Tag: celebrating silver

When the Emotion Ends…

It’s a damn good thing I have a job that allows me so little time to be introspective. I make it through most workdays without having to dwell in the nasty place my brain has dug for itself. That said, meditation seems to be helping. Maybe. Sometimes. Hell, I don’t know. I keep looking at happy, at the word, the definitions, all the silly Pinterest pretty quotes about being happy, choosing happy, waking up happy (do people DO that? Without caffeine? Do they have teenagers? I didn’t think so.).

Dammit. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, changing small things as I can. I’m not going through a midlife crisis here. I don’t want to go out and party until the cows come home, I’m not trying to prove that death is far far away, I’m not trying to change my life into something brand new like that will magically make me a different person. I can’t do most of those things. I don’t want to do most of those things. I don’t want to join a bunch of new groups that have more claims on my time than I already have (seriously, people…I’m still buried in my life…nothing has changed there). I don’t need to be up all night dancing and drinking and hanging out with people…that isn’t going to make me happy, and I think honestly any 40-some-year-old who is doing that on a regular basis has some major growing up to do anyway. There needs to be something you care about in the world…if it’s your job, that’s great. I can see if I were a full-time artist, that would be the case. It’s not, though…realistically it will never be. But I can still make a daily place for art. I don’t want brand new. I don’t want much of anything at the moment…just brief glimpses of contentment, peace, maybe humorous moments (one of my students tried to hook me up with a cop friend of hers today…I tried to explain to her why Ms. Nida and cops aren’t probably the best match, but she wasn’t having it), and anything resembling joy? Well…I will get there. I don’t know when. But I will.

At times, it seems like never. Seriously. It does. But I am resilient. I will get through. To somewhere.

Yes. It was a rough day. Then again, most of them are.

I made it to the gym, though. I’m reading a frustrating book there. It makes it harder to concentrate on the reading. Stupid mindfucks keep creeping in. I have to try to hold on to the person I know I am…the core of me. It’s there. I know. I hear her. She’s pissed. She’s mad as hell. She’s also sad, but she’s mad because of that. I’d watch out for her if I were you. She’s got a sketchbook AND a blog, and she’s not afraid to use either.

Anyway. Meditation talked about trying to keep track of when an emotion ends, because it helps you realize you don’t feel like that anymore…but how do I know when the sad ends? I don’t even know how to define the end of the sad? Even in funny moments when I’m laughing, it’s lurking behind all that. Maybe sad isn’t ending at the moment. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I should give them levels…Sad Level 1, Sad Level 2…or colors…Sad Code Red, Sad Code Yellow. But then I need a rubric and a measuring system (can you see the left brain all over this? I am evenly balanced between the two, if that matters any more). I guess it’s to remember that the emotion is not a permanent state. Logically I know that. Emotionally, I know nothing.

I cut out Wonder Under for a good chunk of time tonight.

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Yes, I should have been grading. Instead, I cut out flames and smoke and rocks and skeleton parts (those are the tiny little pieces). It was a giant pain in the ass. Seriously, lots of tiny pieces and then pointy pieces and just fussy cutting for ages. I’ve been cutting for almost three measly hours now and I’ve made it through two yards…only four yards to go (another 6 hours? Seems light…).

The next yard has body parts and feathers…

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fewer pointy parts, so hopefully it won’t be as much of a pain to cut out. Not that it really matters. It’s time spent making art. It doesn’t feel like anything at the moment, because this is the boring work part, but the next step, the fabric-choosing part…that might be OK. LONG, but OK. I just need to keep making. The making is important. It’s…it’s how I am fixing me. Still broken, yes, but fixing. I don’t actually know at the moment if I’m fixable. I have to assume I am.

Speaking of fixable, my bulb on my digital projector at school has been dying since school started…it’s getting darker and darker and kids can’t read anything. They won’t replace it (at $300 or so a pop) until it actually DIES…seriously, the fact that kids can’t SEE anything is apparently irrelevant. So now I have this dark brown splotch over the left side and it was awful looking, so I rigged this…

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I turn the light off, but shine a bright light on the doc cam base where the paper is…it works pretty well, although I get a shadow on one corner. Yes, I had to MacGyver my classroom…again. So annoying. We have our new computers, too, but the broadcast doesn’t work on them until they do something I don’t understand. AND our broadcast is totally pixelated, which we’re supposed to ignore (it’s very artistic-looking)…an example below.

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They tried fixing it yesterday with no luck. AND we’re getting some type of Google tablet for teachers only in the next month so we can figure out Google docs or something (wish someone would tell me WHAT I’m supposed to be figuring out), because we’re doing some wacky grant stuff in the future, along with Common Core collaboration AND new standards AND I don’t even know what else because I can’t keep track of it all.

Meanwhile, when I borrow the computer cart, 15 of the 32 computers have dying batteries. Like because they’re old and need replacing, not because they’re not charged. It’s a fun technical world we live in. Don’t tell anyone, but I let them use their phones as timers the other day during a lab, because they don’t know how to read an analog clock. I know. Next, we’re teaching them cursive.

Anyway. I’m trying not to wallow in the suckitude. I don’t like all the quiet in my life, the lack of conversation, like the kind where you’re sitting next to someone on the couch or at dinner with them and having a long conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of that damn asshole happiness. That said, it’s not like I had the energy or the opportunity to do either of those things tonight…tomorrow night, I will have the kids and we will talk. It’s not ideal, but it’s all I’ve got.

Throwing Peas

When I’m tired, it hurts more. On a long day like today, what I need is to know I’m going home to a sympathetic ear and maybe a back rub. What I have are two know-it-all teenagers and a drop off and pick up at soccer practice, plus I need to make dinner. I need someone to tell me it will be OK and to sit next to me on the couch and make me feel OK. Someone to help. Maybe they got my text that I’m finally coming home, and they have a cup of tea waiting for me when I get home.

Or not. I wonder when that will stop hurting. The not having.

Girlchild needs back surgery. I know she’s sad and scared and depressed, but she’s been screaming at me since I walked in the door. Teenaged anger, reminding me that I don’t have exclusive rights to sadness. She apologized later. So I leaned over and rubbed the dog’s belly and dripped tears into her fur. She doesn’t care…she just loves the attention. The dog. Maybe the teenager too. I can’t handle that level of demand at the moment.

I feel so disconnected. Like I can’t actually connect…it’s not even a choice. I think that’s why all those “You Can Choose to Be Happy” articles drive me nuts…really? I can? I just wake up in the morning and the hole in my chest and my gut, they’ll just be gone? The ache will be gone? My brain will just give up on filling in the blanks, writing stories? Having hope? Not having hope? Realizing that I was wrong about everything? That I believed and trusted in something that didn’t exist? I wish there were an easy way to work past all that. There isn’t. No happy pill. No forgetfulness drink…unless you were never paying attention in the first place. Then it must all be very easy. I think the people who write those Choose Happiness articles are smoking crack. Or maybe I have a gene, some weird wiring in my brain that doesn’t let me be that perky-ass person. Choose Happiness. Choose My Ass.

Days with too much free space for thinking, but not enough sleep. Or recharging. The two are related, I think.

I choose art. I choose creativity. I choose a visual experience that few others can achieve. I choose Me. I have lived with Me for a long time. Me is not a bad person. She’s conflicted and messed up and emotional and doesn’t see things the way you do. If that’s a problem for you, I don’t know what to say. Me is also pretty truthful with you. She often makes decisions that benefit you at her expense, because she cares about you. Me does not always make the best choices for herself because she is looking out for other people. This might be why Me is doing the hermit thing at the moment, because if she doesn’t take care of herself for a while, there will be no Me of which to speak. It’s easier to take care of Me when everyone else is gone.

I had professional development all day and then a union meeting, so I was at the District Office for entirely too many hours…with almost no caffeine (mistake) and food I shouldn’t have eaten. Not a good combo. My brain had too much time to wander.

I came home briefly and had to shuttle girlchild to soccer. Yes. She needs back surgery and she’s still playing. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. Pain is an interesting beast. She can’t actually make the injury worse. So we’ll see how much of the high-school season she gets through as we wait for them to schedule the surgery. I’m the mom. I have to be the strong one. I have to manage her freakouts and not have any of my own. She is going to be depressed. Soccer is a huge part of her life. Not having it, even knowing that she WILL have it in the future, puts her in a deep hole. I know that hole. So I have to try to hold her up, out of the hole, from within the hole where I have been for over 4 months now. Hard job. Need stronger muscles.

Dinner happened between drop off and pick up and then exercise and meditation. The days have some routine to them…maybe too much routine. I don’t know. Is it better to have a routine I can depend on and that doesn’t challenge my limited emotional capabilities at the moment, or is it better to shake it up? This weekend has some opportunities to shake it up. I don’t know if I have the energy, mentally, physically, or emotionally. In meditation, he talked about how emotions change quickly, how you can go from one to the other, and we usually only notice the actual change. I change from sad to really sad to painfully sad. Sigh. Deepening sadness. Tinges of sad. Sadness followed by a grief chaser. There isn’t a lot of relief from sad.

Choose to be happy, my ass. I just keep going. Someday I’ll get somewhere.

I had a little Wonder Under cutting time…

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Not a lot. It’s slow going…lots of teensy weensy pieces with really annoying and complicated shapes. Stupid designer. This is going to take me a lot longer than the other quilt.

I’m still a total klutz…I mean, I’ve never been a particularly graceful person. I’m the queen of spilling things. But it’s been worse in the last few months…this was a good one. Making dinner, had the strainer full of peas, draining water, and went to put it in the bowl with the pasta and somehow (SOMEHOW) hit the cupboard door (which is at head height…no, I don’t know how I did it).

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The dog was very excited. Apparently she likes peas.

Am I depressed? Yes. Did I cry today? Fuck yeah. Multiple times. Did I laugh heartily (or maybe just like a crazy person) when I threw peas all over the kitchen? Damn straight.

Bring on the Happy, Dammit…

First of all, I am moving on to the next step on the Celebrating Silver quilt. I might pinbaste the other quilt this week, like on a night when I get home before 9 PM maybe. I will be quilting it over the Tday weekend, so it’s not a rush. I do need to get started on Silver though…ideally getting some fabric cut out before that week as well. Cutting out Wonder Under is relatively boring. I watch TV while I’m doing it, but it’s also nitpicky and fussy, especially with all the tiny little pieces, so it’s hard to start when you’re already tired, because it often feels like work.

But I did it anyway, because I’m persistent (and crazy) like that…

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I didn’t do a lot, 45 minutes, but it’s a start. I got one yard cut out, but it was a yard with lots of long big dirt pieces in it. If I work on it every night, it won’t take very long, and then I can start picking fabrics for that one as well, which means I need a background fabric, which means I have to make a decision about the color of the background fabric, which means I have to start coloring that sucker in my head. No problem. Especially if I have another insomniac night when I wake up like three times for no apparent reason and can’t go back to sleep. Meditative breathing got a real workout today, starting about about 1 AM. At least I’m using what I learn in meditation practice, eh? I’m hoping that between the lack of sleep two nights running and the bitchy workout I did at the gym that I can sleep through tonight…because little sleep makes Kathy really sad and unhappy and that’s not good.

I read an article today about 10 simple things you can do today that will make you happier (backed up by science)…the article is here. Is it OK to get irritated by articles like this? I was angry at first, because they make it sound so easy and it’s not that easy for me at the moment, but when I read it the second time (no, I’m not obsessive, shut up), I realized I do most of this stuff already…

I do exercise a lot. I’m revising HOW I exercise, but I don’t think adding 7 minutes/day is going to make a difference…I’m already over 9 hours/week. Wow. That is a lot.

I don’t sleep enough, but hell, it’s not for lack of TRYING. My biology is fucking with me. How do I deal with that? I can’t force myself to sleep more. My brain wakes me up, completely wired, and refuses to go back to sleep (last night truly sucked, and I’m convinced a lot of it is hormonal).

My commute is 2.47 miles. I could walk to work if I didn’t have to carry all that teacher stuff.

I do hang with a small number of friends and family. I could improve on this…but is it quantity or quality? I vote for the latter. It’s on my mind and I’m taking steps.

I could go outside more…although teachers do spend more time outdoors than a lot of office drones. I get to stand outside between each class and walk back and forth outside regularly. I could add to that…not sure how, but working on adding some hiking to my exercise repertoire (more hours!).

Help others, 100 hours/year. Now, does being a teacher count for that? Because I feel like all I do is help others some days, when some days maybe I should spend more time helping myself. I get all helped out. The article talks about spending money on others (being a teacher definitely qualifies for that). So I spent a ton of money on my students and about 6 hours a day for 183 days a year. Seems like a lot.

Practice smiling. Despite the depression, I do smile and laugh every day. Sometimes it’s some dorky kid thing (whether it’s a student or my own children); sometimes it’s something someone wrote (Tanya, Sion, and Monique are good at making me smile). Sometimes it’s that dorky video of cats. Or dogs. You know what I mean.

Plan a trip but don’t take one. OK. That’s just depressing. BUT…that said…I realized yesterday that there were some places I wanted to go, and yes, money is incredibly tight, but at some point in my future, the kids will be gone and on their own, and I could travel, and I am no longer limited by…um…well…certain factors that limited me, shall we say. I talked to my SIL years ago about going to India together…

India

because neither of our significant others wanted anything to do with that trip. I want to go to Antarctica…

antarctica

the Galapagos Islands (can you say science teacher? Iguanas that swim!)…

Galapagos-Islands

Hawaii for the volcanoes and that park you have to walk into…

volcano

I found a friend’s picture of Machu Picchu from when she went a few years ago (at least, I think this is her picture)…

peru-machu-picchu

All those places…the Mayan temples, the Egyptian pyramids, all the places I’ve seen in pictures and read about, minus the tour guides and that crap. I just want to go. So I guess I can plan for that, even if it’s 10+ years in the future and I don’t get everywhere I think I want to go. Even if I’m going by myself. There was some animal reserve on the West coast of Chile where only a certain number of people were allowed per year. There. I want to go there. So. I guess that’s a plan. Of sorts.

Meditate: yup. doing that. every day. So there, brain. Take that.

Practice gratitude: I talked about this yesterday and how it goes against my nature. But if you look back at my years of blogging, I do show gratitude…for good books, good movies, good art, being able to make art, pets, kids, donuts, stupid shit, beautiful landscapes. I do it all the time. I just don’t use the words “I am thankful for…”. Maybe it’s just the triteness of those words being trotted out every year in November that I object to…the being thankful for the stuff that keeps me sane and here on the planet? I can do that. I do it all the time. I just don’t label it properly (much like the water faucets in my shower, says my plumber…I blame Dad for switching them around). Tonight? Tonight I am thankful for apples and a decent cup of tea. In a minute, I’m going to be thankful for a warm bed and a Kitten. I’m hoping to be thankful for a reasonable amount of sleep. Did I cry today? Oh yeah. But I still did the stuff I needed to do and even some stuff I wanted to do. I’m thankful for Brussels sprouts, however weird that is.

So that’s it. I’m doing all the things that should be making me happier. I need to sleep more and go outside more. OK. I’ll do that. Bring on the happy, dammit.

Half Asleep with Its Tongue Hanging out

How to distract a grieving mind? Just give it stuff it likes…the gym, a good book, some fabric, time with kids, a task so close to being finished, tracing Wonder Under. Then try to bring it back and focus it on itself? Not happening. I wonder how healthy it is to constantly be trying to distract my mind from its work, its pulling apart the grief like a stuffed dog toy, going after the fluffy insides to spread them all over the carpet. Everyone’s had a dog like that, right? It’s Christmas, you give the dog a new toy, and an hour later, it’s all over the floor and they look perturbed…and they’ve probably swallowed the squeaky mechanism.

Pulling the grief apart is taking much longer. Sometimes I have to distract the mind from its task just so I don’t feel like I’m sinking under. Sometimes you just have to get stuff done…I am a highly functional depressoid, apparently. I have a couple of books I’m reading about loss and being and stuff like that, but my brain gets so tied up in them, and one of them, while I’m reading it, I just cry. So I can only take it in small amounts. I still need escape…art, music, movies (not many of those lately), books, the gym.

The meditation app is talking about feelings, about labeling them like yesterday with a type, but also deciding how we are dealing with that particular feeling. It’s easy for me to pick the feeling…I really only have one or variations on it: sadness. I guess there’s loss and grief, a variation, and sometimes misery and often tension is there, but that’s a much more physical feeling. When he says to check in with the physical body, from the head to the toe, my gut automatically tenses up multiple times, not something under my control, some psychological thing. The counselor asked me to name it once, name the feeling, and I called it loss. And as soon as my gut tenses up in that physical check-in, here comes the sad, sweeping over me, through my chest, my eyes, that’s when I start to cry. Sometimes it’s sobbing and sometimes like today, it’s more like a convulsive uncontrollable thing, and maybe only a few tears make it out. I cried at the gym today. Can’t remember why. Some thought, some song on the iPod, some random-ass thing as I beat myself up…physically and emotionally.

He asks about the feelings: do I want to prolong them? I don’t think I do. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too hard to let go of being sad. I know I’m trying to, but the girlchild says there are things I should be doing, things that are hurting me that I could get rid of or avoid, and I don’t. I don’t think I am trying to prolong anything…I am just having a hard time letting go. When I am ready, I will. I don’t know when that will be. I’m aware of it, at least. Do I hold on to feelings? I don’t think I’m allowed to…I often have to cut off a feeling so I can get things under control wherever I am or wherever I’m going. I can’t sob at the gym. When I get to work, I have to wipe my face and get out of the car and go to my classroom. I don’t cry all night. Am I resisting the emotion? I don’t think I resist them. I think I let them be. I don’t think I could resist them. I am beyond the days when I could push emotions down into a box and squash them down there until they explode outwards. That’s not really me. I’m not sure I’m letting the emotions go when I sit with them like he wants me to. I think I let it go in the moment, like releasing one balloon, because in reality, there are 50 trillion balloons and releasing one isn’t a problem…there are still 49 trillion and blobbity blobbity left. So even though I’ve let the balloon go, the emotion is still there, looming above me.

It was a physically painful day. Being a woman…sometimes it just hurts physically and emotionally, and you have to wait for it to be done and move on. It makes the days sometimes more difficult simply because the body is going to do what it needs to do, and you will just have to wait on it, be with it, deal with it…like childbirth…you relinquish control to the process and just do the work…and at the end, if you’re lucky, you will push that baby out…but it’s not something you ultimately have control over…which includes the child once it’s out. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Today…even standing and sitting were painful. Deep breaths.

Today things were just painful. So it was easy to distance myself from emotion and physical pain. I did what I needed to do. I’m good at that. I can be relied upon for that.

You can hear how distant I am, can’t you? Everything that is so painful is over there…way over there…by the river. I’m standing up on the hill looking down on it. The river is sparkling in the morning sun, and there is a breeze, and everything is washed clean by the rain. It’s not exactly pretty or enjoyable…but it has promise. At least for now.

I finished the Wonder Under on the Celebrating Silver quilt. Eleven hours and seventeen minutes.

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Looks to be about 5-6 yards of Wonder Under…I started October 13, finished October 28. I didn’t work on it October 24 or 25, but I worked on it every other day. The shortest amount was 24 minutes in a day; the longest was an hour and 16 minutes. I get to do art for about an hour a day, on average, during the school year. Sad but true. Next I get to cut them all out…that should take less time, but not by a lot.

I like that there is progress, that I am creating, making things from nothing.

I’m a little over 5 hours into cutting out the fabrics for the Love quilt…I’m almost done with that. It’s got fewer pieces…and it’s smaller too. I think I’m going to try to iron it together before I cut Wonder Under on the other piece…I’m just looking at due dates and trying to be logical. I know, me? Logical? What the fuck for? I am pretty organized, though…that’s how I get done as much as I do. Plus writing makes me accountable to myself for getting stuff done. If I didn’t write it here, I wouldn’t feel as much pressure to get it done. The second bit of pressure comes from not feeling so useless in my life…if I can get some art done, get a bit done every night or most nights, and I can see progress over time with that, then I feel better about my own existence…it’s not a purpose…or maybe it is? I don’t know. It gets me off the couch. It gets me away from the computer, which isn’t really a source of happiness for me at the moment. I can look back at all this trauma and think, well, at least you made a shitload of art, eh?

Anyway. The girlchild sent me this…

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and this…

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they took the dogs on a hike and Calli’s tongue tried to take over the world. That’s kind of how I want to leave this rambling post…half asleep with its tongue hanging out.

It’s Complicated. It’s Messy. It’s Me.

While tracing the crone tonight, I feel the brain anxiously scrabbling at me, trying to draw me in to its worry and pain, but I focus on each piece, drawing it as accurately as possible. I wonder how I would have drawn the crone if I had drawn her before all the bad happened. Would she look so worn, so world-weary? Would I have made her eyes so bagged and wrinkled? Would the cracks in her exterior have shown up? Is she a better piece of art (in progress), a more accurate depiction because of my own recent suffering?

I hate believing that artists have to suffer to make good art. I would like to think that our suffering often draws us (or drags us, as someone recently wrote me) toward creative endeavors as a way of dealing with…processing the pain. Then again, there must be artists who never suffer, right? I don’t know the answer to that.

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I am close to the end. I am on piece 1145. There are 80 more pieces to trace. Then it will be on to a different type of meditative act, that of cutting all those pieces apart. I might need to divert some time and energy to the cutting out of fabric pieces for the other piece, the one that needs to be done by the beginning of January, which is drawing closer. The time of year that I hate so much is also drawing closer, the holidays. No break from that this year.

Speaking of breaks, I realized I had been avoiding staying home on Saturday nights…that I had spent over 9 years going out every Saturday night, although usually just to movies and dinner, but money is tight and I spent my weekly budgeted allotment for entertainment on Thursday night, plus I have a lot going on this weekend, lots of stuff that has to get done, and I was feeling overwhelmed, especially since I didn’t do any real art stuff two nights running. And then I was trapped here for 4-plus hours because the oven has been seriously malfunctioning (again) and I was waiting for the fixit guy to show up…luckily, it was the same goofy guy from two years ago who put in the last known thermostat for my oven in the entire world (seriously), and he took it upon himself to MacGyver a solution…

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Yup. He didn’t have the right type of screwdriver to adjust the thermostat (long skinny tube with a tiny adjustable screw at the end of it), so he borrowed a wire coathanger from me and made one. Seriously. In my kitchen. And then he tutored me on how to use it and left it with me, and didn’t charge me for labor (I provided the metal). Worst-case, this will be a short-term fix and we’ll have to find some other ghetto option (he wanted to make sure I understood the after-market options would make my kitchen look ghetto…really? More ghetto than it already does?). Because the alternative is $1800-3000 that I don’t have to get a new one in that space. Or just build a fire in there, but that will upset the girlchild, and we don’t want that. Her dad’s oven is also on the fritz and he won’t get his fixed, so she can’t cook anywhere at the moment.

I did the grocery shopping on a Saturday night, like a loser. Yeah! I bought radishes. Exciting. I mailed my nephew’s birthday present, finally. I found incentive stickers for my classroom. These were all things that had been on my list. Tomorrow is my quarterly California Fibers’ meeting, as well as two soccer games, both of which I will miss due to the meeting. I have to plan for school and find my way to the gym.

So I decided when I got back from the grocery store that the best thing I could do for myself tonight was to just slowly experience the evening…do things I wanted to do, and maybe some I needed to (I wrapped all the UK Xmas gifts while he was calibrating the oven…they need to ship out soon)…

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I knew I needed to prep the last three month’s of Sue Spargo’s birds to take with me on the trip to Houston (lots of hours on planes). I kind of stopped working on them when I almost burnt the house down with the August package. Whoops. But I need to get going on them. I don’t really NEED to. It would just make me feel better, and they’re easy to work on when traveling, unlike some of the stuff I’m working on at the moment. So I took a few minutes and did that…

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I ate. I made dessert. I didn’t eat enough today, so it was OK to eat dessert (I ate real food too, don’t panic). I exercised (I cried during that because of the book I’m reading while on the bike). I meditated (cried during that too, but that’s OK and normal). It’s been a sad day, week…full of loss and realizations and things that are just hard to process…like a bad British pub meal sitting heavy in your gut. Either direction it goes, it’s going to hurt. Cry it out. That’s all I do. Once you’ve cried it all out, though, there’s a quiet sense of peace. It’s not happy, it’s not joyful…it’s just quiet. And some of the sadness is just gone for a while. It’s not overwhelming any more.

I also spent a lot of time petting cats (and dog) today.

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That one sat on my lap for a while and I spent some concerted effort smoothing its fur and scratching its head. It was very appreciative.

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That one asked for attention, rubbing around my ankles until I petted it…coming up near me while I was tracing and head-butting me until I paid her attention. Kitten is waiting for me to come to bed so she can curl up next to me and vigorously clean her nether regions, and then wake me up at my school-alarm-clock time, which is too early for a weekend wakeup, not that she cares. Close attention paid to the fur-creatures seems to soothe me for a moment. Plus they don’t care if I’m crying. Midnight will even help by cleaning my face for me. She often sits by me while I’m meditating, if I’m in the living room. She cleans herself to the sound of the meditative guy on my app. If I’m in my office, it’s Babygirl who’s listening, perched on the back of my chair, behind my neck.

I wonder what they think about my meditation. Or my crying. The food giver is sad. We love the food giver. She pets us. We must sit close to the food giver and purr on her (shades of Margaret Atwood’s Crakers). Then she will give us more pets and more food. And it will be good.

I got this huge long spam comment on my blog the other day…it was all like this…

Your {story-telling|writing|humoristic} style is {awesome|witty},
keep {doing what you’re doing|up the good work|it up}!|
I {simply|just} {could not|couldn’t} {leave|depart|go away} your {site|web site|website}
{prior to|before} suggesting that I {really|extremely|actually} {enjoyed|loved} {the standard|the usual}
{information|info} {a person|an individual} {supply|provide} {for your|on your|in your|to your} {visitors|guests}?
Is {going to|gonna} be {back|again} {frequently|regularly|incessantly|steadily|ceaselessly|often|continuously} {in order
to|to} {check up on|check out|inspect|investigate cross-check} new posts|
{I wanted|I needed|I want to|I need to} to thank you for this {great|excellent|fantastic|wonderful|good|very
good} read!! I {definitely|certainly|absolutely} {enjoyed|loved} every {little bit
of|bit of} it. {I have|I’ve got|I have got} you {bookmarked|book marked|book-marked|saved as a favorite} {to check out|to look
at} new {stuff you|things you} post…|

Like I could choose the words I really wanted to read and come up with my own message. I was amused. It’s almost like poetry. Love poetry of a sort. OK. Not.

I read this blog from start to finish…I think she liked one of my posts and I read one of hers, and then I read the rest. It’s not a lot, but it’s an interesting read. Things like that always make me question my OWN depression though…we always wonder if we have the right to be depressed, doesn’t someone else have it worse? I know people who have actually SAID that to me (not this time around), but I write them off pretty quickly. There’s a lack of understanding there. I think most people around me are trying to be understanding and supportive, and I don’t give many guidelines on how to do that, because I honestly don’t know…and yes, dear counselor, I’m pushing people the fuck away because it’s people that hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt. Everything I do is self-protective and based on years of practice in protecting myself, but there hasn’t been a lot of experience I’ve had with not needing that protection. It’s not my self-protective behaviors that caused this. They certainly didn’t help, but they weren’t the source of the problem. The source was not in me. My issues…well, I’ll get to them. When I can handle everything else, then I will get to them, and I will peel off the armor again, maybe, a little, and honestly…if you want to see the fucking armor peeled off, look at my art. There it is. It’s all hanging out and in the open…this is probably why I find it so hard to STAND next to my art and explain it. Because that IS the deep core, the inside, the painful emotional part. And you want me to own it? (I do own it…I just don’t want to explain it to you. You look at it. You get something out of it. You react to it. I put it out there. Don’t make me explain it.).

One of the things I like about the Fifty2Letters blog is that she posts art, really interesting art, as part of every post. And she writes well. And her story is compelling.

Reading other people’s stories…ideally it helps us suss out our own? My story…it’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s me.