Until the Feeling Sticks…

I planned a hike for this morning. I figure once school starts up again and the soccer season hits me fully upside the head (that starts tomorrow), I won’t have as much time to be wandering all over the place. I’ll write about the hike later. But I was sitting in a parking lot getting ready for this hike, and I had had a bad night and a bad morning, and I was already trying not to cry (as usual, what’s new), but…my ex emailed me (and a little while later, the girlchild texted me) that his mom had died last night…and I lost it. I’m not the most emotionally stable person at the moment, and I haven’t seen her in years, and yes I’m divorced and all, but she wrote me every year, usually more than once. And even when it was getting hard for her, she still wrote…to me. She kept up that communication for 10-plus years post-divorce and I always greatly appreciated her doing that, for not cutting me off completely, for keeping the lines open, for her news of a family I no longer officially belonged to. She was a caring woman and I will miss her spidery handwriting with her tales of music and fruitcake.

So I guess I didn’t start the hike out in the best frame of mind.

I’m not processing most of the day any better. I hiked…well, walked really. I went to the store. I weathered the teenaged girlstorm of last-minute planning (I’m kind of tired of that storm, I must say). I graded papers. I read a little.

More importantly, there was art. I think no matter the pain in your heart, whether sadness or loss or just a plain old bad day, being creative, even in a stupid paperwork kind of way, is good for all that. I’m not happier right now, but I am less anxious, more at peace.

I managed to iron down the whole Celebrating Silver quilt this afternoon…

I did it all on the entryway floor (luckily I chose to do this BEFORE we removed the very dead Christmas tree from the house, thus scattering pine needles into corners where they will not reveal themselves until some time in August). I had the whole quilt ironed together in a few large chunks: the earth base, the lower torso of the Crone with the Maiden and the Mother attached, the one bird, the upper torso with arms and staff, and the head and hair entwined with cat and owl. There were also some smaller loose pieces that couldn’t be attached until the whole thing was down on the background fabric.

It took a couple of hours, maybe three, to get the whole mess attached. At one point, I was looking at it and noticed the one dirt piece was much longer than the others…

Why? Fuck if I know. I cut it off.

Once I had everything sort of tacked down on the background, I moved it to the ironing board and tried to do a better job of attaching it, spraying each section with water and heat-setting it for at least 30 seconds.

I can’t show you the whole thing until the exhibit opens…in October. Seriously. I’m sorry. It’s really cool though! Seriously. It is. I’m happy with it.

Of course, I have hours of stitching left, so I should hold on to my feelings of relief for a bit longer. The happiness is a temporary feeling, chased away by anxiety over getting it done this week.

Despite having prewashed every fabric in the quilt, about three of the darker browns bled…

It’s not too obvious and I don’t know if I care. I have used colored pencils in the past to deal with that. I can do that again.

I set up the machine for the stitch-down phase, to start tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s under that towel.

Which is under that cat. Yeah. I know. Damn cat. She has a T-shirt that says Occupy Mom’s Quilts.

My brain is already thinking ahead to how it will stay occupied when this one is done…I have the breast drawing I showed you yesterday? Friday? Can’t remember what day it is now, let alone when I posted about that…I had enlarged it months ago and started taping it together tonight…

Once again, brain short-circuiting reveals itself. One section is copied at the wrong percentage (how the hell did I do that? Must have been unconscious) and I missed another two sections completely…so tomorrow, I will be going back to the copy place to deal with that.

I also started cutting and taping some of the smaller drawings I copied earlier during break…

I want a whole stash of drawings ready to go…this one needed to be filled out on the right. I often run out of page (I have been drawing things off the page since 4th grade, maybe earlier…the problem is not solved by bigger paper) and have to tape bits on to finish the drawing. I need to draw feet for one other one I got taped…

Anyway. These smaller ones are about 14×17″ or so. Maybe I will do one of those first? I do have another smallish quilt top that needs to be stitched down as well. Maybe I will find time for that this week…just continue the stitch-down process after finishing the big one (the big one with tons of pieces that will take me forever to stitch down, who the fuck am I kidding?).

I only got three of the smaller ones done, and now I need to fix another copy issue with one of the drawings. I really did not have full brain power when I went in to do these…amusing (or not) since they were done on two different days, about four months apart. Apparently my brain will not be returning soon. It has left the building and wandered into another time zone.

I meditated with cat on lap.

At least she’s warm. I’m always cold these days. I take my iron pills and the higher thyroid dosage, but it’s not helping. I’m constantly freezing. I need a fur coat (not a real fur coat, but a grown one, like Babygirl has…just carry it around on your skin). I’m OK with genetic modifications that might keep me warm in winter.

Meditation is focusing on feelings still…I’m good at the feels. I’m not good at good feels, just the feels themselves, mostly sad or anxious, occasionally angry. Some people think I should be angry more…more often, more angry. I can’t find a lot of anger. So the meditation says that intellectual, rational thought can obscure underlying feelings…yup. Not mine, though…I told you. I’m good at the feels. I’m not so good at the rational part. I can be intellectual, but I am ruled more by the emotion, the instinct, that gut feeling…Mr. Meditation says that feeling is about knowing what’s right for us. Sigh. That’s the part I’m having issues with right now. I know what’s right, but it isn’t making me happy. It doesn’t feel particularly good. I get little twinges of it, I remember what it feels like…sort of, when I got the whole quilt ironed down (yes, the one I can’t even show you right now)…so that is a good thing. I will just keep doing that until the feeling sticks. And if it happens to stick around for any other part of my life, awesome. I don’t expect much at the moment. But I will be prepared with lots of artwork to pull me through the coming months. Art Saves Lives. Seriously. It does.

Sleep…It’s What’s for Dinner…

It’s funny how depression messes with your ability to remember things, like the part of your brain that’s normally engaged in “oh hey, you need gas,” or “wash the damn bras, ” or “take down the stupid Christmas tree before it spontaneously combusts,” that part is on vacation. I’m not really sure where it goes or what it’s doing. It did not leave a note. There’s some sort of short circuit there that is different than the “I’m so busy” short circuit that I normally have to deal with on a daily basis. My calendar helps with that, as long as I remember to put it in the calendar in the first place (always an issue).

I’ve found that I am having other brain short circuits, though. I usually pick background fabrics for my quilts before I start ironing Wonder Under to fabric. I have the background fabric sitting right next to the table where the pieces are laid out, so I can compare and make sure the new fabric will work with the background, as well as with everything else. I am usually really good at picking appropriate background fabrics well before the rest of the fabrics are chosen. The quilt colors itself in my head, and I just follow that diagram.

Not so on this quilt. I still love what I picked, a deep dark rich purple…

But a lot of what I picked to go on top of it just isn’t going to work. Or even show up. I had a giant brain fart, I guess. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’ve never changed the background at the last minute like this. EVER. What IS that? Demon possession? If I weren’t so afraid of what I might find, I’d go back in the blog and find out when I picked the purple fabric and see what was going on then (nuclear disaster, dying pet, stroke).

Anyway, despite the brain fuzz, I finished up the ironing today…putting the owl together…

I was missing a piece, the leg above one of the claws, so I pulled the fabric for that (this is why I keep all the fabrics I’ve pulled for a specific quilt in a separate box until the quilt is done…then they can go back with the general population), opened it up, and found…

The missing piece…still attached to the fabric in there. Lucky.

And then all the thorny branches (which still don’t look good on that purple)…

And then I piled the whole mess up into a plastic box and drove to the quilt store, where I messed around with a couple of fabrics, all the while knowing what the background wanted to be…

That blue…which is much more turquoise in real life…and is now washed and ready for ironing (new blue on left, old purple on right). I had a not-work party (not a required work party, but a nice party where a lot of people from work just happened to be) tonight, and managed normal social interactions (shocking, I know). I came home and folded fabrics…

Because you can’t just buy one…and then tried to decide which I would do tonight…ironing or sewing binding on…because I also trimmed the Love (not Love) quilt (I really need to pick a name on that one)…

And sewed on the binding this afternoon…I still have to do all the handwork.

I started this afternoon, but didn’t get very far…

Plus Babygirl wanted to sit on my lap…or chew a hole in the quilt. I noticed the eye was twitching again and I’d been grinding my teeth since yesterday morning. Apparently a ton of exercise and art completion and some wine and even good news from the doctor do not make the stress disappear. Not even meditation does that. The balancing is not working well at the moment, at least mentally (ironic, since I’m on Winter Break still)…when I take time out to exercise and hike, it leaves less time to get everything done. But exercising and hiking do relax me, give my brain a break. But then I get more stressed because I have less time.

This is a frustrating conundrum. Still a work in progress. Speaking of which, apparently I looked so pained at the gym this morning, the staff needed to make goofy faces at me and talk to me so I had to take my earphones out and then they had to ask me if I was OK. Shit. Did I look that bad? I’ve looked way worse than that, I know. Sheesh. Carrying all the depression around in my face.

Anyway, I looked at the clock, calculated my wakeup time for tomorrow’s hike, thought about how tired I was from not sleeping well the last three nights, and decided to try going to bed early…now I started writing this post at 11:18 PM. In a former life (as Ms. America? doubtful), I would have been heading for bed at 11:18. Nowadays, I’m still artmaking then. I start to worry around midnight and think it might be time to stop that stuff and move on to the blogging stage of the evening. I’ve been making it into bed between 1:30 and 2 AM for the last two weeks, I think…with an occasional early night, but mostly not. I go back to school in a week. I think I have to readjust the sleeping soon. Anyway, I wrote the post and I’m going to go to bed, kind of a New Year’s resolution on sleep: do more of it and better. Or something. Sleep…it’s what’s for dinner. Nope. That’s not it. Please don’t send me any studies on how a lack of sleep guarantees you will die a horrible and early death. It’s not like I have any control over the process. I’ll get into bed and my brain will revolt against me and wander off into wakey wakey land for an hour or so.

The point was, I didn’t sew and I didn’t iron. I folded. And then I tried to sleep. Wait. I haven’t done that part yet. The cat on my lap is simulating that activity for me. She does it so much better than I do (not hard).

Brain all over the map today. Really. It just sucked. Tomorrow I will force it to be focused and aim for some semblance of what Kathy’s brain used to be. As a backup, I put everything I needed to do on my calendar. All of it. Seriously. If I don’t do it, it’s not important. Until it is.

Guardian Angel

I’m sitting in the parking structure at Radiology downtown. I have 10 minutes before I need to check in. I cried all the way here. I know the odds of there being something really wrong are extremely low, but it doesn’t stop my brain from being upset. I’m not worried, because I know that whatever it is, it already is…something or nothing…I’m just scared. Not too scared to get out of the car…trying to get my eyes to behave, my tear ducts under control. If I look upset, the nurses will be more solicitous and I can’t handle that now. Better that they’re rude so I can be irritated or angry.

They won’t be rude. They never are.

This is the drawing I did back in late June after a followup mammogram.

In June, I had my normal mammogram, and then they called me at school (strangely, I answered) and wanted a followup, but they couldn’t say why. Way to strike fear into a woman’s heart. My doctor called later that day to explain. Whoops. Timing issues. So I went in for the followup (it’s not the first time) and they did 4 or 5 mammograms and an ultrasound and the doctor came in and said there was this thing, deep behind the nipple, but it had been there for three years without changing…but he was concerned. Not so concerned to biopsy it, but concerned enough to have me back in 6 months. So I did that drawing. Ironically, it’s the wrong breast…but I guess I drew it as facing, on the left side. Anyway. It will be my next big quilt, I think. Maybe.

So I went back in today. I wasn’t worried…I was just scared. Those are different feelings. I do my monthly exams. I have no family history. I breastfed for a good long time.

They did three mammogram views and then she said they would call me, and I said, um. Yeah. Can you just have him look now, because I don’t want to have to come back? So she did. And yeah, he wanted an ultrasound. I pack myself out to the “Women’s Lounge” (a separate room in Radiology, so I don’t feel weird about sitting there double-gowned with my clothes in a pile on my lap). I tell them my time constraints (girlchild had her CT scan for today too). They take me in for the ultrasound, and I watch her, watch the screen, watch what they’re looking for. I don’t know what is good and what is bad. She says, “It’ll just take 5 minutes.” Twenty minutes later and she finally says I can clean up, but she wants the doctor to look. “You can get dressed.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” Yeah. I got dressed, and then she came back with the doctor and I got undressed again. Everything is covered with that ultrasound gel now. I think I stopped breathing normally somewhere in there. I sent a message to the girlchild, told her to meet me at her appointment. We already had a contingency plan in case this happened. Her text back made me tear up. She said good luck.

Doctor comes in. His name? Lumpkin. Seriously? (OK, it might be Lumkin, but still!) She does the ultrasound again. Shows him something. He asks about something else. They stare at my breast, then at the ultrasound. Then he smiles and says, “It’s that same thing, a shadow. It’s been there since 2007. It hasn’t changed. I just want two more views on the mammogram.” Gel off, new gown (old one covered in gel), sit in the ~~waiting room~~ Women’s Lounge (I am still not lounging) again. Back in, another two views, which makes five total. Deep breaths. They do the twisty roll thing this time. I’m laughing. The woman is on her knees on the ground, trying to position all of my parts in the right place. I’m looking up at the machine, and someone has put some sort of scented thing on the machine…lavender…to calm us. I’m calm. I’m in pain, but I’m calm. I’m not breathing right, but I’m calm. Whatever it is, it’s already there. It’s been in me for 6 1/2 years or more. Flashes of Aliens movies.

It’s OK. He says it’s normal tissue. I go back in 6 months to my normal mammogram. As long as it stays the same, I’m good. That foreign shadow is part of me.

As I head out for the girlchild’s CT scan, I wish I had my sketchbook. I haven’t drawn all break. No opportunities, I guess. Other priorities. I haven’t done much of anything, it seems. Not true, but it feels that way. Achievement low. Must fix that in the next week.

So I came home and started ironing again…

Didn’t have much time in the afternoon, because I was wrangling with the FAFSA (financial aid for college). I was supposed to know city and state for every college the boychild applied to (I didn’t).

Damn breast is sore. I got all of the torso ironed to the staff, so I pulled it off the teflon sheet and rolled it up on itself…

That’s how I store it until it’s time to iron it all down to fabric. I wanted to finish today, but ended up needing to think about sleep. I am actually fairly wide awake, even now, but I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, so I can’t stay up until I’m done. I do want to get a different background fabric tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I’ll take some of the pieces with me and toss them down on the floor, thus freaking out everyone in the store. Yay me.

In between all this, girlchild had a game…

I graded for the hour before the game…I bargain with myself about work vs. stuff that’s more fun.

Because taking pictures during the night games is totally pointless. I did more embroidery on these.

I’m working on the first two month’s worth. I’ve done all the embellishment in the background color on all 6 blocks, and now have moved on to eyes and feet on all 6. I originally estimated 2 games to finish 3 blocks, so it would be 4 games to finish 6. I’ve put in 2 games’ worth of time on the 6 blocks, so I should be done at next Wednesday’s game. I might be done with grading by then too, if I’m lucky…or at least the grading I can do while sitting on the bleachers. She played half the game tonight, so that was good, but there was all this stupid coaching politics going on, so who knows. I stitch because it keeps me calm during games. Plus I like to stitch. The one guy who’s been asking me about the birds every game asked me if I was done today. You so funny. I’m never done.

Anyway, we had been smart enough to put dinner in the slow cooker, so it was ready when we got home. I exercised and meditated, and finally started ironing really late, unfortunately.

I’m finally ironing the crone’s face…I got all the hair and the cat done, and then constructed the eyes and complicated bits down below on the pattern, so I could put them on top after…

It’s easier for me to see the pieces that way. I think each eye had about 10 pieces in it. She’s a complicated woman.

And I really like how she turned out. Deep breaths. I think this quilt is going to come together and be what I want it to be. I’ll feel better when I see it all together. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show the whole thing before the exhibit opens. I’ll have to go read the rules. You might have to wait until October. That would suck. I really don’t like rules like that.

Tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get it all together…there’s an owl to do and some thorny bits, and then I need to find a new background and iron the whole thing down. Not sure whether I can do that all tomorrow…and Sunday is a bit busy as well. But I’ll try. I also still have a binding that needs to go on.

I finished this book today…Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

I really liked it in the beginning, like 5 out of 5 liked it, but it really wore on my nerves by the end. He has a way with words, but nothing really happened in this book. It was interesting enough, but also irritating. So yeah…down to a 3 out of 5 by the end. It would have been better if it were shorter? I don’t know. I’m going to read some of his other stuff, because I like the words, but these two that I’ve read are apparently not his best, OR he’s all over the map. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really trust GoodReads reviews unless it’s someone I know who reads books I read. Otherwise, every book has been rated a 1 or a 5 by someone.

I have done a good job of keeping up with all the library holds that came in while I was on vacation…I’m not caught up yet, though. It’s been a good run…I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve also been watching Firefly, the TV series that is a Western in space. The boychild recommended it to me, and I’m almost through all of them. They grew on me. I wasn’t sure about the first two episodes, but the last four have been great. The dialog cracks me up sometimes…”That sounds like science fiction.” “We live on a spaceship, dear.” I’ll miss them when they’re gone…I guess that’s a sign of a good show.

So all the angst of the morning is still sitting in my chest, ironically, around about the same place as that shadowy invader, whatever it is. I’m calling it my guardian angel at the moment. Everyone needs one…she might as well reside in my left breast. But all the ironing helped. Getting the face done helped. It was successful. I need more successful, apparently. Eases the sorrow. The pain. The sad. I have this lockbox, open, inside my chest. It’s waiting for my brain to gather up all the feels associated with this pain and put them in the lockbox, close it up and walk away from it. Move on. Let go, says the counselor. My brain is like a pitbull with a steak in its mouth. The brain won’t do it. It picks up a piece here, a piece there, but as it’s reaching for that piece way over there, it drops one of the others. Goes back for that one and drops another. Comedy of errors, of lame-ass behavior, of not really trying? Who knows. I move on. I don’t, but I do. I move on and my brain stays back and tries to continue picking up pieces. I’ll come back when she’s ready for me.

Ironed My Way Out of a Hole…

I was OK. I made it through almost the whole day. Boychild turned 18 today…no longer a kid. Kind of a big deal. I was going through old pictures, trying to write a post about him turning 18, and I lost it. I read someone’s status the other day, summarizing their year…this is one reason I’ve been staying away from Facebook and blogs. People summarize at the end of the old year, beginning of the new…what was 2013 like? Was it good or bad? Will 2014 need to be a little better or a lot better? How can one year, one space of 365 days, hold so much power over us? If the first 6 months were good and the last 6 months bad, how do we evaluate the year? I don’t want to think that way right now. I can’t summarize anything…how to summarize what isn’t over? Anyway, this person talked about having her heart shattered last year.

Sigh. Shattered heart? Naw. That sounds fixable, like I could get the super glue out and put it back together. Just the heart? That’s only one organ…you’ve got plenty more. I feel like Chihuly glass, a whole huge strung-together sculpture of his, hung high in a building, in an atrium four or more stories high, and the cable holding it…it stretches and then snaps…and all the glass comes crashing down onto a stone floor, and shattered…yes, shattered and splintered and gone to dust even, spread all over the floor, impossible to gather all the pieces together, let alone to put them back together. Shattered heart? Nope. Shattered all.

Meditation had me come up with a question I wanted answered yesterday. Today, the same question is asked, but when I’m done sitting with the feeling that comes up (hello sad, my old friend), I am supposed to take the question and leave it on the chair. Don’t think about it and try to solve it. Just leave it and reserve it for meditation. Not trying to think my way to an answer; just noticing the feeling. Is it the right answer? I feel like some people think I shouldn’t still be sad, but I am. So. I am. I need to be able to trust my own feelings. Trust my sad. But I don’t have an answer anyway.

I took the boychild for a walk today…more about that later. Then I ironed…for a long time…

I’m getting closer to done…

and I’m finally feeling comfortable about what I’m ironing. I still think the background isn’t going to work, but I can deal with that pretty easily.

I have all these bits and pieces that can’t be ironed together until other parts are done…this needs the hand that holds the staff so I can iron the bottom and top section to the hand.

I finally started on the crone…

I do the big pieces lined up on top of the drawing, and then move it to the side so I can see what goes on top…

Makes it easier to put everything in the right place…then I finally had somewhere to iron the Mother…

And the other leg came next…with the Maiden attached to it.

This is where I breathed a little easier. It’s making more sense to my brain now. I think. It’s funny that I was so sure of the drawing and the ironing of the fabric, but when I am now putting it all together, I’m not sure. I felt the same way about the Earth Stories quilt.

I got the uterus done just in time to go out for boychild’s birthday dinner…

It must be strange having a mother who is saying, “Just let me finish ironing the uterus down and then we’ll go,” while you’re waiting for your birthday dinner.

Poor kid. We had dinner at his favorite Mexican place…

Grandpa and girlchild calculating tip. Math at the table. Boychild and I tried to find a geocache outside the restaurant afterward (yes, there was one), but we were unsuccessful. It was dark. Made it more difficult.

For his cake, we were thinking about what 18 means: he can vote, so girlchild put a little smiley Obama face on one side (OK, it doesn’t look like him at all) and a cigarette (great). She refrained from adding pictures for joining the military and hanging out at strip clubs and casinos, so I guess we were grateful for that.

He showed no interest in all that other stuff…just the cake.

They left after cake and presents and I started ironing again…

I was on a roll. When I’m ironing, I don’t have to think about sad or New Year’s or shattered anything.

I got most of the torso done, but ran out of steam…

Hands are complicated and that left hand is supremely so. Plus I have to get up in the morning for yet another mammogram to check the thing that keeps showing up and making them do followups. It makes me nervous, but at least they’re paying attention. My life would be so much better if more people were paying attention. So I’ll let them do their followup and hope for the best. It’s all you can do.

I’m about 10 1/2 hours into the ironing…I have about 30 pieces left in the 900s, but I’ve already used some of the 1000s too. I’m guessing I have about 250 pieces to go, so maybe another 2 1/2 hours. I don’t know if I even HAVE 2 1/2 hours tomorrow…maybe…doctors and soccer and counseling. Save the boob and the brain and watch the ball. Tired now. Ironed my way out of a hole. It’s OK…I know I’m going to keep falling into that hole, but at least I keep climbing back out.

Not Resolving Anything…

So. New Year. I hiked…geocached actually…for the first time. More about that later…but it was supposed to be for a few hours and turned into the whole day…something about getting lost, an impromptu climbing of a mountain, some bushwhacking, and a much longer hike than we expected…but all good in the long run. The pro of long hikes like that is that they mostly occupy my brain, especially one that required some higher levels of thinking (well, sort of)…the con is that I’m not getting any art or other life crap done when I’m out there. It’s a balancing act. I have stuff I need to get done. But my brain needs the space. I haven’t figured out the balance yet. Ever? I think I will never find the balance. The other con after a long hike like that is pure exhaustion…I couldn’t get my brain to deal with ironing until really late in the day…um, night actually…so I didn’t get much done. I will have to be better tomorrow.

Worth it for that tree alone…

And these…

And for long stretches of this…the mood was definitely improved today. It’s not a mistake that I drag myself outside on these hikes so much…it clears the webby dark bits of the brain. Meditation helps with that too…I had to come up with a question for today. I cycled through a bunch, couldn’t get the wording right, finally settled on “Why are you still sad?” because the counselor had asked me that too and I couldn’t answer, and today on the way back from the hike, my brain was doing weird shit with hope and crap, and I kept thinking to myself, saying to that PART of my brain actually, “What the FUCK are you thinking? Why does that seem like something GOOD to you? Are you a fucking idiot?” Um. Well. Since it’s my brain, I guess the answer is yes, I’m an idiot. Great. Still got some work to do (no duh…anyone who spends any time with me at all knows that).

Yeah. Well, tomorrow the boychild turns 18. I really shouldn’t call him the boychild any more, but manchild seems weird. I guess he will always be my boychild. Erg. That was sickly sweet. Anyway, presents and cake for the boy…and Mexican food (it’s what he wants). He finished all but one college application today, with the last one not due until January 9. That’s a relief…presumably for him as well. Now we wait. Sigh. And hope. I guess I can’t make him do yardwork tomorrow. He’s used the apps as his excuse for days (really?)…so I’ll give him one more day. Friday he can be Chore Man.

The question of the last 24 hours, everywhere I’ve gone, has been, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” Um. Yeah. Not going there. Not picking an inspirational word for the year either, and I’m not setting any more goals than the ones I’ve been carrying around in my head for the last 6 months. I’ve graduated beyond “survive” to something more like “live,” with some codicils. “Happy” might be next on the list, but I need instructions for that.

Part of my problem with getting to the ironing tonight was that I had only a little bit of this book to go, Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep…

Good book…not horror…more fantasy…a nice sequel to the Shining story, and well-written. The man can toy with your emotions. So I finished reading it first.

I’m still working my way through all the library holds that came in during the last two weeks…I’m staying caught up with all the due dates for now, but I have 4 more books that have to be finished in the next three weeks (some I only have 10 days left on the reserve). Then I can start to read some of the books I got for Christmas. Hopefully. Luckily, I enjoy reading.

After I finished, I finally started ironing at about 10 at night…I started on the Maiden…

She went together fairly quickly…

I’m not sure if she has fewer pieces than the Mother (I think so)…

I’m about 6 1/2 hours in, 670 pieces ironed. Another 6 hours to go? Something like that. I’ve been remarkably inefficient this vacation in terms of getting art done. Oh well. It will get done somehow.

There. I resolve to get this quilt done. Soon. In time for the deadline. Easy peasy. Then I’ll do the next one. And the next one. And in between, I’ll go on hikes. Or to the gym. Does not sound hard. For now? I resolve to go to sleep…

I’ll Let You Know When It’s the New Year…

So this is the magical change over to the New Year, when everything is fresh and you have a new slate and the whole year can be different than last year. Yeah. I bet you know what I think about that. It’s just a day, a night, an hour. I watched some of it earlier, not by choice. I reveled briefly (not really). I ventured out briefly. Then ironing fabric called me back. I spent too much of today asleep (girlchild’s bus was really late…she stumbled in around 4 AM and I didn’t really sleep until she was home), at the gym, or reading. Or just plain procrastinating, trying to give my brain some space to exist with itself.

So I did start ironing eventually, but my kamikaze plan to be done tonight is not happening. Not shocking really. I make plans so I can break them and make new plans, right? I’m not as motivated to finish as I should be. Part of my brain is squawking about deadlines and the to-do list, and the other part is trying to relax and be on vacation. They’re a bit at odds.

So I ironed the mother’s head…

I’m rethinking my background fabric. I think it will be too dark. I also think I need to do some serious threadwork or something…two of my fabrics are too close together. Or something. It may be that when everything is all together that it will make me happier. Until then, I’m stressed about it.

I was less stressed when I came back from trying to be sociable (it’s OK…I failed…) and started working on the bird…

Is it a hawk? It’s something not-raven for once…

And it has over 100 pieces in it, and it’s now done. I’m at about 550 pieces ironed and 5 1/2 hours in. Sigh. Less than halfway done…and the next three days are busy. But I think if I focus better (fuck, what’s the probability of that happening?), I will get done.

I made some more geocaching thingies today, but screwed two of them up by not remembering the instructions…

Anyway, if I have time tomorrow, I’ll do a couple more…

I don’t think it really matters how many I have…

I forgot to take an after picture, but I put two of them in upside down by accident…

So they didn’t flatten properly. Shrinky Dink science is very particular, and I am too much of a space cadet to follow instructions. So I made cookies instead. Actually, I didn’t do too well with those either, but they’re good to eat at least. Do I need cookies? Fuck no, I don’t, but I made the mistake of going to the grocery store after the gym and before eating anything, because I needed to buy supplies for the boychild’s birthday cake, and we’re all just damn lucky I didn’t buy a lot more food. Do NOT go to the store when you’re hungry and depressed…it is just a fucking bad idea.

Anyway…the mood is still rancid, so I’m dragging my ass outside on a hike tomorrow with people who don’t know me (really, that’s better for everyone involved…I can handle my kids or strangers…nothing in between), hopefully to beat my brain into some semblance of peace and calm in honor of the New Year, which again, is just the next day on a standardized calendar that doesn’t really make any sense. I’ll let you know when I think it really IS the new year. We can celebrate then. Apparently there are quail hunters on the loose where we will be hiking (I did not know this was legal, and I’ve never seen quail out here…I think…so I’d like to see one, preferably not shot, and I’d like to NOT see hunters). And then hopefully I will come back and iron the maiden (Iron Maiden, huh uhuh uhuh…) and then move on to the next thing on this beast. If I need a new background, I can decide that once it’s all ironed together.

Anyway, another loser New Year’s Eve for me…wish I could have spent it differently, but such is my life at the moment. At least fabric was involved…that’s always the best way to start a new year. Which reminds me, here’s the quilt roundup from 2013…

Not a bad year for quiltmaking, which was the good news…one is only a detail, since I’m not allowed to show the full quilt until May 2014…but 8 quilts finished (with one about to be finished this week and another within two week’s time, just like last year)…albeit, three were relatively small, but two of them were quite huge. So…achievement…in the face of nasty ass depression. At least I can still do that.

Sideswiped…

I keep getting sideswiped…like 2-ton vehicles slamming past and pulling me with them, too fast, throwing me to the ground. I try to figure out the why, why now? Why today? Is it hormonal? Is there some reason for the mood change or the lack of control of the mood? Is there something that has made meditation become a weepy place again? He talks about not knowing your emotions, so looking at the frustration, the worry, the doubt, and trying to find the underlying emotion to that surface feeling. Dude. It’s sad underlying sad. It’s sad all the way down. It’s just plain sad. I don’t need help identifying the emotion. But I saw something today that hit the sad into overdrive…and it’s not something I have control over…it just is and I, as he tells me, sink my mind down into that emotion and just sit in it…just sit there, like it’s a big overstuffed beanbag chair, kind of sticking to the back of your legs and not particularly comfortable, making noise every time you move…I just sit. And it’s an ugly color too, and those stupid tiny white styrofoam balls? They’re spilling out on the carpet too, but you can’t find the hole. Apparently the emotion should move on at some point. I’m curious when that will happen. What am I sad about? When will it move on? What is the difference between grief and sadness? Tomorrow I’m supposed to have a question for meditation. One? That’s it? Will he magically answer it? There isn’t enough magic in my life.

Yeah. So I didn’t do well with the sleep thing last night, so it makes sense that I’m writing this past one in the morning. I’m not at all tired, wide awake really, wired. I suspect it’s the artmaking doing that. I didn’t get to it until late, but then I couldn’t stop…I did the 100 pieces of skelly…

dead bodies hidden in the ground. Then moved on to a few other things I buried underground in this piece…

This quilt has symbolism all over the freakin’ place. It’s like my depression got a home in fabric. It will be oh so fun to explain. The boychild quite liked this part…

He’s been writing college essays for the last two days and hopefully his mother’s art was not the subject of a huge number of them…he won’t let me read any of them. I spent about 2 hours with him going through and paying for all the tests to be sent to the various colleges, and then going through and sending all of the application fees. He has 5 more to finish, 4 before Wednesday and 1 later next week. Then we’re done…until the acceptances go out, no stress, and I still have to do the FAFSA and we need to try to hunt down some scholarships. It’s all very terrifying, especially when I look at how much money I charged to credit cards today for all the fees. Yikes. Anyway. We’re mostly done until next year, when we have to do it again with the girlchild.

I went to school in the morning to grade the last of the science journals…

I had to do it. I had put it off already for two days…but it was as depressing as I thought it would be. There are parts of my job that I enjoy, but the hard work parts of it just make the rest of my life seem so much worse…so I sat there for a minute, staring out at the empty room (they’re waxing floors on Thursday, so everything is up or out), and cried. Then I turned up the music real loud and graded and wondered what magic miracle was expected of me to get some of these kids to give a shit about their classwork, based on what I was seeing. I probably shouldn’t have done that class last…they are a bit challenging. But getting pressure from higher-ups that makes you feel like any F is a failure on YOUR part, and then going through simple assignments like this? Makes you want to quit teaching and go work for the Republican party. Yes. It’s that bad. It would be easier. I think.

Anyway…politics aside, I’m pushing through the grading best I can, because grades are due the week we go back to school. It depresses me to grade at the moment, so I try to do it in small amounts, spread out over many days.

I’ve been falling down on some of my jobs for an art group I’m in, so I tried to get my act back in gear today. I just need a routine. If it feels hard, I just put it off at the moment. I can’t handle anything hard. I say that, but I’m ironing a million tiny pieces down. Hard is relative.

I’m geocaching later this week, and I didn’t know what to bring to put into them, but remembered I had been given an Shrinky Dink oven and supplies many years back, so I pulled them out and started drawing…

Then colored them in and put them in the oven…

Which is powered by a 60-watt lightbulb…

They came out teensy weensy…

But I think that’s OK. The flame head folded over on itself a little and didn’t fully flatten. I’ll make some more tomorrow.

The boychild is interested in geocaching, so we might do that on his birthday. He’s turning 18 on Thursday, which is more than a little terrifying. Not as terrifying as paying for college, but close. His Christmas present included hiking boots (his request), so I’ve been trying to get them broken in.

We spent a few hours this evening picking up the kids’ dad from the airport; he’s been in Britain for 2 weeks visiting family, especially his mom. Part of my Christmas present came back with him. One thing that always amused me about British TV and books from when I was younger was how important tea was to their culture, but I didn’t really understand it until I lived there. It’s where I got addicted (and I still drink British tea with milk, thus confusing the majority of Americans, including all my students)…this mug was a gift from my ex-SIL and family, and entirely appropriate to my life at the moment…

Tea does solve many problems, simply by making you sit down and drink it properly. Sometimes a cup of tea perfectly brewed and at exactly the right temperature can bring an immense amount of calm to my troubled brain.

So I washed and folded all the red fabrics I bought yesterday (yes, some were NOT red)…

The one on the left was going to be the binding, but it lost out to one of the other ones, which I was lucky to have bought a yard of anyway, because that’s all that was left on the bolt and I had this niggling feeling that it was a better choice than the one above. I’ll try to get the binding on sometime soon so you can see it…but right now, I’m still on a roll with ironing…

I was going to stop after the bird, but the woman was calling to me…above, she is still in pieces…

Apparently she called quite loudly, because I got all of her ironed except for the head.

Which maybe is why I’m still up (but finally getting tired) at holy crap in the morning. Plus the girlchild is coming back from Pasadena, where she’s been working on one of the floats for the Rose Parade. I wouldn’t be a good mom if I didn’t wait up. Actually, if I’d thought I could have gone to sleep earlier, I would have.

Earlier today, Babygirl was helping me use the mouse.

Right before I took this picture, she actually was sleeping with her head on my mouse hand. Ugh.

Then Midnight was standing watch for a while too…

Actually, she spent most of her time sleeping.

Jake went home today, so the cats seem to feel more free to move around. Jake chases them, stalks them. Calli could care less.

Anyway. I’m hoping to iron more tomorrow…it’s taking me about an hour per 100 pieces, so there are about 8 1/2 hours to go. That’s a lot. Hmn. That might be unrealistic, when I look at what else is going on tomorrow. The ironing did distract me for a long time from the sadness that is lurking around and gut-punching me on a regular basis. Meditation made me think about something I had said or done that was positive, and I remembered making an effort to tell these two girls who are in one of my roughest classes that they were rocking science right now (they really are…and the other positive thing I had come up with just made me cry more, so I picked the girls)…they’re both kind of different and went into teen-girl glow mode when I said it. I was just thinking about trying to encourage girls to be more into science through high school when I said it, plus I wanted them to know I appreciated how hard they worked. I don’t get any happy glow out of it, though. I’m supposed to…for making them feel good. But that’s part of my job. Sigh. I think my emotional machine is out of order. It doesn’t react right. And I’m getting this vision of the Wicked Witch on her bike (broom? Wizard of Oz?) cackling that I will PAY, my pretty, I will pay. That I have been wicked somehow and I will pay.

I should probably iron a lot more tomorrow instead of spending close personal time with that part of my brain. It needs a vacation or something. And the sad? It can go fuck itself. I’m tired of it. If it’s going to be sad, be sad about something that’s real, that’s true, not something that was apparently bullshit and a lie. Oh if only it were so easy to direct the mind to be sad about the right things and to drop the wrong things. The creative mind…it kinda does what it wants. We can try to direct it all we like…it will decide how to be.

I’d like to decide to be asleep now.

Loosening Knots…

I’m trying to move on to the next steps for both the in-progress quilts…I keep getting behind on my self-made schedule. Sometimes it’s just getting side-tracked…sometimes I just can’t find the right mood to get to work. Today was more of the latter, I think…a very moody day. I delivered two quilts for a show up in Orange County opening in January, then went to the quilt store to try to find binding for the Love (not love) quilt.

I think I bought a lot of red fabrics and I’m not even sure that the one I chose for the binding is all that good. It’s a little difficult to open up your naked-lady quilt on the floor of the quilt store when there are that many people wandering the store, and it’s easier for me to choose when I can see it from a distance. My red stash is getting low, though, and good reds are hard to find. I’m not sure I really did the right thing with buying more red, but…sometimes, the fabric calls. I was in a bad mood, so that was not probably the best time to go shopping. Sigh.

Money is such a mess at the moment. The car’s catalytic converter is dying or has died, the upper oven in the kitchen is going twonky again, but in the other direction…I can’t afford to fix either of those at the moment, and luckily neither is particularly crucial. The car will drive without the catalytic converter working until it needs a smog check (I try not to think about my contribution to climate change, thank you), and there is a second oven that works fine at the moment. I can try adjusting the oven again like the fixer guy showed me, or I might need another part, which is another hundred bucks or so that I don’t have at the moment.

So yeah. Maybe I should have pieced my binding from scraps off the floor. I do think that sometimes…what am I doing making art and entering shows when money is tight? I have two quilts that need to ship this month too, so that’s more money out. Sigh. I’m sure there’s a balance and I haven’t found it…probably never will.

I did make myself sort fabric pieces earlier today though…

I love the light table for this…it makes my life so much easier…I used to do this on the floor…

and my foot would fall asleep and it would tweak my back. Now it’s a piece of cake.

It took about an hour and a half to sort all 1250 or so pieces into the bins, one for each 100 pieces.

Lots of tiny little freakin’ pieces on this quilt. Seriously. It’s detail heavy. I hope it’s worth it. I hope it looks good. It does on paper.

I started ironing tonight…this is the first 100 pieces or so…

I was going to keep going but (1) realized I hadn’t exercised or meditated and it was getting late and (2) realized the next 100 pieces were pretty much teensy weensy skelly parts…

And it was going to take me forever to cut out all the finger and toe bones…some parts I don’t cut out until I’m ready to iron them down, because they’re so small, I will probably lose them. This quilt has lots of those. Anyway. I’ll do that tomorrow, when I feel a little less tired. Hopefully. I always forget how addictive the ironing is…it can be really exhausting, but it’s also very mind-consuming at times…it eats up all the available space and puts me in a great head place, very meditative and calming. Luckily, that’s what tonight was like…which is why it was hard to stop and do the stuff I knew I needed to do. That bodes well for getting this sucker ironed quickly. I want it done in the next two days. Seriously. Then stitched down and quilted. Yes. Seriously. I can do it. I think.

Yes, there are other things on my list for the next two days…but I think I can get it done.

I’m not sure the mood is better, now that I ironed some, but there is progress. Progress is good, even when it doesn’t fix everything. Sometimes moods are bad. Sometimes you wish you had done things differently, better, so that you wouldn’t be stressing over buying red fabric and fixing an old car so that it might last another 4 or 5 years. Too many regrets. Regrets sounds like egrets. Too many egrets. That is a better picture. I’m going to think about lots of egrets instead.

Sigh. Yes, I have to talk my brain out of the hole on a regular basis.

It didn’t help that I read this today, Joshilyn Jackson’s Someone Else’s Love Story…

I loved this book at the beginning…it was a great story that grabbed on and stuck. I had a hard time putting it down last night, but I managed to force myself so I could get something fabric-related done. I finished it today and…sigh…the ending. Oh well. I still love her writing…she has an easy, lyrical and descriptive style to her stories, and the depth of character is wonderful, but this one fell apart in like the last 30 pages. I was disappointed in the end…it was too pat, too pretty, too perfect. I’ll still read her stuff, though, and in fact, I started reading her books because I read her blog and she is hysterically funny, and that does pop up in her books. Her characters are quirky and the stories are too.

This story had sad running through it, though, and that made it harder to read…just because of where I’m at. I keep reading advice for the depressed, for those trying to be happy, for how to have a better life, and so many say that you should only read/see happy things when you are sad, and I’m not sure that’s good advice. I’ve been reading happy, sad, neutral all along, and the happy is kind of annoying at times, and then even more depressing at other times…like, why do THEY get to be happy when they are such lame-asses or assholes or fuck-ups? Wait, does that mean I am even MORE of a lame-ass? Yes, the brain ties itself up in that knot and I have to undo it…like the knot I took 20 minutes to undo at the soccer game on Friday night, cold hands and all…sometimes you just have to sit there and work the knot until it releases. I’m really good at that. I have lots of practice, both with thread and with my brain. This knot it’s in now? It’s gonna take a whole lot of time to undo. It’s a thoroughly fucked-up knot, all twisted together and hair strands are holding it together, like something that tied itself together in the dryer, tangled and tight and messy. I’m just picking at it with cold hands, cold heart, pulling at it, worrying it, fussing with it, making it loosen and come apart, a little at a time. It’s a stubborn knot, but it will eventually give.

See. I have hope. I always have hope. I don’t know where it comes from, and it often gets beaten down by the part of my brain that sees the world as all gray and oversalted and empty, but it’s always there, like a weed popping up in a crack in the asphalt.

With that, I’m going to take my cold self to bed, where Kitten awaits…

She sleeps on the pillow behind my head, and when she wants me to get up, she hurdles me, chirping the entire time…over and over again until I get up. Hopefully she’ll wait until a decent hour tomorrow morning. That would be a nice change. Maybe the knot will be a little looser too…

Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Deep Shit*

It’s one of those introspective weeks. I want to get more art stuff done, but there is so much other crap that needs doing…plus honestly, spending time with the monsters kind of takes precedence. I say that, but I’m stressed about getting the art done that NEEDS to get done. I have deadlines. I’m not a flake. I can’t ignore them. And my brain keeps getting tied up in knots, tripping over itself. I wish it would just get ON with it.

It doesn’t help that I’m still dealing with grief and depression, or both, or some sort of frittata of the two. Even the counselor was trying to decide which…she thinks I’ve been suffering from a low-level depression for a long time (yup. agree. since about March of 2012) such that I don’t know how to NOT be depressed. But there is definitely a difference between how I was feeling then and how I feel now. Now it is just a dead, empty feeling…a constant sad, even when things are good. The things that made me happy, joyous before? Even when I was depressed? They don’t. I keep doing them. I know I have to keep doing them. The art is part of that. I get a sense of peace from certain artistic tasks, like drawing and tracing, but some of it is just like work, and finishing one part just means there will be more work. There is a sense of relief from finishing a task, but not the sense of celebration, hallelujah, that I used to get. I think that just takes time. Some people think it takes meds. I’m not in that camp yet. I don’t see how that will speed things up…it will just put the emotions off, over there; I will still need to deal at some point. I’d rather deal now…even if it’s fucking slow and hurts like a bitch. I can take it. Better now than reliving it later.

And that just fucking sucks.

Today? Today I should be celebrating my ass off. I finally FINALLY finished quilting the Love (not love) quilt…

Yup. I hunkered down a couple of days ago and thought I would be done, but the thread conspired against me and kept breaking and there was cat hair everywhere and I just didn’t have the stamina.

Yes, it takes fucking stamina sometimes. So it took a total of 7 hours and 36 minutes to quilt that sucker. I’m buying binding fabric tomorrow. I won’t finish it until 2014…there’s really no point in trying to finish it as a 2013 quilt…it’ll age out even sooner.

I started quilting it over the Thanksgiving week break, so it took a month. I was kinda lame during that month though. You have to get into the rhythm to quilt and I didn’t get there. It’s not a huge quilt either…so who knows what my problem was.

I also finally finished cutting out the damn pieces for the Celebrating Silver quilt. Here’s the trash…

I’m scared to throw the trash out, in case I messed up and threw a real piece in there (it happens). It took me a total of 15 hours and 35 minutes to cut all those pieces out…

I started on November 25 and have worked pretty consistently on it. The pieces were fussy…that’s why it took so long. Tomorrow I’ll sort them and start ironing. I realized I probably have 40 hours left in this quilt and only two weeks of break left. Insert panic here. I’m figuring another 15 hours to iron it alone…so that’s my New Year’s Eve plans right there, eh? Yes, I’m a loser. I do actually LIKE working on quilts as the year changes over. Maybe it will signal a better year for me.

Insert conversation with counselor here. We’re having some growing pains, the counselor and I, wherein she believes certain things and I believe others, and the two are not meeting in the middle. I don’t think it’s a death sentence to the relationship, but there is some understanding that needs to happen. Meditation usually helps me with that…it seems less judgmental…more supportive of the shit I am dealing with. There’s the semantics of “letting go” vs. “moving on.” I think I’ve done the first on some level, certainly in my head, but am completely unprepared for the second…and probably that will be for a good long while. It’s not just a matter of trusting others…you have to trust yourself, and that’s a harder deal for me at the moment. I get real caught up in words, in what they really mean. But there was the question of what is making me so sad? Is this grief? Depression? Does it really matter? What did I lose? Did it ever exist? My brain worries these things into the ground and comes up gasping for air and weeping disconsolately. Fuck. Just shut up. This is why I go to the gym and read books…so I don’t have to listen to my mind trouble things out. Meditation has been very relevant lately…when someone else does something wrong to you, you are the one carrying it around. You can’t control what others think and feel…you can only deal with your own response…so that is what I’m trying to modulate…my own response. I need peace and resolution within myself. Everyone else can go fuck themselves right now. I just need to give my own head the space to heal. I’m doing that on my schedule. If you think I should be further along? Well whatever. You can think what you like…it’s not my reality.

This all comes back to finishing…finishing things should feel exultant, joyous, successful…like achievement has occurred…and it doesn’t. I just try to fill the empty space that is now there with another project.

The cats have been helping in here…really…

by leaving fur everywhere…

I had to pack up two quilts for a show opening soon and the cat hair was the biggest issue. I dealt. I deliver tomorrow. Two more to be delivered in the next three weeks. These are not bad problems to have. I just wish they filled me up with some sense of achievement. Instead, they seem to magnify the emptiness. That just really sucks. I hate that feeling.

Jake…Jake was farting heinously tonight…

But we played with him and I think he even got popcorn and maybe some chicken. Big mooch. Girlchild was in a mood, alternately happy and psycho angry. It’s kind of typical for her…

I have to go to a thing next weekend and needed a nicer top for that, so she helped…but really, she wanted to shop (and she did, and hey! The 80s are still back and are still frightening). I managed to get her to stop watching sitcoms for a while so I could finish cutting pieces out (I have a very low tolerance for stupid happy)…

This is the embellishment I finished last night at the alumni game…

Not much of anything, but something. I’m grading stuff too, a little at a time. I’m trying to be efficient, to make lists, because otherwise I just completely forget what I’m supposed to be doing. My brain is on vacation in Tahiti and it’s not answering texts. Asshole.

I finished this book today…Hammered, by Kevin Hearne…

It’s the third book in the series of the Iron Druid Chronicles…there are three more books out in this series, which is considered urban fantasy. The main character is a druid, but there are witches and gods and vampires and werewolves and demons and all sorts of good things going on. This was a good book…the last one, there was some argument about Hearne’s treatment of female characters, but he riffs on that in this book, talking about the macho imperative. I will keep reading the series, but need to get through some of the other books on my docket first.

*the title is from Hammered, Kevin Hearne. It’s how many days feel…better than being in the valley, but still in the shadow.

To Settle My Soul

Christmas Day: The house smells of red velvet cake, then cauliflower soup, and now short ribs. The deviled eggs are made, spiced with fresh pepper and mustard (it’s one of the two things I was allowed to cook). I’m watching The Paradise, a British program set in the 1870s (supposedly an “intoxicating love story”…I’m not sure about either the intoxication or the love, but it’s so far from my reality with the young girls falling in insta-love that it doesn’t hurt to watch it), while trimming fabric for the Celebrating Silver quilt. I’ve cleaned up all the gifting trash and the girlchild is cooking dinner. She’s a freakin’ expert at this point, needing zero help most days, creative in her exploration of food while simultaneously destroying the kitchen. Seriously…it’s now 24 hours later and I still haven’t cleaned it all up.

The day is quiet…

We have parents and dogs and cats, but their dad is missing (yes, he’s usually here), and the girlchild misses him. The boychild may as well, but will not admit to it (yes, he’s covering his face).

Calli is quite happy with her new toy…

And with all attention thrown her way.

I stitch through most of the present-opening. Stitching occupies the part of my brain that likes to wander off into WishLand or Depressoid World. So it’s better to keep it working on something.

Girlchild put on an amazingly presented meal, which of course, I do not have a photo of…or maybe I do on the phone. I don’t know. She even gifted me placemats and napkins for the dinner table, plus borrowed matching plates and bowls from her dad’s house (she preferred his color scheme to mine apparently)…

Impressive. I don’t know where all her cooking/presentation brain power comes from…it must be related to the part of my brain that makes art…the creative bent. But I couldn’t care less about food presentation…it’s just fuel to me…although she makes very good fuel, that’s for sure. I feel exceedingly lucky to have her and her cooking expertise in my life. I am a better cook because of her, and I eat better too (tonight’s open-faced chicken sandwiches with pea pesto were to die for…seriously. I wouldn’t even have made them, because it sounded too weird, but they were damn good).

After dinner, we play a rousing game of SmartAss (you know, like you do). It goes on for a long while; we don’t set an ending time (besides, I won in about 10 minutes on the first round…apparently I was a super SmartAss on Christmas Day…probably to make up for being a Space Cadet the rest of the time). I stitched through most of the game as well. By the end of all the festivities, I’ve managed an hour and 37 minutes of cutting out pieces for the new quilt PLUS I’ve sewed almost everything on the wool birds…

Actually, last night I thought I was done, but I realized this morning that I still have two cotton pieces to sew on…

Whatever. It means I start embellishing at tomorrow’s soccer game. I don’t know if it’s healthy to always be distracting my brain from the bad sad stuff, but I’m getting pretty good at it. It won’t go away all day, though. It always surfaces somewhere: at the gym, in the car, during meditation, when I wake up, in my dreams. There’s no escaping it. It’s just there. I don’t know when it will go away…maybe never.

We usually do a family photo with the kids in front of the tree with whatever animals we have that year. This year, we decided to toss me in there as well, because we have three cats who don’t like each other enough to be held by the same person. Kitten is my cat; she barely tolerates Midnight, the girlchild’s cat, and Babygirl, though she likes me as well, is definitely the boychild’s ward…as much as she is beholden to anyone (she really does channel her previous dead owner’s personality). Calli belongs to the girlchild, and Jake is their dad’s dog, but he was better at sitting still and in place than Calli, so we gave him an honorary spot…

There it is…the official 2013 family portrait. I do have copies of the real-live official family portraits my mom had done a few weeks ago…maybe I’ll post them later. It’s sad that I’m the shortest…by far. Oh well. I never claimed to be tall.

This is my Christmas fabric haul…

Mom says I needed more dirt because I seem to be making quilts with lots of dirt in them. OK. And flesh. I’m always using flesh…although I think some of that flesh fabric might be better as hair. And that black spotty fabric…now I feel a challenge to use it as flesh. Or dirt. Or both. Or not. I did enlarge a bunch of smaller drawings at the copy place on Christmas Eve…I had to go pick up my Sightlines quilt, which has now returned home after almost 4 years of traveling, so I decided to use the copy machines as well, since I was already there and it was on my To-Do list for break. I’ll hopefully be doing some of those in January. I copied WAY TOO MANY drawings, but they’re small. I’m worried about not having anything to do. Crazy, that, really, considering the number of big drawings I have sitting around too…and my To-Do list is staggering for the rest of life too, at the moment. But if it’s 10 PM on a school night and I need some art-related activity to chase away the depression, then I should be prepared. I’m a Girl Scout through and through.

I cut more pieces out today…almost three hours’ worth…

I’m over 14 hours in now…you can see the pile of trash is big. I was hoping to get everything done today, but the bin on the left still has a couple of hours’ worth of pieces to do. So I quit. I’ll hopefully finish tomorrow. Then I can start ironing on Saturday. I got all freaked out about getting done…with everything. I’m going in to school tomorrow to grade stuff too. I can’t let stuff slip, however much my brain is trying to force my hand, make me wallow in shit and not get work done. It needs to grow up and deal. The eye-twitch is gone. That’s good. I’ve been sleeping more…although not well. That’s good. Exercise has obviously been a priority, and that is helping. Spending time with the kids is also good…we’ve watched movies and played games and hiked and shopped (seriously, the boychild stayed shopping with me rather than go home with the girlchild…stranger things have happened!). I appreciate this time with them, because they will be gone soon…off to college and then to their own lives…and I hope they do it better than I did. I haven’t been the best role model for relationships, although I have definitely taught them how to get back up off the ground and survive, despite all the shit. I guess that’s something. I hope they have less shit in their lives…there are people I know who never go through anything really bad…may my kids be in that group.

The title to today’s post come from the PBS show I was watching…”I long for peace…to settle my soul.” Mr. Moray in The Paradise. I actually think Moray is a total ass in this show, but whatever…I’m with him on the sentiment.