Uncomfortably Numb…

My head was spinning itself into a panicked mess today…yesterday…whenever. When I get like that, all harried and freaking out, just drive me to the gym, shove me out the car door, hand me a book, and make me work out until I’ve finished the book. Or hand me my sketchbook and a pen and put me in a locked room and don’t let me come out for a few hours. There should be an emergency meditation program for days like this…you press a red button on the meditation app that says Emergency and it runs and runs until you come up for calm air and the panic is gone (21 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack). I did the first one, the gym and a book. And meditation. I only had time for 26 minutes of ironing tonight, but the exercise helped numb the crazy and push it down into some hole, shove it in a drawer, wrap it up in a box and hide it on a shelf. Whatever. I’m numb now…not comfortably…just pushed everything back over THERE. It’ll come out again, but maybe by then I’ll have some distance, some ability to deal. Some strength that I am lacking at the moment.

I ironed lungs and a cat (21 Objects You Can Find in Kathy’s Quilts). It’s all I had time to do.

I was so numb after everything that I just full on gave up on removing the cat from the ironing board (21 Ways to Remove a Cat from an Ironing Board).

She’s expecting me to pull her off, but I just don’t have the mental energy. I just dehaired the board when I was ready to iron (21 Uses for Tape).

Are you noticing a theme? I actually had a rant in my head the other day about all the posts with numbered lists and how they were driving me nuts…Ten Ways to Use up Turkey, Fourteen Ways to Wear a Scarf, Twelve Ways to Screw Up Your Life…but then I ran into one where I didn’t care that it was a numbered list, because it was actually a well-written and useful list.

I shared this link on Facebook, but it got deleted and then reappeared (FB Gremlins beware)…21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You’re Depressed…by Rosalind Robertson, in response to all those happy lists about how to be freakin’ happy, like it’s something I can buy in a spray bottle at the grocery store and just never got around to using. I liked what she said about creatives and depression: “we ARE the ‘creative’ types around you. We feel more, we see more, and for that we suffer.” I don’t think being depressed made me creative or being creative made me depressed, but being creative gives me a better path OUT of the depression…so maybe I’m the more obvious depressiod in your circles…the rest are hiding in bed and not telling you what they’re feeling or thinking, because they may not even know. I’m out there in your face about it. I’m actually paying attention to how I feel instead of running away or hiding from it. Dammit, I’m going to write my way out of this depression…

It is thoroughly annoying to have people tell you that you make a choice to be depressed when you are doing all the things on that list, like you’re an even bigger failure than you already thought you were…or putting a time limit on your depression. “Well, it’s been X months now, so you really should be moving on.” Rightio. Getting on with that right now. Now get the fuck away from me.

Robertson refers to an article about the upside of depression from the New York Times in 2010, which you can read here (yes, it’s a lot of words…they are interesting words, though, and there’s lots of science in them, and science is often good).

“He cites as evidence a recent study that found ‘expressive writing’ — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes. The reason, Thomson suggests, is that writing is a form of thinking, which enhances our natural problem-solving abilities. ‘This doesn’t mean there’s some miracle cure,’ he says. ‘In most cases, the recovery period is going to be long and difficult.'” Great. Well, that’s what my blog has been since mid-July…expressive writing about how I’m feeling and a little bit about what I’m getting done. I wish it were more “getting done” and less “having to feel shitty,” but there does seem to be a purpose to my madness.

What I find really interesting is that I am already doing most of the things on the list…that I have some inherent ability to know what will pull me out of depression, a toolbox, as it were, and I employ the tools in it as needed to get out of that damn hole. It’s not just up and out, though…it’s up a bit and fall back in. Sometimes you make it further up the muddy wall, just to fall further back into the hole, but up the wall you continue. Slowly. Bleeding fingers, nails pulled back and ripped from trying to hold on, covered in mud from the repeated falls…but up the wall you go. I would argue for me that my natural state is not in the hole. I know what “normal” for me feels like, and it’s not this constant melancholy, as Robertson calls her natural state. I know I don’t belong in the hole, that I’ve spent most of my life out of it. I’m hoping that with increased iron in my diet and an adjustment to my thyroid meds that I’ll see some improvement in moods…I’m not expecting miracles, but some more sleep would be good. I can’t do anything about the hormonal stuff except survive it…the wonder of perimenopause. Fuck those who don’t understand that transition. It’s so easy to be someone who doesn’t have to deal with the hormonal fuckitude.

In positive news, the girlchild finally passed her driving test today and has her license, thus freeing me from spending every night sitting in the high-school parking lot to pick her up. Just to clarify, she didn’t ever fail…her dad’s CAR failed to start and then the second time, his registration hadn’t been renewed, so this was the third try to actually GET to the DMV with paperwork in hand, and she was finally successful. Life will change as we know it. Tomorrow, we go to the orthopedic doctor to talk about back surgery…it will be a difficult conversation, since all three of us are on different pages…should be interesting.

Anyway. Definitely a numb night. From the book I’m reading, “A dreadful array of feelings yawned. Which should I elect to overcome me first? I could not decide. The dog came and put his head in my lap and we sat there until I realized that one of the reactions I could have was numbness.” Louise Erdrich, The Round House. I’m going to let Louise take me and my numbness to bed now…tomorrow is a long day and I really need more resources to survive it than I had today. Sleep might help with that…I read that in a list somewhere.

Damn, I Wish That Were True…

I managed to go to bed at an almost reasonable hour last night, after a few nights of 1:30-2 AM bedtimes (which really doesn’t work when you have to be up at 6:30)…but then spent the next hour NOT sleeping, but crying instead. I tried meditative breathing…it must have eventually worked (or pure exhaustion did…who knows), but I don’t even really know what set me off…some sense of futility. All’s not right with the world. No real sense of purpose to the days. That plodding feeling. Get through this day? Then there’s another. And another. And another. And they are all largely the same. Getting through. Getting by. Making stuff, but none of it feels that good to make…I can’t iron fabrics for 18 hours a day. And the ironing never made me feel GOOD…it was at the end of the ironing, when you would see what you achieved and THAT would feel good. That only happens once a quilt. It’s not enough.

I don’t know how to BE…be happy with what I have and not want more. I want more but I don’t see it ever happening. I don’t even know what I want more of. I don’t hold out much hope for more. This might be it. It seems a very empty life. There are too many Have-To’s and not enough Want-To’s…mostly because I don’t have many wants any more. And then my brain kicks in and tells me I really should be cleaning house. Fuck you, Brain. If I wanted to clean house, I would. When I am already unhappy, why make me do something that makes me more unhappy?

I say that, but there were two floors today that needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. That’s how my cleaning works. It’s not obsessive. It happens in small spurts…out of necessity.

Today. Back to school. I’m thinking I need to make a voodoo doll. I got to a point with this one school issue where if I didn’t meditate, I would have to kill small furry things (not really, but that’s how it feels). The anger, the work stress, the unhappy…I just needed to focus and get it out of my system, so I used the meditation for that, and again, it asked the one question that upset me so much yesterday, and today I tried to change the answer…my brain tossed in another answer, a perfectly reasonable answer…honestly a BETTER answer, because yesterday’s answer was just plain stupid. And yeah. Crying again, because my brain and I don’t agree.

Who am I if I am not my brain?

Healing is such a fucking slow process. I can’t hurry it. I just have to go with it, move what I can, change what I can, do the things that make the day more bearable.

So I ironed…

I did not make the voodoo doll (or five)…yet. Give me time. Those are heart pieces and arteries. I managed to do those and some fire and a spider and web and a uterus and two tattoos and three thunderbolts…I stopped right before the lungs because I realized that even though I was not in the least bit tired (strange that), it was getting late. That was the problem last night…I went to bed and I wasn’t tired yet. I mean, I was sort of tired, but not tired enough to just fall asleep and not have to work at it. So my brain got itself tied in knots and took me underwater into the murk of melancholia. Fucking stupid brain.

I need more exercise I think. Traveling messed with my exercise plan.

So the stuff in color is what I got done…it’s not much, actually…

An eyeball.

It’s kind of pitiful. Oh well. I’m at 12 hours now…at least one more to go, maybe more.

Part of the evening got tied up with work prep and cooking and picking the girlchild up from soccer…

Pretty skies, every year. I stopped to appreciate the sky. Tomorrow, hopefully I will appreciate the sky from home, because girlchild is supposed to finally get her license (I will believe it when I see it). She’s been in a mood lately…stress from soccer and life and everything…so she snaps at me for just about anything, and I try not to react…because when I react now, it’s usually with tears, and that upsets her. Then again, she needs to learn not to always snap. She needs to see that her mood causes other people pain. Or maybe I am just super sensitive. I am.

One part of the meditation question that makes me cry is the reminder that her brother will be gone in less than a year to college, and she follows the year after. And then there is just me. And this little psycho…

Yup. There she is, on the ironing board. Pulled her off another 4 times tonight.

Then she landed on my lap (three times tonight, once during meditation, claws kneading my thighs the entire time, try concentrating with that going on…I have a mind of steel, really).

And finally she tried the back end approach to the ironing board while I was working…she eventually ended up on the back of the chair with front legs on the purple fabric until I jiggled the board a few too many times and she gave up.

Mr. Meditation wants me to appreciate things, be grateful. I’m grateful to my ex for putting up my Xmas lights, even though we have been divorced for a million years now. He knows it scares the crap out of me, so he just does it. Thanks to my coworker who sent me a tiny, live Christmas tree for my classroom…it even has sparkles. Thanks to the kids who remembered their homework from before break and brought it today…and to those who didn’t and still showed up to detention to serve their time. I appreciated the sky this evening. Thanks to climate change and pollution for that. Oops. I didn’t mean that to be negative…but sometimes the ugly is indeed beautiful. Thanks to the kids for continuing to watch stupid TV series with their mom every night they’re here, connecting with me on some lame level that centers me at night and makes it easier to get through the rest of the day. Thanks to meditation for helping me be calmer about the stupid shit that swirls around me both externally and internally. Thanks to the two girls I had as students a million years ago who still remember my name, even though I’ve forgotten theirs (sigh).

And thanks to the part of my brain that pushes past all the sad and yuck and depression and makes up drawings and colors them in and finds the fabrics. I know it was some sort of genetic mutation that caused that part of my brain to exist…most don’t have that talent…and it was sheer stubbornness and willpower that made it as strong as it is today…and that, people, was all me. That’s mine. May tonight be full of sleep and empty of tears…for enough tears have fallen for today…hell, for this year. I don’t have any left to give.

Damn, I wish that were true.

Ironing the Crone

I originally named this post “I Just Want to Sit on Your Ironing Board, Bitch: Stories of a Petulant Cat,” but it seemed like a really long title and I didn’t have a photo that went with it. Just know that a certain cranky old-lady kitty had to be forcefully (claws in the cover) removed from the ironing board about 7 times today. She’s a stubborn bitch. I don’t like cat hair on my ironing board…plus she tends to knock fabrics down onto the floor…

She doesn’t like my telling her what to do.

When I’m not actually ironing, I move the board out of the center of the room…but she still jumps from the back of the office chair to the board (which often ends in the board hitting the floor, because it’s not very stable). You can see all the fabrics I’ve used so far piled up on the right side, some more in the middle. I leave the drawing up where I can see it, so I know what I’m ironing. I’ve had to draw about 10 pieces that I apparently missed before. Whoops…some were double numbers, but some I just plain old missed completely. They weren’t even numbered.

So I have 11 hours into the ironing at this point. I managed three hours today…mostly I got the flesh part of the Crone done…

I used almost all of the lightest flesh color…there is very little left of it…

just little tiny bits in between the other pieces. I still have about 40 or 50 pieces in the Crone that I haven’t done…the heart, lungs, bits and pieces that aren’t flesh or hair, because I finished all of those. So I’m through piece 1122, but I haven’t done all of them. You can see some of them below…

And now I have a bunch more to cut out…which is what I’ll probably be doing a lot of this month.

I managed to finally get my head out of the emotional mud today, at least once I picked the kids up. The morning was a mess, but when I started ironing, I was able to distract the mopey part of my brain with X-Files and a complicated part of the drawing…it really does require a bunch of concentration to try to figure out what color each piece is supposed to be. Sometimes I write notes on the pattern, like what number in the color range a piece is (1-6 on this one), in case I forget. I like to iron an entire body in one go, so I don’t forget where I was…so I have to figure good places to stop and start. So it took three hours today JUST to pick out and iron all the Crone flesh pieces…she’s about 400 pieces, so that’s reasonable. I’ll get the lungs, heart, etc. done tomorrow hopefully…it’s almost done. I have to do an owl and a cat (like you do) and some thorny bits…maybe another 2 hours? Hard to say.

Unfortunately, I also have to go back to school tomorrow. I’m mostly caught up on grading, but the next three weeks will be challenging. I’m going to try to be really efficient so I don’t have a ton of stuff to deal with over break…knock on wood. We’ll see how that goes. I always make plans and get screwed up by real life.

Meditation has moved into a new series, focusing on the mind (like they don’t ALL focus on the mind?)…

Mr. Meditation changed his clothes for this series…there isn’t a video every day…it’s usually every 5th day before the actual meditation. But he wore the same gray sweater for the last 40 days, which was the Discovery Series, and now we have a blue shirt for the Mind Series (another 40 days). I thought maybe you’d like to have a picture to go with my descriptions of what he tells me. No, his name isn’t really Mr. Meditation…I don’t remember what it is. It doesn’t really matter. Mostly I just listen to myself breathe and sometimes he tries to talk me through some process of reflection or being in the moment with my feelings or letting my brain go do what it wants (usually a mistake at this stage of my life).

I was feeling actually fairly settled when I started meditation tonight. I had spent those three hours ironing, although I made dinner and hung out with the kids in the middle of it…I even drew a little. So I’d done everything I could to help my brain settle a bit, but then he starts talking about training the mind to appreciate and reflect (I do OK with that…the reflection at least. I’m working on the appreciation)…and he asked one simple question and I started crying. Not just a little trickle of tiny tears, but a full-on waterfall. Damn brain. I know why. And it’s interesting, because we’re back to the thinking vs the feeling, and I am very good at allowing my brain to have the feelings and work through them. Sometimes my thinking brain gets angry about WHY I’m feeling, why I haven’t been able to get OVER it, and why I can’t just ignore stupid anniversaries that aren’t anniversaries any more, but I think I just have to accept that part right now. And it sounds like Mr. Meditation will be making me work on that for the next 40 days.

Two of my pieces will be at the SOKA University Art Gallery in Aliso Viejo (Southern Orange County, California) from January 13-May 8, 2014, as part of a California Fibers exhibit. I will unfortunately miss the opening; it’s on Thursday, January 23, I think (that’s a school night…not driving that far), but I will probably go up at some point to see the exhibit. It will be a good variety of fiber work from this group. It was juried by Kevin Wallace, director of the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, California. That’s good news, getting work into shows. I will keep working on that.

Art Keeps Me from Flying Apart

So I had art goals for this week off from school…and as always, I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to…but that’s OK. I got a lot done, including grading for school (that’s what I do during all those Avengers’ movies…by the way, someone needs to explain how Captain America’s actor changed his body so much in that movie, and Thor? Love Thor.), which puts me ahead for the next few weeks…that will help. I don’t have a life, so I have more time to get art done, I guess. I have even less of a life over the next few weeks…the holidays suck for that, plus the high-school soccer season is starting, plus tournaments, plus crazy school crap, plus family stuff, plus ex is going to the UK. And that Xmas holiday. Sucks. Whatever. I’ll figure it out. Anyone wanna help me with the shopping? I’m flailing.

I did all the outline quilting on the Love (not love) quilt.

It only took about 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Look. It’s Kitten. I’m not sure why I didn’t get more quilting done. It was hard to just quilt, even with music playing, because it’s too much free time for my muddled little brain.

It gets upset. Angry. So then I had to go for a walk. A long walk. With a dog.

So I did that. And found a British phone booth. Strange.

It was a beautiful day. After about 30 minutes of walking hard and fast with the dog, I was feeling a little better. Less angry. Less sad. Not a good combination, those two emotions, especially while driving a fast-moving needle past your fingers.

Nice gate…

This was my quilting setup…big table with machine (under the quilt), boychild often on the couch or the chair. Headphones on. Both of us.

It really was too dark to quilt at night…on navy blue fabric with navy blue thread. A little crazy. I do this every year. Really. I do. Go back and look at November for the last I don’t know how many years. Routine.

I meant to cut pieces out for the Celebrating Silver quilt too, but that didn’t happen at all. It could have, but I was too tired. Funny, because tonight? I’m wide awake. And it’s bloody late. Stupid brain.

Last night, I managed to clean up the fabric a bit…the mess I’d left before we went to the mountains…

It was fabric chaos…because I had wanted to get halfway through, so through the 600s…but I didn’t. Too much bullshit on Tuesday morning. Couldn’t deal. Need mental space to be able to pick fabrics. My brain has to be able to access that mellow art space where it can color the picture in my head. I wasn’t there on Tuesday morning. Too freaked out. So it waited until last night.

Babygirl has apparently decided ironing boards full of fabric are nice to sit on. Nope. Give it up.

These were all the fabrics for the Maiden, which I got done last night…

She got to be blonde. Her sister, the Mother, was a redhead. The Crone? She’ll be silver. I already know what her hair will look like.

Then I looked at the clock. Super late. I’m not doing much better tonight. I managed to finish off a bunch of stuff, bird and skull and big stick…

Don’t remember what else…I’m only at piece 747, though…so 500 to go. Not ideal.

I thought about starting the Crone tonight, but I’d still be ironing now, and I have to try to get my body back on school sleep time. That means not staying up until 2 AM. So I stopped. I’m 8 hours into the fabric-choosing stage…probably got 4-5 hours left. So it’s unlikely that I’ll finish before I go back to school. That’s OK. I also wanted to finish the quilting, and I’ve got probably 2-3 hours left there as well. Because of the setup in my office/studio, it will be easier to finish the ironing before the quilting, so I’ll do that. If I can finish the quilting in the next week or so and get the binding on, that quilt will get done this month…which is good, because it needs to be photographed before the end of January. Then the other quilt, I’ll need to get it ironed down before Christmas so I can get it stitched down and quilted over Winter Break and photographed before February 1. I’d like to start another one in that time period too, so that’s on my mind. Not sure if I’ll do a smaller one (or two) first, or if I’ll do the next one on my list. We’ll see. I don’t have to decide right now. I just need a loose plan…goals to get through for December. I’ve got those. Make lots of art to distract my stupid brain. Check.

Remember how we needed white shirts for the family photo? I found this one for the boychild…

You can buy it here. He is also planning to dye his hair and do a mohawk (he has a lot of hair, so this could be really impressive). Grandma will love it. Really. (I’m not really planning on doing this. I just dream about this type of rebellion.)

I really want to be a street artist when I grow up. Street artists have this ability to paint and realize it will be gone…sometimes in days…

Amazing how they even paint over the stuff they just painted. I wanna be that free with my art. Maybe that’s my goal in the next year. Plus I want to use spray paint and do stuff that’s really big and looks awesome in timelapse photography. Plus I want to be on a couch and spray paint the ground. I have really simple needs.

And I need this pregnancy app for when I teach human reproduction…

Unfortunately, it’s not free. The useful stuff rarely is…because education has so much spare cash lying around? Seriously…my students would really benefit from this.

My mood today? I got through. I did stuff. I ran errands. I went to the gym. I finished a book, the second in a series…Crossed by Allie Condie.

It was pretty good. More YA dystopia where we try to eradicate anomalies (and disease) from society and realize that would fail because humans have free will and all. Plus love. You know. The ending was a little iffy, but there’s a third book in the series, so they had to set up for that. I would have done it differently, but I haven’t managed to write my breakout novel yet, so I can’t really complain.

Life. I get through it. Art keeps me from flying apart.

Muddling

I just want my mind to give up and let me have a rest from its constant noise. I get that for about 20 minutes in meditation…well, some days I do and some I don’t. I’m getting better at it…not silencing it, per se, but being able to step back from it. It’s the same thing that saves most teachers: the ability to block out all that excess noise and focus on one kid’s voice, eyes, face. Or the voice in our heads…telling us to keep it together, despite the chaos. It works that way now sometimes…I can step back from the sad and the grief. They’re still there, I still feel them in my chest, my gut, but I can stand back, arms crossed on my chest…and watch. It doesn’t make it hurt less. It doesn’t make me feel less sad. But it gives me some distance, I guess.

My life needs to adjust: the purpose needs to be to Live and not just to get through or survive…because that’s what it is now. I wake up in the morning and think about how I will survive the day. I don’t think about how to Live it, most days. When I can, I add a hike or artmaking. That’s closer to Live. I’m not happy about what the Live looks like, but that’s what it is. I can’t control what other people think or do…I can’t even control my own mind half the time. During meditation tonight, I hugged it, my mind. I just freakin’ hugged it from behind, because it wouldn’t turn and face me. Girlchild accused my radio station of playing sad songs all day, and I guess it was true, because I cried on the way to pick her up and on the way to and from quilt class. And to school. And to the doctor. The rest of the time, she was in the car with me. Distraction. My mind was in a bad place, wandering around in the cold and the dark. Someone should have put on some better music for it.

I started this in the morning. I typed: “Just electronically checked in at the doctors office. Cute perky little things ask if I want to try the kiosk. Yes. If if means I don’t have to talk to anyone and say have a good Thanksgiving to people I don’t know but recognize because I’m here all too often. That superficial social stuff. Becoming a hermit. Must be the holidays. Plus I’m a tech person? I guess.” Is the world becoming more antisocial with kiosks? Maybe. I do prefer the self-serve at Home Depot and the grocery store. I’m tired of making small talk. “How are you?” “I’m fine.” “No, I’m not. I’m having a really bad life at the moment. I’m not going to kill myself, which is what people keep asking, but I’m just not having any fun. Or even anything anywhere near fun. Why do you ask? Are you looking at my purchases differently now?” Yeah. So. Kiosk it is. Then no one needs to know that I bought artichoke hearts AND coriander seeds.

After doctor appointments, there was someone I would always call, because the appointments make me feel unsettled, shaky, unsure of my own body. I just needed to check in with someone who apparently cared about me. I can’t burden the kids with my health issues. There are so few health successes. Even today. Doc was all excited about the weight loss, but then wanted to know how. So I told her. She was…I don’t know how to describe how she was. She’s been my doctor for a million years…since the girlchild was born. She was worried about me. She asked if I was getting help, did I want more help, did I want more meds, did I want to hurt myself. She tried to tell me that single women were happier (is that true?). She even hugged me at the end, and that’s why I cried on the way home. I made it out the hallway and past the waiting room and the perky little things and the kiosks and through the parking lot and into the car. And there was no one I felt I could call. I’m sure that’s not true, that there were people I could have called, but my brain was all tied up in whom I would have called.

My numbers aren’t bad. Some are better, but I didn’t get rid of any meds…I got more. Fucking meds. Fucking body. It feels like a conspiracy. How are you supposed to reduce stress if bad shit keeps happening? I don’t know. Mr. Meditation will tell me, maybe.

So a rough day. Discussed holidays with the girlchild. She says to have no expectations. I say it’s not even expectations, because I don’t expect anything. It’s that I had something and now I don’t, and the holidays are a big slap in the face reminder of that. Plus no routine and too much thinking time and it just reminds me and I don’t want any more reminders. And it’s all about survival and not Live.

So I did a lot of fabric stuff today, despite a million hours of grocery shopping and errands and driving (or riding, because girlchild is driving me). I did the fabric stuff to try to counteract the brain muddling through its holiday crap. I wanted to get through ironing half the pieces down, but the errands took longer than I thought…

I did get through about piece 535, though…

So not bad. And I have the flesh run of 7 fabrics now, so it will be easier when I get to the other bodies…

Babygirl was not helping by sleeping on the flesh fabrics…

I’ve done the Mother and the bird above her head…tomorrow, I’ll start on the Maiden maybe…if I have time. I’ve got 5 hours and 40 minutes into the fabric choosing, with probably 7 plus hours to go. I also cut pieces out at our rescheduled quilt class…

Got about two hours into that. And then came home and ironed some more…

Probably worked later than I should have, but I’m wide awake and scared to go to bed when I’m this awake.

My brain really doesn’t need more opportunities to get all worked up at the moment. Someone needs to whack it over the head with an iron frying pan to gently persuade it to sleep. Seriously. It’s significantly late and I am wide-fucking-awake.

Just tell it to stop. My kids try to distract me with stories and videos and movies that we all watch together. Discussions of who is hotter, Thor from the Avengers or Gale from The Hunger Games (the boychild just scoffs at these conversations). Talk of what movies we’ll see later this week…there’s some guy named BatDad. There’s a geeky video of Miley Cyrus infiltrating Key Club. I would probably be OK without all that stuff, but I know they are trying to engage me in life, in Live instead of survive. So I go along with it. It’s OK in the moment. It’s the standing in line or waiting in the car moments where I start to muddle through the muck again.

I thought y’all should see my recipe card for the Nida family holiday Swiss green beans (no French-fried onions were sacrificed for this dish)…

It is well-used, and every year, my SIL calls to get the recipe again because she’s lost hers.

Thankful I can always find it. Thankful for kids who care. Thankful for a doctor who pays attention and remembers enough details of my life to ask the right questions. Thankful for the art…for as long as I can remember, it has been saving me. I hope it never leaves, because everything else probably will.

Out of the Dirt

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

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

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

All the 200s are laid out…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Out of the dirt…into the snow.

Fabric Soothes My Soul

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the boychild’s share…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t get very far…

(the first 100 pieces laid out in 10s)

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

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

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

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

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

Wait. So This Is What You Want?

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

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

Not to be. Must fix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brain Overflowing

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8YaMK4-MYg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making a Stand…Over and Over Again

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

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

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

So it was a day of making a stand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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