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.

Distractions

Have you noticed that I haven’t been posting about emotions and grief and all that crap? I preloaded two benign posts (I put all the pictures in before we left Tuesday) so I could write two posts up in the mountains without having to think too hard. I figured I would have issues up there, and I did. The emotional stuff…it’s heavier now with the holidays. I was so relieved, even happy last year at this time about an issue that I thought was finally solved, that I could finally feel comfortable about the holidays and how we dealt with them, and I guess this year is proof that I knew nothing. That nothing is permanent or works out…and yes, I know that’s negative thinking, but the holidays sort of bring that out, you know? You have expectations, and this year, I had none…and I got that. Nothing. I got nothing that I really wanted, because who the hell knows what I want? I’m just moving through the days, doing the stuff people expect me to do, but not happy about any of it. Living in the moment? Really just trying not to think at all. That’s one issue I have with this concept of living in the moment…if you don’t look forward at all, you can’t change what’s happening. If you don’t look back, you can’t change where you are. In the actual moment, I don’t do anything but live THAT moment. And that doesn’t change anything for me. I need change. I need reflection.

We go to Lake Arrowhead every year for Thanksgiving. This year was no different.

We left Tuesday. The plus is that the girlchild wanted to drive and she’s fairly competent, so I sewed birds until we hit the mountain…

Calli slept in the back seat with the boychild…

She’s a very good car dog…

As long as you don’t mind her sleeping on you. She did have an extended back seat…we put the ice chest behind the seat and covered it with towels so she COULD sleep that way, but it’s more fun to be ON someone.

Traffic wasn’t bad. The weather was nice.

And I cried on and off. Music set me off. Plus the holiday itself. And stupid memories. Hard to shut those off. Just stitching, my brain has too much time to wander off into sentimental crap that won’t help it. It does it anyway.

I don’t feel good enough. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t the right thing. I know that’s not about me, but it doesn’t make it hurt less or feel better. It really just feels like shit. I wasn’t worth working for…and that’s happened twice now. Please don’t say “you’re better off…” because that just ignores the pain I’m in right now. It may be true…I certainly got there in my head post-divorce and still believe it, but it doesn’t make any of it feel any better while you’re living it. All those things we say and write…they are so meaningless, and sometimes downright cruel. Just say “I’m sorry.” That’s all you have to say. You can’t fix it, so don’t even try. There really isn’t anything you can say that will make it better. You can show me some lame comic off of Reddit or a stupid Vine video of BatDad…that might help…once.

On Tuesday night, the kids and I went to see Catching Fire…

It was good, although I almost ended up in the boychild’s lap during the baboon scene. He is very tolerant. I wrote this down during the movie, a quote from President Snow’s daughter: “Some day I want to love someone that much.” Snow answers, “And so you shall.” Even the movies conspire against me. I had a conversation with the boychild…something along the lines of, “you’ve watched your mom cry for 5+ months now…keep that in mind as you are dealing with women or anyone else in the future…don’t run away…make sure you communicate and be responsible for your actions…don’t you dare do something like this to someone else. It’s not OK.” He says he knows. In the moment? Who knows what he will do or think or feel. He is very kind to me, though. Then again, I’m mom.

This was Tuesday night’s sky. It helped, briefly. Nature helps. Beauty helps. Briefly.

I felt bad about writing about depression and grief on Thanksgiving, so I just didn’t write. I mean, I wrote here, but I didn’t post any of it. I was there with my family and friends and I should have been thankful for food and time off and people who love me, but I’m not. I’m in that mind space where I’m just surviving…I’m trying to tell that whiny voice in my head to shut up. I’m not reading blogs, because I can’t handle other peoples’ happy or thankful at the moment. I’m staying off Facebook…same deal. I have nothing good to say…all I can say is wow…this still sucks. Thus is depression, and it has its claws in me. I will get away, but not today. Today I will do what I need to do to get through, and I will try not to think about last year, because how can you now be thankful when you have less and what you have hurts all the time? And that is depression. It’s not something where I can just get up and make a decision to be OK. I have to work through it.

My dad gave me an article about the difference between being lonely and alone: I still feel lonely in a room surrounded by others. I’m not ready to go out and party. I’m still hurting and sad. It’s a sign of how deeply I was committed to what I had, how deeply I was hurt. Respect it. Let me find my own way, in my own time. I’m alone because that’s all I can handle. I’m lonely because I haven’t figured out how to fix that yet.

We came home today; I drove down the mountain. We had Pandora playing most of the trip off the girlchild’s phone, and tried a variety of ways to rig the speakers…this was NOT the best choice…

Boychild finally typed up his essays for the University of California college app (due tomorrow)…in the back seat of the car…

Calli had her head on the keyboard for part of it. He has now officially applied to two colleges…only eight to go (seriously). I’m feeling a little less stressed, or a little more stressed, depending on what part of his going to college I think about…paying for it or sending him off or having finally started the process or I don’t know. His actually getting in? Scary stuff. Paying for all of it while trying to budget for Christmas is a whole ‘nother issue.

We switched drivers at the bottom of the mountain (I get carsick easily, plus didn’t want to white-knuckle the trip down in the rain)…

Calli was awake for that (briefly).

Then I went back to sewing, in the rain this time…this is where the speakers ended up…

More crying on the way home. Girlchild notices…doesn’t say a word. I cried on the way up because she had been yelling at me, typical teenaged stuff, but I just couldn’t handle it. On the way back, I don’t even know what set me off…songs…the trip…my brain. She said sorry on the way up. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

I didn’t manage meditation up there at all…too tired by the end of the day. I think we saw three Avengers movies in the last 5 days, plus lots of people and food (more about that later). I really should have meditated, but would have just fallen asleep in the middle of it. I kept having dreams and nightmares…mostly dreams that turned into nightmares…makes sleep a bad place to be. The house was on fire, I kept going back for stuff, someone was helping me. Kids were little; I grabbed electronics and chargers. I couldn’t get to my sketchbooks, clothing, or meds. Calli was the last thing I grabbed. The house gets sprayed by something, but it’s not helicopters, it’s people flying through the air with their arms outstretched, spitting water from their mouths. It’s not enough. I woke up terrified. That was the nightmare. I couldn’t remember the dream by the time I had typed that out.

I meditated tonight, a relief really (remember that), but with a cat on my lap, squawking at me and kneading my thighs with her claws, while the dog cried at me with her ball, wanting me to throw it, headbutting me until I petted her. While breathing. While counting my breaths. While noting my emotions. While crying. Meditation with interruptions is still better than no meditation at all.

Mr. Meditation says I need to allow my emotions the space they need to exist. I think I do that. I don’t run away from them. They are part of human existence. We can’t control when they come and go. We can’t get away from them or control them. There needs to be a willingness to listen within. Listen to my own emotions and watch them and exist with them. If more people did that, I think there would be a lot less pain in the world. Fear of one’s own emotions seems to cause an awful lot of stupid behavior.

Despite all the bad mental stuff over the last three or four days, I found myself today being grateful for the art. I’ll write tomorrow about what I’ve gotten done, but better than that…I currently have 9 pieces out for shows, either in shows right now or traveling to a show that will open soon. I have 4 pieces guaranteed for shows in the next few months, another one that I will finish in the next few months that has a guaranteed traveling exhibition starting next winter, and another one I haven’t even started that will be in a show next January. There is no shortage of work in my head that wants to be made…one was crying out to be drawn during meditation today and I ignored it…at least for now. The art brain is there, it’s active, it’s holding my head out of the water. The art brain doesn’t mind being alone…it’s the non-art brain that gets lonely. The two don’t exist apart from each other, unfortunately though, so I have to help one to help the other…at the moment, the art brain is ruling the roost…it hears the other part, but it knows that the art will get me through…so it keeps making and dragging that part of the brain along with it. They don’t often get along, the two pieces of my brain, but they do know to take care of each other…give art brain ample time to create, but let the rest of my brain have a life outside of art, and they will both be happy. Right now I will settle for one part being hard at work and somewhat distracted by that. For now.

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.

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?

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.

Hiking and the Brain

I went to sleep early last night because I knew I was going on a hike today. I shouldn’t have wasted my energy. My overactive depressoid brain woke me up two hours early and then fussed over stupid shit and wouldn’t allow me to go back to sleep. And just so you know, putting your pillow over your head works for blocking light and the noise of cats licking their nether regions, but it doesn’t do shit for shutting up an overly active brain. It’s like having a 2-year-old in the house. They don’t know it’s the one morning in the week when you can sleep in. They just know it’s morning and they’re bored.

Stupid brain. Maybe I should just take sleep off my wish list. I hope for 6+ hours a night. I rarely get it. Not by choice.

Anyway, I got all my hiking stuff ready and headed out for the meeting spot…we drove out to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to climb Stonewall Peak…

I’ve climbed this one before, at least once, maybe twice…right after the divorce, I hiked a lot with the Sierra Club local singles group. I was young then…no really, I was. This hike today was with a local women’s hiking group.

The weather was cool, but not freezing, and the day was beautiful, blue skies and bright autumnal weather.

Great views…sometimes the weather conspires against, especially this time of year, but today was perfect.

There is an 850-foot elevation gain from the parking lot to the top…

It took us an hour to do the first 2 miles…we weren’t walking super fast, but not slow either…

We weren’t even halfway through the hike at this point, but we stopped and ate, and then headed down for the back half of the trail…

Instead of going back the way we came, we went down the northern end of the peak…

Which was gorgeous, despite being full of trees that had burned in the Cedar Fire of 2003, which raged through this area…in fact, I hiked another peak in this area the week before, and then three weeks after, went through (illegally…because fires were still burning inside the trunks of some of the oak trees) and was devastated by the loss of the big oaks. I have pictures somewhere of before and after. So walking through a valley like this is a little like walking through a graveyard…

A beautiful graveyard…and then you notice these little guys…

Tiny little trees shaded and protected, growing…and you see some that were burned halfway up the trunk, but survived and seem to be thriving.

And at some point, the brain stops remembering all the stupid shit that woke you up before 6 AM and it’s just staring at the trees and the path and the oak leaves that had fallen on the ground and the patterns in the rings of the trees that had been cut to clear the trail post-fire. And the clouds in the sky and the smell of the skunkweed and the burnt log that looked like a bear and the taste of the sandwich and the sight of an expansive view. And the brain stops being such a fucking 2-year-old and starts to resemble Kathy again.

Some of the trees look dead but have new branches coming up from the trunks, surrounding the old, dead wood.

And some parts just seem completely untouched by disaster.

It’s a beautiful area, no matter what. Charcoal and all. Five miles, a little less than three hours. My brain left all the stupid behind and I communed with nature and a few humans. If I could do that and draw every day, I’d probably be almost human pretty damn quickly.

Not really a plan I can stick to at the moment…but I can certainly try to add a few hikes a month to my therapeutic plan.

I came home and rushed through school stuff and grocery shopping and we went out to dinner with mom, because dad was still in an airport in Texas…managed meditation and cutting out of Wonder Under. Midnight approves of the newly cleaned-off table (OK, I did not get everything cleared off, but quite a bit of it, plus I washed the table runner that she loves to deposit her hair on, so that’s a plus).

Meditation talked about communing with our own minds as being helpful with knowing what’s in the minds of others. I’m usually pretty good at that, although the few times I’ve been slammed by NOT knowing were particularly devastating. Mr. Meditation talked about Being There for the experience…I did that successfully this weekend, I think…mostly. I just need to translate it into my whole life, and maybe kick my brain back into a mode where sadness doesn’t overwhelm me. I had my moments today, trust me. I felt it in the post-hike exhaustion in the car…my brain crept back in and was trying to drag me down. In the grocery store. On the phone with a friend. It’s a relentless beast. But he says that I can better understand where people are coming from, empathize with them…he talked about most people conceptualizing, thinking about how they THOUGHT someone would feel, instead of KNOWING how they feel, and how this practice helps with that. I got caught in that this year…someone assuming they knew what I was thinking and feeling, and actually ignoring what I was saying and all the evidence that was there to make assumptions about what I thought and what I would do. I hate that. I do have a pretty good sense of what I think and feel, and I’m pretty good at saying it. I appreciate those who respect me enough to actually have the conversation with me before assuming they know what I would do. I had a couple really respectful, human, responsible, and mature conversations today…and it reminded me that is how they should all go…not behind my back, talking to other people, guessing at what I think. Fucking ask me, man. I’ll tell you. And you don’t have to agree with me, but if we’re talking about MY mind and how it works, I hate to tell you, I know better than any other person on the planet.

I did an hour of cutting…

Look any different? Fuck no. It will. Maybe.

I’m exhausted…physically, emotionally, whatever. I’m going to bed early again. If my brain really loves me, it will let me sleep.

Running Roughshod over Me

If Friday’s a moody bitch, Saturday’s an amusement park ride…not a carousel or an easy roller coaster…the kind that throws you up and down, and you’re never really sure whether you’re having fun or about to die. It’s never mellow and calm…and the bad is really bad, like Stephen King started to write your story. It never really gets fun…you’re either sick to your stomach or screaming with terror. You can’t possibly stop and go somewhere nice…somewhere pretty and calm. Saturday’s hijacked your life and is kicking the shit out of you, and she’s not ready to stop, even when you try to force her hand.

One of the grief books I read talks about the times when you feel the worst, the most alone, that you should try to schedule that time…by the hour, even 10- or 15-minute swathes of time. Know what you’re doing before the bad time even starts, and hopefully you’ll be able to just plod along through it and not fall into the vats of acid on either side of that path.

Sigh. Yeah right. I made multiple plans for the weekend. Because my toenail finally fell off, I figured I could handle closed-toe shoes and a hike (finally). That’s tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that goes. I actually know the woman in charge of the hike, so that helps. I also signed up for a book club thing (sigh…I am somewhat troubled by this, but I love to read and…I don’t know what and…) that’s next week. In the last two or so years of my marriage, I started doing life drawing one Saturday a month…I went to a studio space downtown and this artist I knew would hire models and we’d pay $5 to show up and draw or paint. It was great. I knew half the people there, I was semi-social, and I messed around with a variety of materials and styles, even drawing on fabric a few times (none of which have ever been finished, for a variety of reasons). I eventually stopped because Saturday mornings got filled with soccer and other stuff, and the chick in charge moved to Arizona, and I never found a replacement. Then I read about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School online somewhere and found a local…um…chapter? I don’t know what to call it. I put it on my calendar probably 5 years ago and promptly never went. It was never convenient. There were always better things to do, people I wanted to hang out with. It’s not like I wasn’t drawing on my own, and this was touted as FUN! And I’m suspicious of fun. Really. I am. Well, I’m suspicious when other people are labeling it as fun.

So even now, with Saturdays being a vast expanse of shit and hell, I couldn’t go the last two months, and even today, I had talked myself out of it. I had this to do, that to do, there simply wasn’t time.

And then there was. I was actually late, about 15 minutes, but I went. I drove to a bar in Hillcrest and I paid my money and I sat and tried to remember how to loosen up enough to do those 1-minute, 2-minute, 5-minute drawings. Even the 10-minute ones seem too short…I’m used to my big drawings taking a couple of hours (actually, the drawing for Earth Stories took me over 20 hours to complete), and even the small ones I used to do in restaurants are at least 15 minutes usually, unless they’re really simple. So it was hard.

(the model was Zoe Tantrum…no, that’s not her real name…but she was also an amazing singer, sort of conceptual opera)

But I eventually got it. It helped that it was in a bar and I could order alcohol. Actually, I can’t drink most hard alcohol…makes my heart race…but they had cherry cider…and it was good. And it helped me relax a little. And I realized…

(no, she’s not holding shoes, and she’s wearing a shitload of tulle, which is remarkably difficult to draw)

Because of meditation…because it makes me aware of how I’m feeling when my brain is semi-quiet, it lets me hear myself feel…

I realized I had relaxed. That I was sitting in that bar with about 25 total strangers while this woman held wacky poses and I was relaxed. Until I thought about it, of course, and then I tensed up again. Sigh.

So, just so you know, there’s a theme every month and the model dresses to the theme…this month was Fae, hence the pointy ears. Strangely, the book I read for book club is ALSO about the fae. I’m feeling weird about all that. The drawing above was a contest, a 50/50 contest, where I drew for the first 5 minutes and then the Brit next to me took my drawing and I took his, and we drew all over each other for the next 5 minutes. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to START drawing all over someone else’s work, but if you stop thinking of each drawing as a precious commodity, which in this situation, it definitely is not, then it’s much easier…not a single one of the pieces I did today will be used for anything…they are just good for the hand and the eye and seeing the body better after 10 years of not drawing from life. This will be my 4th (?) time going back to life drawing.

Anyway. We didn’t win the prize. I’m OK with that. On the last one, I tried to meld sketching with my personal drawing style.

The costuming made it difficult. But I still think it was a good thing, because there was one pose I just couldn’t get right, so I gave up and started Kathy drawing…

There we are. There’s the weird. She was wearing some metal hoop structure to wrap the tulle around. Yes, it really did have chains. I haven’t finished this one.

So it was a good experience. I had fun sitting there and drawing. I was relaxed. I will do it again. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not having spent the last 5 years making time for this at least once in a while. I made that mistake…but I’m having a hard time working out what would have been the solution. On the one hand, I was trying to balance a personal life, being a mom, and having a very demanding job, as well as art and going to the gym. Very difficult. And in the end, making time for the personal life was not successful…so in the future, as I try to balance the things that feel good and bad and have-to’s and want’s and should’s and all this crap…I still don’t think I have the right answer for that. I don’t think it would have helped anything for me to have been going to this for the last 5 years…but what do I know? I know nothing.

I was up very early this morning for girlchild’s last official game of the season. If they won, they would have been in 1st place.

My camera battery died before the girlchild made her team’s only goal (seriously? I suck.), but they lost anyway. It’s OK…they played really well…it was a really good game. PLUS, I got a ton of grading done. So I felt like I could do other stuff the rest of the day. Grading looms over me and makes me feel bad. I hate that.

This woman was recording her son’s game with the iPad…but what was funny is that she wasn’t watching the actual game…just the screen. Her arms must be really strong…I couldn’t do it.

Don’t think we’re done with soccer. High-school tryouts are all next week. Sigh. Of course, girlchild’s back was PERFECT today. Whatever.

I also made it to the gym today, finished a really irritating book, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner…

I kept a ton of quotes from this book, and it started really strong and I was excited to read it, but then it wandered off into history and politics and artspeak and annoying language and behavior, and I just lost it.

Here’s one of the quotes that drew me in: “I feel changed. Like, say my mind is a sweater. And a loose thread gets tugged at, pulled and pulled until the sweater unravels and there’s only a big fluffy pile of yarn. You can make something out of it, that pile of yarn, but it will never be a sweater again.” You could knit another sweater, though. Anyway. I read it because someone ELSE recommended it, but I don’t remember who…and I’m not recommending it. Well, I shouldn’t say that, because I have very particular likes in fiction, and you perhaps have different likes. So try it, and we can commiserate if you decide you don’t like it.

I also meditated. I bet Mr. Meditation didn’t have a cat trying to climb on his lap while he meditated. I had a hard time with meditation tonight. I was crying before I even started. Something about being home alone on a Saturday night, but I had spent my entertainment money for the week at the art thing and I had stuff I needed to get done and I needed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, so this was what Saturday night looked like…

And it wasn’t until I stupidly looked on the internet and realized that my life had been hijacked and put out to pasture or something (I always mix metaphors) and that the things I used to be able to do and want to do were either off the table, but just for me, or I couldn’t go because…well, because I’d have to be way more brave than I am right now, and right now, I am a scared little monkey half the time…so I cried. A lot. And when he said that I had to be willing to “sit with the mind, no matter how it is,” I lost it. I tear up even now, reading that. Silly. Sigh. It’s MY mind. Dammit. “Meditation is a skill that needs practicing.” OK. I’ve done 74 sessions. I’m better. I was aware of my feelings at the sketching place. I am usually aware of them. They are just often so overwhelming.

I even made a fire (I’ve been freezing all day).

And I tried to take care of ME. Because she’s not a bad person and even when Saturday tries to push her down, she tells her to fuck off and find another victim. I worry sometimes that I am repeating the activities from post-divorce, but then I think, well duh. Those are the things that make you happy: movies, drawing, hiking. I have to be really careful with money, so that’s an issue, but that’s why I plan.

I cut out more Wonder Under tonight. I’m making sure to take a new picture of what looks like the same thing every night I cut stuff out, so you can see my progress.

Or because I am slightly insane. You pick. (It’s NOT the same. It’s NOT. It’s NOT.) I’m about 4 1/2 hours into the cutting. I have about 2 3/4 yards of Wonder Under to go. Sigh.

As life and love run roughshod over me…I draw. And now I (hopefully) sleep.

Friday Wants a Sparkly Tree

Moody bitch, Friday. She wakes up with a hangover, even though she didn’t drink the night before. Her headache takes 5 Motrin and 2 hours to wander off. She cries on the way to work. She’s still crying in the parking lot, and she doesn’t even know why. Sometimes she just needs to cry. I manage to kick her butt eventually, dealing with job stuff, kids. Learning. You know. What teachers are supposed to encourage (we almost got there today…really). She wants a fucking donut and I say no. She doesn’t need the sugar; she’ll get a rush and they’re empty calories. It doesn’t matter how moody she is. She’ll get over it. She gets worse during lunch and one period almost takes her down, but I pull her through…by her hair…because she’s still being a bitch. Friday used to be kinda nice, a relief, because I knew the weekend would be relaxing and maybe even fun. Now it’s mostly work and sad…and Friday doesn’t care how bad she makes me feel…she knows Saturday and Sunday will be worse, so she can be as bad as she likes.

Today she is right there when the girlchild is yelling at me in the parking lot (it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that hormones and teenagedness is part of the problem, I can’t handle being screamed at by the end of the day). Friday watches me cry in the car. She watches the girlchild wander off in Target and she lets me walk to the Christmas section. Why? I have always liked the decorating part of Christmas. I like the tree, the smell, the ornaments. I love the lights. I must have had good times as a kid during Christmas. I like just sitting in the living room with all the lights off except the tree lights. There’s always one that flashes…and no one knows why.

Friday lets me stand and stare at shiny sparkly balls and garlands and cute little fuzzy things. Then she wants to buy a sparkly fake tree (really?) and bitches me out when I say no. It’s fucking pink. Not happening. There’s no money. It’s stupid. I don’t want more stuff. Luckily, there aren’t many people in the Christmas section tonight, so I can cry and no one but Friday will know. Maybe she’ll be nicer to me if she sees me cry. Isn’t that how it works?

Sigh. The Target trip just made me remember all the other errands I’ve been putting off…I made a list on my phone while I was waiting…trying to find the girlchild, who stomped off into the store without her phone. She’s not a bad kid. Really. I do love her. She’s having a rough week.

Windshield wipers. A new casserole dish with a lid. I keep breaking things (by accident). Gym clothes that fit. Fabric for the background of the next quilt. Dog food and cat food. The essentials.

The weekend…I’m trying to be brave about some stuff. We’ll see how that turns out. Julie always tells me to Be Brave. I always listen to Julie. She’s wise…and kind…and a little wacky.

I managed more cutting of the Wonder Under tonight…

Notice how it still looks the same. It’s looked the same every damn night. Seriously. This is the torturous part of Kathy quiltmaking. Why not torture myself? It keeps my brain occupied. Progress is going to look like this for a while. Lots of white stuff with pencil lines on it. Woo hoo. Yippee. My lord. When will I be done?

I’m trying to persuade my brain it’s sleepy. It’s not. It’s in overdrive. It’s drawing things. I don’t have time right now to draw things. I guess I will have to make time. I do actually have a drawing thing I could do tomorrow, like an event, but I’m not sure I want to. We’ll see. I’m trying. I really am. I can’t just be the mope on the couch. Well, I can, but that’s stupid. I’m not stupid.

Babygirl is still here. I don’t know if she’s ever leaving. We seem to have some sort of truce going on most days…

Although boychild is still her favorite (she looks bitchy in this photo…that’s because she IS). She’s kind of a goofball. I think we stretch her sense of herself. She’s a really selfish beast, but we don’t let her get away with it. Boychild’s hair is so long and nice-looking in this photo…especially with the claws embedded in it.

While I was meditating, this was the view (before I closed my eyes)…

What a freakin’ mess. Need to clean. Need kids to help. That means I need to yell and put my foot down. That’s why nothing’s getting clean, because I’m NOT doing that. I don’t have it in me.

At the far end of that view? Midnight…

in the laundry basket where laundry goes to die. Seriously, I don’t think anyone has put laundry away since summer. It just piles up in baskets until I get frustrated and dump it on someone’s bed or the couch. Babygirl is about two feet to my left at this time. Sometimes Midnight is right behind me, on the back of the couch. They growl at each other. While I’m meditating. Like I said, I don’t think Mr. Meditation deals with my shit. He seems like a nice guy. He probably thinks it should be relatively quiet and growl-free during meditation.

Friday has gone to bed. Or maybe she went out dancing. Hard to say. I’ll know tomorrow morning…at some ungodly hour, when I have to get up to deal with soccer. That’s why I really need to get tired and go to sleep.

I’m trying to have a life. I’m trying to ignore that Friday bitch. She’s been around way too many weeks. She needs a Xanax…or a martini. I don’t care which, as long as she stops messing with me. Maybe Fridays are always going to be art days from here on out. I used to grade on Friday nights. I don’t think it’s a good idea at the moment. Remaking all the schedules I used to have. The routines. In counseling, we talked about the things I wanted that I haven’t had for years. We talked about why I didn’t have those things. Apparently it’s not unrealistic for me to want those things. I can actually keep that list in my head now and know that those things are important, and because my kids are getting old enough that I don’t have to worry as much about how it might affect them…they will be leaving soon…I can make those things BE important. I don’t have to referee any more, negotiate between people who can’t figure out how to behave in a mature fashion. No one wants to be in the middle of those kinds of negotiations, between their own children and adults who should know better but don’t.

Anyway. Bad television tonight. Really bad. But it didn’t really matter. I was dealing with Wonder Under anyway. Sleep. Elusive. It will hurt tomorrow.