s kinda like a houseful when they get going. They aren’t leaving, either. They will be here until some time in the morning…the REAL morning. Not the morning it is NOW. Hopefully not until after I wake up. And have tea. Because I can barely deal with my OWN teenagers in the morning these days.

I need to get my ass in gear on quilting this week. Hours of it. Starting…um…not now. I spent a chunk of today making and sewing on labels on the bird quilts…

Yes, I’m weird. I sew them on. I read about someone who was removing labels and then putting her own labels on the quilts. So I started fusing AND sewing them on. It might be overkill. Some things are just habit. Not necessarily a good thing.

Jul 28 14 001 small

I have two to go, I think.

I’ve been referred to physical therapy for the recurring knee problem, starting tomorrow. It’s probably too much to ask him if I can hike on Thursday, eh? I will ask anyway. Or I will do it anyway. Who knows. I’m not willing to stop hiking because my knee is cranky.

Yesterday, I forgot to eat until 3:30 in the afternoon. I forgot before I went grocery shopping in the morning. I planned to eat when I got back, but the kids came in staging World War III, and by the time the screaming stopped, it was time for me to leave…so when we got there (to the meeting) and I thought, “Why do I feel so shaky?” and then wracked my brains trying to remember what meal I’d actually eaten that day…um. Yeah. So the brain is still out to lunch. With martinis. She’s in a real mood at the moment. Actually, it’s somewhat easier to exist when she’s out to lunch (except for the part where I forget to eat). There’s less drama. More just getting by. Minute by minute.

The last year has been a bitch. You might have noticed. Here are the positive things that happened though:

In the last year, I’ve written 380 posts averaging about a thousand words a post, some quite a bit more than that. That’s about 380,000 words. That’s kind of a lot.

I started writing a book. I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I’m significantly into this thing at the moment. Hopefully I’ll figure out how it’s supposed to end soon…and maybe get around to naming all the characters.

I learned to meditate. I still meditate almost every evening. I think it has helped give me some distance from my sad brain and situations when I am wigging out. I have meditated in hotels, cars, my classroom (with or without my students), and staff meetings. I have told my students I am meditating right now. I have taught them how to meditate as well.

I’m hiking pretty regularly. The physical exercise is obviously good for me, and the type of exercise is a good alternative to my gym time, but I’m also outside and hanging out with a different group of people on a regular basis. In nature. With the bugs and snakes and other crawly things. And I only fall down occasionally.

I’m reading a lot. I guess this could be a negative in some ways, because my hermit self probably doesn’t need more excuses to hang out with its nose in a book, but I’m reading a good variety of stuff and doing book clubs too for the intellectual stimulation (and just plain goofiness at times).

I remodeled (with the help of the boychild and my dad, and sort of the girlchild) the living room, getting rid of tons of crap and hopefully streamlining the space a bit. Next year, we’ll do the other half of the house if it kills me (and it probably will).

I made a bunch of quilts and drawings that will turn into awesome quilts. I do this every year, but it seems important to note that even when I’m dealing with massive depression and breakdowns, I can still do that. Thanks to the artistic brain for pushing the other shit off the cliff on a regular basis. It keeps climbing back up and getting in my face, but that art brain is unstoppable. She rocks.

I outlasted my boss.

I helped one kid get into college with a pretty good financial aid plan, and hopefully he will remember where he lives after he leaves. There was a lot of paperwork and too many deadlines.

I reintroduced myself to the dance, theater, and spoken-word performances that I used to go to all the time, and I rediscovered my love of comics.

I got some of my diabetes numbers back to the normal range. There have been other issues associated with that, but the HbA1c is the same as someone without diabetes. It’s been over 12 years since it’s been there.

Most of all, I survived it. Moving on. Of course, that’s easy to say right NOW. When that silly brain comes back from her extended cocktail hour, I might have to force the issue a bit more. And there’s that part of the brain that is always yelling “but but but!” whenever you say you did something good…it needs to take a hike. In the opposite direction. Tomorrow, I quilt. Seriously.

Birds for Sale…

So here’s the 10 birds. I have 5 people in line, who get to choose first, in order. If you’re interested in something, let me know. Payment is by Paypal, unless you (a) live in San Diego and I trust you to hand me cash or check or (b) you have some heinous issue with Paypal and you can suggest an alternate payment method. Prices are based on hours and size and include shipping costs, if necessary. There is a hanging sleeve at the top…I might even be able to locate a dowel to fit in it (OK, let’s say I can handle that). If you have any questions, let me know. They are all actual rectangles, despite my lame photography and lack of ironing at this stage…I will iron before I ship (but then I will ROLL it again, so what can I say?).

Bird 1: Dove, 11.5“ w x 10.5“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 2: Spotted Bird, 9.25“ w x 9.25“ h, $105. (SOLD)

Bird 3: Bird with Eyeball, 10“ w x 10“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 4: Diving Bird, 9“ w x 14.25“ h, $110. (SOLD)

Bird 5: HeyBird, 14“ w x 11“ h, $130. (SOLD)

Bird 6: Falling Bird, 9.25“ w x 18.5“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 7: Bluebird, 19.5“ w x 11.5“ h, $150. (SOLD)

Bird 8: Purple Bird, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

Bird 9: Blackbird, 16.75“ w x 13“ h, $205. (SOLD)

Bird 10: Owl, 15.5“ w x 18.25“ h, $235. (SOLD)

Contact me with any questions. You can go through the comments section below or the contact page on the website. I will mark them sold as that happens. If the one you like is sold, I may be able to remake it in similar fabrics. Many thanks!

Bringing the Brain On Line

Not the most effective use of my time yesterday. Mental breakdowns never are. The plus is I seem to recover fairly quickly now from the parts where I shake and can’t focus. Thank meditation for that. And the help of some friends who say the right stuff, remind me that I am OK…remind me that just because one person in the world believes something about me doesn’t mean it’s right.

I tortured my son and ex by dragging them to the Cornell San Diego barbecue, mostly for me, really, but also so the boy might recognize people who live near him. Not that he will use that info (but all my college friends are yelling Road Trip!). He’s disdainful of the process, and actually came up and asked why the other older students made a point of telling the kids to wash whites separate from other colors, because we don’t do that at home (it’s true, we don’t, although I was raised doing that). I reminded him that the colors of his college include RED. Which RUNS. And makes everything white turn PINK. His dad admitted to making that mistake in college. Boychild wears no white, though, so he’s probably OK.

I tried to work on bindings in the car, but the curvy roads were making me sick. I wanted to get two done yesterday, but had to settle for one…Bird No. 7…

Can’t remember what the other name is for this one.

For one thing, I also quilted a bit (not a lot) on Mammogram…

It’s piled up to keep cats off it.

I finally found the purple fabric I needed for the birds…it was hiding under something else, of course.

I knew it was here. I hate that my brain is still pulling this shit where I’m staring right at something and I can’t see it…I lost the teabag squeezer (probably there’s an official name for that) the other day and was going nuts, but it was right where it should have been, except up an inch or so on a pile of stuff. Right in the wide open. I don’t even understand how I couldn’t see it. OK, I know…because my brain was playing games. I can’t find my turquoise hand-sewing thread either. I’m sure it’s somewhere. Oh shit. I know where it is. Fuck. Dumbass. OK, I know I’m not a dumbass…I just need days of processing time now. Hard to know how much of that is age, hormones, or depression. Or a revolting combo of all of them. The big part of my brain is just not available on a regular basis. I send a messenger down there, into the deep hole, and sometimes the messenger comes back and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the message is so garbled that it’s useless. And sometimes 24 hours later, the location of the turquoise thread pops into my head.

But in order to manage some of my crazy, I called one friend and emailed another, and we ended up going to see Boyhood…

Which was interesting, although I was more interested in the mother character. It was an interesting concept, although the boy was not very engaging in the first few years. He was much more interesting when he aged and had more mature opinions, and certainly, being about to send a boy off to college, there was some relevance there.

I can’t seem to get my brain working on finishing the stupid pile of small tasks that would finish the living room remodel. Which means my bedroom is a disaster. And now apparently a bunch of teenaged girls are coming to spend the night tomorrow. OK. Well. There’s some motivation to move it along. Or just shove it all in my bedroom and close the door. Whichever seems to make more sense. Taking care of myself is often a collection of behaviors that others do not understand. They don’t get that I’m dragging my brain along with me, behind me, and sometimes it’s strangling me by trying to dig its feet in. Recalcitrant asshole.

More car time today…sitting in a meeting too. Four more bindings. Today. Done. Really. Maybe then my brain will come back on line. Ha.

Working Through It

It’s been one of my (many) mantras this year, work through it. Just keep making. At some point, it will feel different again. The plus with making quilts the way I do is that there are tasks that can be divided up and finished in shorter periods of time. If something is long and difficult, this is how you get through it, one chunk at a time. So when I’m sitting there stabbing needles into that one place on my right middle finger that gets a callous when I’m doing a lot of hand-stitching, I know that it is not an endless, Dante’s-Inferno-of-Stabbing-Pain, but a task that will end, and if it is supremely heinous, then there will be a new and different task to follow it.

I finished three more bindings yesterday. It was difficult, but Endeavour Morse helped me survive it. I never watched the Inspector Morse series, but I like the prequels.

This is Bird 4…they have names now too. I have a hard time remembering the numbers.

Also known as Diving Bird. Obv.

In pricing them, I’ve really only looked at the time. Quilters Newsletter Magazine recently had an article on pricing your work, and I do usually use a combination of time and size, looking at both calculations and arriving somewhere in the middle.

This is Bird 5…

aka HeyBird. The article was interesting in that it touched on two points: those who underprice and undervalue their time are hurting the rest of us…and it gave actual pricing info from some quilters, including Luke Haynes and Caryl Bryer Fallert, both more famous in the quilt world than I am, but I was able to compare my prices for my work with what they would charge for something similar…

This is Bird 6…

aka Curvy Bird or maybe Falling Bird. I haven’t decided. And I found that my pricing formulas do actually make sense. You are paying for my 25 years of experience, my drawing ability, my quilting ability, and for the rarity that is a small Kathy piece without boobs in it (as my daughter would say). Because honestly, this opportunity may never arise again. I find these little quilts a pain in the ass to make, and they don’t give me any satisfaction to make…except when I see them in a pile. That’s kind of cool…a pile of birds. Until the cat tries to sit on them, and then I have to hide them again. And my prices are significantly lower than Fallert’s (as they should be).

Updated: I had to add this after a conversation with the boychild. Minimum wage in California is $9/hour at the moment. If I sell these birds in a gallery, I can lose up to 50% of the price to the gallery (understood, by the way…I’m not arguing against that), so I have to consider the pricing with that in mind. The smallest one, right now, is the only one priced under $100, and if it sold in a gallery, I would get just over minimum wage. Sigh. But these weren’t complicated and I didn’t draw NEW birds…these are existing birds from drawings and quilts that are already done. Plus I think most if not all of them will sell outside of a gallery, so I’m OK with the pricing.

Four more to go, but I already set up the sewing machine last night to start quilting Mammogram. I want to get on with it. Next week is really the last WHOLE week I have free from school stuff until December (oh my god, that is so depressing). I need to use it wisely. This is why as the summer goes on, I become more and more hermitlike. In the early days, I leave the house for lots of errands and fun stuff and lunch with friends (not really), but by the time August 1 rolls around, I’m in lockdown mode. School looms towards me, swinging claws towards my free time and my sanity, and Fall is notoriously bad with soccer slamming me as well. Although this year, there will only be one kid around…one kid who has taken on coaching her OWN team (am I required to go watch that? I feel like I should go at least once.).

And I am exercising and meditating every day. Another way to work through it. One chunk at a time.

“Keep mindfulness alive even in the darkest moments, reminding yourself that the awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Nida Happy Time

Someone actually found my blog by searching for that. I am amused. I been looking for some Nida Happy Time…maybe they will let me know where ELSE the internet pointed so I can get there. I’ve been sitting here for about an hour, trying to find and change all of the autopay places that my old stolen credit card number might be lurking and replacing it with the new. A call to Ohio. Searching websites for the right combination of key words. I think I’ve got them all and I think I’ve found the few late charges that got thrown at me.

I was woken up this morning by the sound of thunder, loud, scary at first, then comforting. It was early, but not really bad. Just earlier than I wanted, which is always the case these days. I rarely wake up feeling rested. My body doesn’t let me sleep long enough for that. Soon the rain started, heavy at first, then slowing to that syncopated rhythm that is mostly droplets falling from tree leaves. When it started up again, that pattern of thunder, then rain, then trickle, I got up. I love that sound, that feeling…maybe because it is so rare here, especially in summer. We had one quick storm a week ago…these thunderstorms wander in from the mountains and drop their load and then leave again, bringing the temperature down briefly, but just a memory after an hour. Before that? It had been months since it rained…I think. I remember a hike in April or May that got rained out, but nothing since then. It’s a drought here, like it always is. So this a respite. Brief. But it feels like an omen. Not a bad one.

Yesterday morning, on the way to life drawing, a new drawing started to insert itself in my head. Yesterday was a maliversary, and since I know my brain is going to have issues with that, I try to baby it a little, give it distractions, give it what it wants. So it got life drawing, which was kind of a joke. My muse owes me $5 because she totally did not show up. I was overly tired (really bad night) and the model was male, which is novel, but harder for me to draw. I draw mostly women, so I’m used to their shapes. I was able to do OK with pencil, but when I switched to ink on the long drawings, holy fuck. I did a very nice drawing of the chair he was sitting on. And his bald head. The rest was a clusterfuck. It’s OK. It happens. I also started drawing a study of sorts for the drawing in my head. Honestly, most of the drawing was there, just like it popped in. BOOM. There were some changes, variations that were fluttering through my head as I tried to draw the naked guy, but I just let it process.

From there, I went to my stitching meeting, where I was working on the birds (more about that below). It was fine, but I realized the bindings are going to take longer than I thought…which is fine. I realize I can do them by machine, but I like the way the finish looks by hand, especially on something this small. There’s something to be said for craftsmanship. However out there my imagery is, I’m kinda old school with some of my practices, because I do like how they look.

There was a car issue after that, so I came home and couldn’t go to the gym because I had no car (amusing that). So I tried to finish my book…I’m getting increasingly irritated with how Jim Butcher deals with female characters. I still like the stories though. Sigh.

When the two kids finally came home, I was a good girl and went to the gym. During weightlifting, which is when my brain has the most time to get into trouble, that drawing popped up again. And it basically drew itself. Details popped in. I rearranged some things mentally and made it better. Really, it majorly sucks that I can’t just download directly to a device from my brain, because I knew actually DRAWING it would be an issue. It was complicated. But it was about today, about how I’ve been feeling this summer, the last year. Many people call this their muse, God speaking through them, whatever. I don’t really know or care what it is, but it’s a drive that can’t be shut up. I know some people ignore it, but I think mine is louder, more insistent, because I make a point of listening…of responding…of drawing at the drop of a hat…of giving part of my brain permission to run off and mess with the images. The fiber art group I’m in wants me to bring a 10-word description of my artistic process to the next meeting. TEN words? Yeah. Whatever. I think I’ll write a haiku. Boychild had a random-word generator giving me 10-word combinations yesterday that would have been about as relevant. I don’t want to play that game.

I came home from the gym, ate, and then contemplated the day. I had done a good job protecting the part of my brain that might have had an issue. I distracted it and gave it a goal and I reached that goal and was still there in one piece, my brain wasn’t raging all over the place or huddled in a pool of tears. Not bad. I still had a few hours and one difficult task, though, so I needed to keep going. It was obvious what I needed to do next, so I grabbed the sketchbook and started…

This was the second start. The first one had the hinges on the wrong side. And it has issues, but I think I can fix them, plus I’m going to have to extend the paper down and probably to the left. I’m trying to decide whether to copy and enlarge it as is, or to trace and move things like I think they should be moved and THEN enlarge and add his feet etc.? Did I tell you about my 5th-grade art teacher who really wanted me to learn to stay on the page? She was an artist too, so don’t give her shit. She’s right. I should learn to stay on the page.

Yes, I have another drawing that needs to be finished. It wasn’t screaming at me last night. This one was.

When I got that far (an hour?), I stopped because I needed more space on the page and to make a decision about enlarging. And then I sewed the third bird. And then I went to bed, because for normal people, it was a bedtime that would be considered normal (well, no, it would still be late, but it wouldn’t be as fucking late as I normally go to bed). Because I have three weeks to get my sleep schedule back to semi-normal. Less, really, if you consider the professional development stuff I have to do before that which requires me to be up at an ungodly hour.

So there we are. It’s not Nida Happy Time, but it’s something.

I finished three birds yesterday…Bird 1…

Bird 2…

and Bird 3…

I started calculating time too…gave up and did it old school on GASP paper.

I know. Crazy. I think there’s an issue with the quilting time on birds 2 and 3…I think I must have hit the wrong task in the app for some period of time. I can go back and look at the specific dates and times, because they’re almost the same size, almost the same bird…there shouldn’t be that wide a gap between the quilting times. When they’re all done, I’ll post them with sizes and prices. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of errands to do today, but I want to get the bindings machine-sewn on Birds 9 and 10 at least. I think I’m almost awake enough to do that. And hopefully tonight I’ll have a go at the drawing stuff again. Maybe by then my brain will have made a decision about tracing or enlarging or whatever.

Oh yeah, so the living room furniture is almost settled.

I think we’re going to put the TV on an arm off the wall and get that piece of furniture out of there too. But that big blank white wall needs art. Um. I make art. I make BIG art. Then girlchild says, “You can’t put anything with boobs on there.” Huh? “I don’t want boobs in the living room.” Sweetheart, there’s boobs within sight of the living room already, pointing out the existing Kathy quilts that hang around the house. “That’s not the living room. No boobs in the living room.” Well. Huh. Whatever. I may or may not listen to her. I know why. She has friends over and has to explain her mom’s art. I’ve heard her do it. It’s amusing. I’m sure it’s not amusing for her.

I’ve only hung one piece of art back up so far (mostly because they’re buried in my room at the moment). Plus I need to solve TV and bookshelf problems first…you see the piles of books. One pile is “outtahere,” one is “don’t know what to do with you,” one is “box it up for later dealings,” and the last one is “belongs in the bookshelf next to the fireplace.” So yeah. They’re not going away until I get my act together. Again. Still. But it’s getting there.

Flail Day

I’m a fan of nominating one day of the month (hell, one day of the WEEK, why don’t we?) as Flail Day…the day when we completely neglect everything we should do, all our set plans for the day, blow it all off, don’t even shower until we have to, wear pajamas most of the day, and don’t do anything real at all. Keep saying we’re going to get up as soon as we finish this or that, then look at the clock and realize it’s after midnight.

Yes, I realize many people designate the weekend as their flail days, but I’ve never been able to do that…oh, that’s not true. In the early married days, with no kids, Sundays were often flail days. Sit around and watch home-improvement television while reading the paper, claiming we were planning a trip to Home Depot, but just having another cup of tea instead until it was dinner time.

Yesterday was a Flail Day. I couldn’t get my brain to wake up, let alone my body. Boychild and I managed to fill most of one bookshelf (alphabetized even!), but I then flailed all over the place about any other moving decisions. I did finally get to Costco, but only after I had spent 2 hours in the vet’s office (itchy dog), which seems to have cured Flail Day tendencies. I think it’s because I read 300 blogposts about other people who were doing so much MORE than me. Or something. Maybe it just wore off. I really got mostly nothing done yesterday…and today I feel guilty about that. Lame? Yup.

Except I know when I do that it’s because there’s a reason. A need. There’s some reason I need to keep the brain distracted and doing totally lame stuff. There’s stuff in there that wants to come out and it’s just gonna hurt. Or make things worse. I’ve had a few people say to me something recently about “going backwards”. I guess there is no clear forward movement to recovering from depression. It’s a wandering trail, up and down, mostly down, until at some point you realize that might have been an up.

My up yesterday? Leaving Costco with the girlchild, I decided to RIDE the cart…like a scooter. I got that behemoth moving through the parking lot and almost hit a Jeep. (whoops). Looked back and girlchild has her hand in front of her face and is trying to both keep from laughing out loud and totally dissociate herself from her mom. So I kept going…because it was fun. And it didn’t tip over, more importantly. That shit? That’s almost the old Kathy.

I did manage to quilt the last of the ten birds last night…

The next step is to trim and bind the fuckers. Tells you kinda how I feel about them at the moment. It’s OK…it’s how I feel about most of my quilts at this stage.

So I started trimming and cutting out bindings and sleeve fabrics…I wasn’t very creative with the first one, because I thought anything else would detract from the bird…

I was a bit more out there with this one…

although that fabric is in the bird…unlike this one…

which totally isn’t. That’s because the two darker blacks in the bird both have straight lines in the patterns, and on skinny little bindings, that’s just asking for trouble. There’s no way they’re going to line up, and that’s just going to be distracting.

The binding and sleeve were two different fabrics for this one…

Because there wasn’t very much left of either one.

I might get around to doing the others tonight…I’m hiking tonight and taking the girlchild with me for the first time with this group. Should be interesting. It’s warm out…ugh. That’s not so interesting. In fact, I need to go chase down clothes and flashlights and crap like that. I’m planning on getting all the bindings sewn on, the machine part anyway, today and tomorrow (that might be a problem, but we’ll see) and then handsewing at Thursday and Sunday’s meetings. Meanwhile, I can start quilting the Mammogram quilt and taping and drawing the rest of the gender equality quilt. Plus I really should put everything away, but I really don’t know what to do with most of it. That’s a problem. Maybe just get it out of my bedroom and pile it up in the entryway? Sigh.

Tomorrow also includes such fun activities as getting two fillings fixed and having the plumber visit. There are probably better ways to spend my day.

Meanwhile, I’m dropping the ball on multiple things that I really should be doing. Such is my mental state. Distracted and fucked up. Flail Day.

Kicking Gratitude’s Ass…

I’m trying to tie my brain down to writing at the moment. It’s like a balloon floating around the room. Grab it and pull it down.

At counseling, we talked about trying to shut the part of my brain up that wants to be sad, or more like can’t get out of being sad. I’d hate to think I actually want that, but I do seem to have a hard time shaking it. There are about a million gratitude rituals online. It’s kind of annoying when you’re depressed to see all of them and realize, yes, you should be grateful that you have food and a house and the internet and enough fabric to make your crazy art quilts. Yeah. I know. I get that. But we decided I might be able to shut that brain part up by throwing those gratitude things at it…like, hey! You have nice new carpet and a freshly painted living area (see, that part of my brain starts freaking out about putting everything away, and I don’t blame it, because that’s a pretty overwhelming THING looming over me. So I do a little every day, and boychild follows me down the hall and just picks stuff up and helps me, not a word.). Walk in the house and tell yourself how grateful you are…narrow vision, so you don’t see any of the piles or mess. Because that just fucks up the gratitude right there. (Are people who are doing these gratitude things just like total Pollyannas? I don’t get it.)

So yesterday I managed to keep badness away (mostly) with distraction and distance. I’m never sure if those are healthy. It seems like I’m not really dealing with my feelings and issues when I just push them further away. Not dealing with YOU. Go AWAY. I distract you with a book, with words.

So today, I realized it was sinking, the mood, that is…sinking like the Titanic, with all the pretty boys slipping under the water to save the pretty girls. Yup. So I said to myself, “Self, as the bad things assault you, bring up something good.” Now this was not easy. I hate grocery shopping, and I had to really work at the positive thoughts in the grocery store. Brussels sprouts were a positive thought, but then the pork chops tried to drag me down, so I had to boost myself with a dose of cornmeal, brand-new box, no bugs. And when they didn’t have the pita bread I normally use, I psyched myself out about all the positive aspects of the NEW pita bread. Look…it’s BIGGER. For less money. But then the cost of grapes pulled me back under until she told me I had saved $16 using the online coupons. Damn. OK.

I swear. My brain can be really dumb. It’s really not. It’s sitting over there, ankles crossed, leaning up against a column in the store, arms crossed on my chest, giving me that look. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? It’s not working.” Fuck you, brain.

You know it’s bad, though, when you start crying on the way home and you start telling yourself, “but you have a car full of groceries,” and THAT makes you cry harder? Wow. That’s evidence of depression winning out over those gratitude rituals. Again, I keep saying this…depression, she’s a bitch and she doesn’t give a shit about your internet memes. She’s gonna kick your ass. “I’m thankful for…” Oh shit. Fuck that. Just grab another book, or meditate some more, or draw, because that’s all that really works. I’m grateful for my ability to draw knives stabbing into eyeballs, because that’s how it feels every day. At least I can communicate that.

You know me, though. I’m a bitchy fighter myself. I’m in numb mode again…after crying all the way through one of the quilted birds…

I don’t know why. I just was having moments in my brain of pure unadulterated waves of sadness. So. I guess quilting equals crying? I kept trying, “Oh look, you’re almost done with number 8! You can do bindings tomorrow and maybe be done with these things next week sometime.”

Yeah. That didn’t help. I did another quilted hill on this one…it shows up more than the other one because of the lighter fabric. I seriously don’t know how I quilted this. I couldn’t see, I was crying so hard. What the fuck? Just turn that off. You can’t tell me there’s a gratitude meme that will kick that ass.

Then I did number 9.

Holy fuck. This one kicked my butt. I think the thread broke about 20 times. I don’t know why. I tried many things.

Swearing did not help. I did some funky quilting on this one too. I just breathed deep, tied off where it broke, and started again. There’s really no point in getting all hung up on thread breakage. It happens. It’s not karma (don’t fucking believe in karma). It just is. It happens. Don’t stress about it. Clean stuff, replace stuff, rethread. Then move on.

Just one more bird left. Hopefully tomorrow. Then trim them all down and try to find binding fabrics. I have two meetings in the next week where I can get a lot of hand-stitching done. It would be smart to have them ready for that. The smaller ones are at about an hour and a half of work, and the larger ones have hit almost 4 1/2 hours.

I went to the book club meeting today that was voting on all the books for the rest of the year. I’m not sure why, since my vote seemed mostly useless. I really went to vote against the biographies (not a fan) and the books I’d already read. Yeah. Well, I think they’re reading three books I’ve already read (that’s what comes of being 20 years older than most of them…I’ve had more TIME to read all those books…there was actually an argument about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance…now I think I need to reread it.) and there’s at least one biography. It’s OK…this is the meeting that is hardest for me to actually attend, especially in the Fall, so I’m not that worried. I stitched through the whole thing. I started stitching because my brain was wigging out. I did about 60 french knots. Forgot to take a picture.

There was also soccer…

(Please tell me you don’t think the other team’s uniforms are as weird-looking as I thought they were…reminded me of band uniforms).

Luckily, they didn’t get into the semifinals. Oh wait, am I supposed to say that out loud? Probably not.

I really wasn’t in the mood for multiple games today. She did well again today. I think she’s getting her soccer legs back on the ground…

I’m glad. Now I just wish she would do her dishes without squawking about it and get her summer homework done. And clean her room (if I’m going pie-in-the-sky, I might as well go all out).

Yeah. I know. Whatever. This picture? We nicknamed this tournament the “sluts and skanky hoes tournament.” There was a lot of swearing, pushing, pulling, grabbing, and generally bitchy behavior…amusing because it’s not like this is the World Cup, ladies. Get over yourselves. Why get injured before the real season? So the girlchild is in fact whacking that girl in this photo because of whatever shit she was pulling beforehand. She’s a bit vindictive.

There was definitely some physicality in this tournament.

She has college prep camp all week, with college coaches coming to watch them practice and play. But she doesn’t care about any of the schools, even the one I suggested as a backup school…so whatever. We have next weekend off, then we have another tournament. Hate the summer because of all the tournaments. Luckily the next one is not a traveling one…that’s the one AFTER that. Hate sitting in hotel rooms and having to go to dinner with all the parents. There is this one mom who has known me for ages and constantly calls me Kathryn, which I associate with being in trouble with my mom. I’ve tried to tell her to call me Kathy, and she just hasn’t processed that request. It’s like she goes out of her way. OK, I know she’s not doing it on purpose. I keep meaning to say, “Hey, just call me Kathy,” but I think I HAVE already done that. Sigh. It’s just how I feel about the whole traveling-with-the-team experience. Between spending time with the girlchild when she’s tired and cranky without any buffers (her dad will be at another tournament with HIS team) and spending time with parents who can only talk about their girls’ prospects in college soccer, it just makes me want to scream and rip my hair out.

So yeah. Fun stuff. I think I need an outlet for all my emotional crap. Oh wait. That’s my art. Or writing. Or the blog.

I should be drawing tomorrow night…hopefully. Finishing that gender equality piece. Finishing the birds and putting bindings on them. Then starting the quilting on the other two. Seriously, just get it done. There’s where the brain needs to focus. Cry while you’re doing it, if you have to…but just do it. Gratitude? I’m thankful for my over-functioning tear ducts. They keep everything hydrated.

Lost Cause

I sat down this morning to write a blogpost and even resized the one single picture I had and then realized the mood I was in and decided, no, no, no. Do not write now. Live the day, try to change that shitty mood that dragged you up out of deep blank sleep, or at least dreams that you don’t remember, change it and then write.

So I set out to change it. (BTW, WordPress, WTF? Way to completely change everything. I am weirded out. Totally new interface. Radically different.)

I can’t say that I was entirely successful, but since my counselor saw me today (to make up for missing last week) and told me multiple times that I was feeling all the normal feels and nothing was crazy talk, except the part where I call myself a loser, but that’s crazy talk from a year ago that I can’t seem to shake, and we talked about the two parts of my brain and how sometimes one part wins over the other, but the other, more practical and mature part of my brain is still there, talking away, shaking its head at the stupid drama, saying “I’m not crazy. I’m just tormented at the moment.” Odds are I’ll get over it. Someday. That’s the shitty part. The Someday Part.

There are other shitty parts, but believe it or not, I don’t write everything I’m feeling on here. Some of it just gets cried out in the car on the drive between here and there. The worst of it, you never see it. Think about that. I really wanted to be in a different place by now, but you can want things all you like, and you can even be one of those perky people who think that if you just WANT it HARD enough and SMILE a LOT, then it will be YOURS. (Fuck You, by the way)

Those people have not lived my existence. They are not negotiating golf clubs with a teenager at 11:30 PM. They are not determining if an axle boot needs fixing. They are not trying to decide how much weight the deck can hold. And they are certainly not trying to decide whether it’s possible to just stay asleep, deeply asleep, blindly and blankly not dreaming, for at least another year or two, until it doesn’t hurt to wake up. Because it still does. And I can’t even describe to you how much that sucks. How much I want it to stop. And there’s no magic that makes it stop. Just like there’s no magic to stop the tears that are falling down your cheeks as you drive up to your destination.

Thanks, by the way, to my chiropractor for the second emergency appointment in two months. Am I stressed? I guess. I don’t know. Was I crying in your parking lot? Damn straight I was.

I often wonder if people know I’ve been crying. Yet again. Because that hasn’t stopped. That’s the new me. Crying Kathy. Woo!

Anyway. So I set out to make the day at least…well…um…insert adjective here. Not unhappy. Not depressing (impossible at the moment).

I finished stitching down the Mammogram quilt…

And then I sandwiched it and pinbasted it.

Which meant I had to clean a floor first, and that floor promptly became dirty again, but that’s OK. It’s gonna be worse tomorrow. It was a temporary clean. I wanted that done before the carpet guys came, in case I finished stitching the Menopause quilt down before Wednesday, because I’m expecting to get a lot of stitching done on Wednesday, since I’ll be trapped in my office pretty much. I’m OK with that. I need more of that…because then I can’t see the chaos in the rest of the house.

I can’t tell you how much I need that chaos gone. It’s transmuted into my head. I think it’s making everything worse.

Once that was done, I started in on the ten bird quilts…pinbasting all of them.

They didn’t take long…

Five minutes for the smaller ones…

They all have the same backing fabric, an old cotton from before I was really sewing quilts, but when I made fabric frames. I wasn’t sure if it was cotton or poly cotton, so I burned it in the sink.

It was really old cotton. I really don’t need to be buying more fabric right now…

Although I’m a bit concerned about bindings. The dark quilts are easy, if I have enough of the dark fabric left. Although that one could do a green or orange binding and be OK.

And this one could do black…maybe.

But I need to quilt them all first.

That could take a while.

But they’re all ready now.

The longest it took to pinbaste one quilt was 12 minutes.

The day was still shitty after all that. I’m in the middle of writing a post about art and why I do it and how it doesn’t do magical things like solve all my problems and make me leap out of bed in the morning and sing joyous songs during the day. So art helps, but it doesn’t really make everything OK. It’s there. It saves me in many ways, but it doesn’t make everything pretty and nice-smelling. I think people who are not artists and really want to be think it’s so cool that it must solve everything and make everything fucking awesome and they really wish they could be an artist like me, but they don’t realize that it’s not something you choose to do…it chooses you. And it doesn’t make it good. It just makes it. And. I don’t know. It’s not magic. I keep saying that. I want there to be magic. I really do. I’m Scully though, not Mulder. I wish I were Mulder.

Girlchild has been fussy lately and keeps wanting me to sit with her while she watches television, like while dinner was in the oven tonight (she did cook)…so I can’t quilt during that time and today was so bad I had thought of drawing about 17 times, so I grabbed this drawing and finished it up…

This is good. It needs to be a quilt. Not anytime soon of course. Really I should have been drawing the other one, but apparently I can only work on that one while sitting in a wine bar waiting for teenagers to get out of concerts. Or something. I wasn’t going to draw a penis while sitting next to my daughter on the couch. I knew what kind of commentary that would produce.

After dinner, I started stitching the Menopause quilt down…that’s not its real name, just its inspiration.

Cracked skull and all…I’m about halfway up into the water…this is gonna take a while.

Which is probably OK. I sorta persuaded Pandora that it should be playing young angry-man rock instead of that mopey shit that makes me cry. Of course, when X-Files makes you cry, you know you’re a mess. So there’s been a lot of Linkin Park and Nirvana. So that might tell you a bit about where my head is at the moment.

And this song…was the last mopey song Pandora played before I fucked with it and explained my current mood…

Beck’s Lost Cause…”There’s a place where you are going…” Hopefully that place is into a deep sleep with an easy wakeup call.