This Is Where Things Are Right Now.

It’s been a rough few days, physically and emotionally. I’ve been running microscope labs for three days and then went right into frog dissections. These take lots of time, energy, class management, cleanup, and dealing with squealing teens, which I just don’t have the patience for right now. I suspect MOST teachers are running low on patience at the moment. There’s nothing abnormal about that. But Tuesday night at the gym, after spending over an hour with the boychild and his dad, trying to navigate through college and immunization crap, I hadn’t apparently eaten enough and my blood sugar crashed at the gym. Badly. I didn’t have my tester, but I did have glucose tabs with me. Here’s a sign of how your brain doesn’t work when your blood sugar crashes: I kept exercising. I know. Silly. It was OK in the end, though…although I felt like crap for the rest of the evening…that’s also unfortunately normal. So I didn’t have the energy to stand and iron…I cut pieces out instead. Silence abounded. Sadness followed.

It’s OK, the next day, right?

Fuck that.

My cutting view: TV, messy house, pajamas on, single glass of wine. I get my hour in, then I go to sleep. The sleep of the exhausted. That’s what low blood sugar does. Fucks with me.

And I keep getting emails from places that annoy me…like Good Housekeeping, why? I don’t think that a new everyday hairstyle or a pop of color in my bathroom is going to change my mood…although the bathroom is on my list for the summer. And House Beautiful? What the fuck? I’m not into that stuff, reading about it, it’s just depressing and reminds me of how lame I am at the moment. Comedy shows? Not my thing. Delete delete delete. Comedy shows are full of mean people being mean to people. Fuck them. Take me off your fucking list, unsubscribe over and over again. Just leave me the fuck alone. Comedy isn’t funny.

Deep breath. Normally I would take a weekend or a short vacation right after school got out and clear my head. That’s not happening this year. No money. Nowhere to go. No one to go with. One kid will apparently be in Palm Springs (or Palm Sprongs, which is what I’m calling it now), which is fine, or it WOULD have been fine if someone had actually talked to me about it instead of assuming that because I have no life that there doesn’t need to be communication. I feel like I need an artists’ retreat or a self-reflective place with lots of meditation time, but I think that would also be a mistake right now. I don’t have enough emotional support to do that. Maybe what I need is to be in my own space, cleaning and rearranging and painting my own life so I can move on past this mopey shit. Damn mopey shit has tentacles that don’t let go. Release me, you fuckwads. Let me be someone else, someone who is not this sad person. I’m tired of her. She’s not fun to be around and she just makes me feel worse.

Funny that the me is still me. Can’t get away from me. Me me me me…fuck me.

So yesterday, I knew it would be rough…first day of frog dissections, plus I had a 2-hour science meeting right after school and then I had to sit through a 2-hour teenaged driving course (required by the school so the girlchild can drive on campus next year without her brother around, who already sat through this). For those of you who remember Red Asphalt…I just saw Red Asphalt V. Sigh. And three other videos that I show my students every year about driving and drinking and texting and all that crap. So I packed food (I learned from the day before…this is my new existence. Eat or pass out.) and I drew during each meeting, because otherwise I would have fallen asleep…

Post-it note with ballpoint pen: not my favorite materials, but I left the sketchbook in the car.

Then I drew during Red Asphalt…

She’s remarkably calm-looking, considering what I was there to see and listen to. Surprisingly, girlchild got mad at me for reading on my phone during the presentation, said it was rude, but had no issues with my DRAWING during the sheriffs’ talking. Not rude to draw.

So Tuesday night, this is what it looked like after I cut pieces out…

And this is after Wednesday night…

Can you tell the difference? Sigh. It’s no wonder I’m depressed. It’s fucking neverending. I mean, I can look at those two photos and see that I got something done…but it’s taking for-freakin-ever. I’m at 11 hours and 38 minutes. There is no way I’m finishing in a couple of hours or so.

Same with this post. I need to go to school. Who knows when I’ll finish.

From meditation, the title. This is where things are right now. Live in the moment. In the moment, I am tired, frustrated, dejected, sad, depressed, overwhelmed, disheartened, anxious, stressed, barefoot, drinking tea, reminding myself I need to iron the boychild’s clothes for the awards ceremony. Mr. Meditation talks about opening a space where we can envision change, even if change is not happening right now (I imagined a mountain meadow with peaks and trees all around, because he said to open the space). Lifting oneself out of the depressed space. Can’t do that. Fuck you. But now I’m sitting in a meadow with all that other shit towering around me. I don’t know if that’s better. It’s easier to hide in the trees than out in the open.

Frogs are done. I even did the dishes already (science labs=dishes). Tomorrow we start sex ed. I don’t know that it will put me in a better mood. When you read all that futuristic and dystopian fiction, there’s always pills or medical conversion chambers or genetic engineering that makes sure that people don’t feel bad or sad…OR…they kill all of us mutants and don’t let us reproduce and make more deep reflective thinkers like us. Society doesn’t want to deal with the likes of us. Even though we make amazing art, visual, verbal, musical, dance…they don’t want to admit that the brain falls so deep for so long. This is where things are right now. Tomorrow maybe I will have a donut and they will be somewhere else.

Ironing a Mammogram

I had a goal this weekend to start ironing the Mammogram quilt together. It doesn’t have many pieces, less than 400, although it’s not a small quilt. I am still cutting pieces out for the big monster of a quilt I’ll be finishing this summer (which isn’t actually that BIG, it just has a lot of pieces). I like to have a variety of things to work on over the summer, so if I get tired of any one stage of a quilt, I can take a break and work on another one that’s in a different stage, because usually all the deadlines are in the fall, not the summer, so I have some leeway with what I work on. Last summer, I had one ironed together, another one in the fabric-trimming stage, one that needed tracing, and two smaller ones that I started, no wait…three smaller ones that I started and finished over the summer (if you count Labor Day weekend). So it worked out OK. Well, at least THAT part of summer worked out OK.

So right now I have one small top ironed, ready to be stitched down. I have this larger one that is getting ironed down now. I have the big one in pieces, and as soon as I can get my head somewhat cleared (um. cough cough. when might that be?), I can draw the other one that’s due in November and start tracing it. It’s OK. I seem to eventually be able to draw what I need to…when I really need to. I have faith in my brain’s ability to kick butt when it’s required. Someone told me this weekend that I handle high-stress situations well, that I can be counted on in those situations. Huh. Funny. It never FEELS that way. I always feel like I’m falling apart, that I’m barely holding it together. I guess I fake it well.

The problem with that quilt, the one I need to draw, is that I had a clear vision of it back in September when I was first asked to be part of the exhibit, and ironically, that view was more positive in outlook than the view I have now. So I keep trying to get back to that positive view, because that is a view of hope, and I’d rather be there than in the negative place I’m in now about gender equality. But maybe that negative view is more realistic? I have a post-in-progress that I’ve been writing on and off for about a month about feminism and gender equality as they exist (or not) right now…not in the 50s or the 60s or whenever, but right this minute, while I’m trying to raise a son and daughter to be aware (they are, trust me). But like the drawing, the post is not fully gelling, so I’m just giving it space and time to develop. I’ll probably work some of it out in drawings that will never grow up to be big quilts, which is fine. It’s not a waste of time; sometimes they do go on to be quilts, and if not, it was an hour or so that I needed in order to process what was in my head. That’s never a bad thing.

I had a ton of grading to deal with yesterday, plus my eyesight is getting worse again, so I had to get eyes checked…they were lots worse, unfortunately, because the cost of new glasses was not in my summer expense budget (and now it is). So I didn’t get started on ironing the Mammogram quilt together until about 10:45 at night (yes, when you were all going to bed), and then my brother and SIL called about a teacher/tech issue that I hopefully gave them multiple ways to solve…so I was trying to iron AND help them (how to get a large video file to a teacher at 11 PM on the night before it’s due). So I didn’t get very far…

It’s a start. I’m already missing an eyelid. And yes, that figure fades into the belly, but that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want it to bounce out at you. And when I stitch around it, it will be more visible. I only got 49 pieces ironed down. Oh wait, 48, because of the missing eyelid (it will either show up in another bin or I will cut a new one. It’s not crucial).

For those who haven’t been around for a whole year, I’ve had a few mammograms over the years that show this dense area that sometimes makes the radiologists nervous, so I’ve had to have retakes on the scans a few times. Last July, it was a major retake with multiple mammograms and other scans and then he wanted to see me in 6 months, just to be sure…that was back in January, where they did all the panicky stuff again, which makes you feel like you just want to cut the offending appendage off and hand it to them…here, just go at it. Give it back to me when you’re done. Of course, you go along with it, because that cancer word is scary as hell, and I did finally get cleared…again. But now I’m back to my yearly schedule, so I get to do it again. Anyway, last year, when it was a big issue, I drew the issue. Because that’s what I do. I draw what bugs me, what worries me, what makes me sad.

I think the fish are like protective spirits of some sort. They show up a lot. Birds aren’t really protective. Harbingers of doom and all. Anyway. The breast is still here, and so is the funny shadowy area that freaks them out every other year or so (some years, it’s not an issue at all). So maybe I’ll draw one every year and have a mammogram series. Or not.

Hopefully it won’t take all week to finish this (although this week is a bitch, so it could). I thought about trying to finish it for IQF, but I don’t really see it hanging there…amongst the pretty landscapes and technically amazing traditional patterns and the occasional quilt from a nice photo. I will have a piece in the SAQA Celebrating Silver exhibit that is challenging enough for most viewers, so I don’t know that I need to try to enter IQF…besides, I just checked and the entries are due in two days and I haven’t mailed it yet, so there’s the deciding factor right there. I love it when my forgetful brain handles decisions like this by just filing them in the back cupboard, so I don’t have to even consider it. I only remembered the exhibit at all because people were talking about it being the 40th anniversary.

Anyway. Back to entering art shows. Because that’s where my stuff belongs.

No Fit…

I’ve never been good at fitting in. I have a lot of different interests and that seems like it should make it easier, but it doesn’t always. I suspect part of it is my fault…I see all the differences, as well as the similarities, and the differences feel like they push me away. I’m not even sure I want to fit in most of the time…maybe it’s that I want to feel accepted even when I don’t fit well. Maybe I will never fit well. That’s not true. There have been times when my core existence was a good fit, or at least I thought it was, and it made it easier to feel like I fit in elsewhere. Or that it mattered less. Right now, I can’t even find my core…I’m floating around in this weird mental space that doesn’t feel right, I don’t feel right, and maybe that’s the issue. It’s not that I don’t fit in with any particular group. I can handle that. I’m OK with that. It’s that I don’t feel like I fit in with myself.

It’s hard to explain. It’s like wearing a shoe that’s not quite comfortable. There’s a rock in there. You pull the shoe off, readjust the sock, find the rock, put the shoe back on, walk for a while. Nope. Still doesn’t feel right. It’s just uncomfortable. It’s wrong. You stomp your feet a bit to try to make them conform to the shoe or vice versa. No luck. No fit.

I have conversations with my counselor pretty regularly about how this feels and what to do about it. It’s part of what feeds the depression, feeling out of place, unsettled, like I don’t know who I am. I do the stuff she suggests, sometimes I’m already doing it, because I do know how to make a life. I’ve had to remake my life before. I remember. It wasn’t this bad last time though. This time, it’s like going from a scorched landscape…like the hike we did on Saturday, where the fire was a year ago…where baby plants are just now popping up, and here we are stepping on them, feeling bad about it. A fire goes through, it can take 10 years or more to get back to something approximating normal. So maybe I am the fire-scorched landscape, and it hasn’t even been a year, and I have baby plants, but they’re not strong enough, big enough, and they’re getting stepped on. I’m betting those hillsides don’t feel normal yet. They certainly don’t look it.

So why do I hike? Being outside in nature helps with the depression. Being outside doing something physical, sometimes even challenging, it helps. (Saturday was a challenge, between elevation and my knee acting up…not a good thing…it was a challenge. Not a significant challenge, like the previous week, which hopefully I’ll post later today, but still…) Forcing myself to be with people for at least part of the days when I would normally be alone, in dead silence, it’s probably a good thing. I do OK when the people are around most days…it isn’t until I’m on my own, driving home or wherever, that I have an issue. Out of the group, into the pit.

I’m working on all of this. I’m aware of it. I’m trying to find my trail through all of it. There are marked trails, but I’m not good at following those…I’m out bushwhacking my own trail. It may take me a while. It most definitely will take me a while.

So this weekend, I tried a few social events. I did OK. I haven’t found a balance between trying to be with people and getting my introverted and artistic needs met. I have to sacrifice one to the other, it seems, and that’s not ideal. It’s not what I want. But it is what it is right now. I went to a work thing. I went hiking. Then I went camping with people from work (well, one people from work, because the others bailed). In the moment, it was fine. I did OK. I like hiking. I like camping. The crap feelings I have on either side are what I need to work through. And I am.

So after I hiked about 10 miles off of Sunrise Highway, I drove out to William Heise County Park near Julian, where a friend from work and a bunch of her family and friends were camping. Here was my setup…

We had four campsites all clustered together under the oaks, with a nice wide area in the middle for the ten kids to race around and throw things at each other (you know, like kids do…).

We hung out and chatted and ate and sat by the campfire…

It was nice. I was tired, but it was OK. I even walked around and took pictures of flowers…

These are the oaks that were above my tent…

Here was my breakfast (very exciting…I did not challenge myself on the cooking. I bought a burrito for dinner and heated it up on the fire).

I read. I drew. I made tea (shocking, for those who know me). It was nice. This drawing has been in my head in pieces for months. It’s not done.

I’m not even sure I like it, but if it’s in my head, it needs to get out.

This one I did Sunday morning while drinking tea…

It’s also not done. I like it better than the other one, but I’m not sure it needs to become a quilt. Maybe.

Sometimes I just draw and I don’t worry about the purpose of the drawing or the final product. It is enough to draw. I haven’t been drawing much lately. You need time to draw, and my time has been limited. That is one of the issues of doing all the hiking and social stuff…it takes away from my art time, from the actual space I need in my head to draw. I hate that. It’s a nasty balance. I don’t seem to be able to work it out right. I was better at it before, but that was a different me. She’s gone. This other me is a lot more needy.

I only camped for about 22 hours (yes, I counted). I had stuff I had to do yesterday, including groceries and getting the boychild a tux for prom. Yes, he’s going…with a group of friends, which is the best way to go anyway. So we stood around in a tux rental place yesterday and tried to get him to make decisions (amusing!). And I was uber-tired yesterday night after very little sleep two nights running, so I fell asleep while trying to grade tests (I am so far behind…) and finally gave up and went to sleep. No amount of caffeine was going to help. I slept over 9 hours last night, almost straight through, so that tells you how exhausted I was. Good thing I had today off. Today? Gotta be efficient. This week? Gotta be on top of my game. Whether or not I fit is irrelevant this week. I just have to get through.

So here’s the science teacher brain at work. One of my coworker’s daughters pointed out these bugs while we were setting up my tent (it required two people…it was a bizarre shape…kinda buglike, actually). There were some on the ground near the tent, and then she found them on the tree. These are the adults, I think, with the wings…

Then these are the larva, no wings, look kinda like bees with the stripes.

There were husks of the larva on the tree, attached to it, so like a cocoon, but not. The legs are still there. Like they stick to the tree for a while.

Then as I was taking the tent down, I saw this one, probably newly emerged, because the wings aren’t entirely unfurled, and it still had a really pink, new-looking body.

And this one, also on the tent, looked full grown.

We were concerned that these were the gold-spotted oak borers that have attacked many of the trees up in the Cuyamacas, including in this park, but those are much smaller, and the larva are worms, not crawly beetle things. So I don’t know what they are. But it was interesting seeing all the stages around (most of them on my tent).

Anyway. Today? Not trying to fit. Just trying to cope. But see, I’m back with my kids in my house doing the stuff I need to do as a mom and teacher. So that’s not where I have the problems. I have issues when it’s just me on my own…and that’s going to get worse over the next two years as the kids go off to college, so that’s my goal…figure out my head before they both leave. Have a comfortable space where I feel like I fit, even if it’s just me by myself, and be OK with that. Be able to go out and do this more social stuff and come home and feel content, not empty and lost. It sucks to be in my late 40s and trying to figure all this stuff out yet again, but there’s nothing I can do about that except try to do a better job from here on out. Find my fit.

Out of the Pit, into the Cave

Depression is an interesting beast. It’s so prevalent in our world, has been for years, just read some Romantic poetry or wallow in Russian literature for a while, and you’ll realize how not-alone you are in this feeling that never seems to go away. I’ve seen it described as a rain cloud that follows you around, the big black dog, a pit, a hole, a cave. We come up with these personifications, these illustrations, to try to make it something we can look at, distance ourselves from, maybe even fix. My meditation guy wants me to look at my whole brain that way. Like I’m a private detective, leaning up against that lamppost in the dark, lighting the cigarette and watching the brain (hey…shouldn’t smoke!). Watch what the brain does, make notes in a little book, process it, spit out a report at the end. This is what happened, this is where it went, dry and dissected, no emotions.

I wish my depression was the big black dog. I know how to deal with dogs. It started out as a pit, a hole. It’s been that before. Prior to my divorce, back in 2000 or so, it was a giant hole, and once I had dragged myself out of it, with no help from my husband at the time, he tossed me back in. But I got out…probably because I had spent a couple of years trying to deal with my brain and what it was doing, and I had enough tools to build a ladder out of there fairly quickly. I had some control over the situation.

Not so this time. This time I didn’t even see the pit before I got tossed in. I thought it was way behind me, filled in, totally safe ground to walk on, and I blithely continued on, carrying my little beachball of work stress and hormonal disruptions…which yes, caused a minor depression, but it was completely treatable. I just didn’t know I needed to deal with it. I think it would have eventually worked itself out with the right supports (which I wasn’t getting). But then a giant maw of a deep dark hole opened up and I just tumbled all the way down. And I can look back now and see how deep I went, how bad it was (sometimes still is).

They tell you that once you’ve experienced one depressive event that you are more prone to them later on. Great. Appreciate it. Didn’t ask for this. Mine are event-based. This isn’t just random shit being shot out of a cannon, like some people’s depression, which I can see would be much harder to deal with, because you can’t pinpoint the cause. It just is. It’s that brain chemistry out of whack. No, this is because of what other people have done, and in each case, it is out of my control. I am just the one dealing with the aftermath. It seems unfair, but I know that life is not set out to be fair…there is no arbitrator of fairness and karma setting out punishments and rewards. You may believe otherwise…feel free…but I don’t.

So once I’m in the pit, the deep hole, I have to find my way out. Sometimes it’s medications, which didn’t work this time, it’s always counseling, it’s always a time of deep reflection and artmaking for me, which makes me somewhat lucky, in that I can actually create while down in the pit. I know plenty who can’t, who are hogtied by the depression to a point of not being able to even pick up a pencil. I guess I’m glad that when my brain goes into that hole, she takes her sketchbook and her pens with her. I guess that is a learned defense against the depression.

And it really is me, the private dick, still leaning up against the lamppost, checking my watch, adjusting my hat against the misty rain, waiting for the brain to show herself again, logging her activity.

I guess the plus is that she’s moved out of the hole. Well, she moved into a cave recently, I guess…I don’t know why the visualization changed, but it did. It seems easier…she can just walk in and out of the cave, no need to build a ladder or scramble up the sides of a muddy pit. She hunches over, my brain, and she brings a bowl out into the light, gathers some leaves or berries (I’ve been eating a lot of berries lately), she blinks, squints up at the sky, sees me and drops her chin, acknowledging my presence, and then shuffles back into the cave. Brings tears to my eyes. There she is. She was out. She tried. She’s going back in for a while, because it was too much.

Some day I’ll talk about the current quilt and its title. Because it is the hardest part of this depression. I know what was in my head as I drew it, and…it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with in my own head. Yes, only one. Sad but true.

I’d better find a way to do something restorative tonight, beyond exercise and meditation. Because…ouch. Bad place.

What’s That About…

I mentioned that I had some drawings pop up in my head in the last few days. One has actually been popping in and out for about a month. It thinks it wants to be the equality quilt that has to be done by November, but I’ve already told it that it’s not what I want, it’s not appropriate. It’s interesting, because I had picked gender equality, because that’s a big issue for me, always has been, and the image that’s popping up is not a good one…and I really do believe gender equality is possible…eventually. But some shit needs to change. The boychild is an editor on the newspaper at his high school and one of the writers (female) wrote an article about why we need feminism, and there was nothing new or earth-shattering in this article, being as it was written by a teenaged girl who hadn’t really experienced much of anything, but she obviously knew the code words and the issues…but another student (apparently) at the school wrote a comment, a huge long diatribe against feminism and women, claiming she was a 17-year-old female, showing enough knowledge of the school that our guess is that it’s the PARENT of a student, but because of some of the stuff in the comment, they can’t post it online as is (because if they could, me, my SIL, and half my friends would be commenting on her ass, for sure). The assumption is that every women CAN have whatever she wants, that nothing gets in the way of that, but then some stuff about being a proper wife (oh dear, well, I’ve blown that…in fact, I can’t even be a proper girl, or woman, in her terms…and I’m so totally OK with that).

So I need my drawing to be on the good side, the positive side of what gender equality is going to look like, because I have to believe that can exist, despite some of the shit I’ve seen throughout my 47 years (as she wrote about her vast experience of 17 years). So that drawing…it will happen, but the bad version of it might need to happen first. The one where despite what people SAY, they still believe in the lame divisions of who does what, with no understanding of the work involved or the assumptions behind it. If you want me to cook for you dammit, then pick a meal and go buy the supplies, and THEN we can have a discussion…don’t drop all that shit into the lap of someone who cooks all the time and thinks of it as just more work when she is already overwhelmed…do you know how many nights I make TWO dinners, one for tonight and one for the next night? Cooking is not my friend.

On Saturday’s hike, someone (male) slapped my ass. I didn’t say much…not sure what his assumption was, but I refrained from saying something…well…rude, honestly…but it certainly reframed the conversations we’d had over the last two hikes. Women in general will talk about almost anything on hikes…I talked with women about hiking, knee surgery, hysterectomies, teaching, raising children, artmaking, sleep, hormones, allergies, the view, hiking again, shoes (hiking, not the other, plus sandals for post-hiking), diabetes, and food…and that was just today. The men? Always a different conversation. We never know what they do for a living, unless we ask (women tend to drop this info quickly and easily). We don’t know whether they have kids half the time (they rarely talk about their children…we talk about our kids constantly). They appear to have no lives. They probably would say they come on these hikes to get AWAY from their lives, but you know that shit follows you…you might as well let it out.

So if he slaps my ass again, I will probably have to say something, but I’ve learned enough from dealing with middle-school kids that I have two routes: embarrass the crap out of him (burn! as my students say), which is sometimes effective, or grab him on his own and explain that I don’t like it. Either way, I am now that feminist, eh? And I’m OK with that. So my dad and I had a conversation about that and he said there were some women who slapped his ass (which he does NOT mind, the old lech), which I think is just as bad, personally, unless you know the person well and this is part of your interaction with them. I don’t know this guy well. And that’s my ass. So get off of it.

Sigh. There I go being all confrontational again.

So instead of drawing gender equality last night, I drew one version of the bathtub that’s been in and out of my head since I saw Frida Kahlo’s version…

reminded of George Bush’s version (it scares me that I keep remembering art that George made)…

and it’s not done, and I don’t even think it’s right, but it is. She needs a head though.

There’s a lot more that needs to go into the picture. I need at least a half a page above this one. It’s funny…I remember being in 4th or 5th grade, Mrs. Westcott was my teacher, and she was an artist on the side as well…in fact, my parents have a portrait of me that she drew, pastels I think? Anyway, she would get so frustrated with my inability to stay ON the page. My drawings, paintings, etc. always fell off the page. My tree trunks would extend so far up the paper that there was just the bottom part of the leaves showing. I distinctly remember her pointing that out to me, and telling me I needed to look at the page and try to FIT on it. Didn’t happen. I need paper that extends automatically. Anyway. I drew. That’s the real point. It felt good. It’s such a good place to be in my head when I’m drawing. Everything else goes away.

That woman standing in the bathtub…she was a skeleton when I saw her for the first time in the drawing Saturday. Before that, when I saw this drawing, she wasn’t there at all. So I’m not sure what that’s about.

I had another low-blood-sugar event yesterday, the first since I went off the apparently offending medication. It was a strange one, too, and I’m starting to pin these occurrences on hormones instead of anything else…I was feeling nauseous but knew I needed to eat, so I had some fruit with frozen yogurt about 30 minutes before, and then it crashed…which makes no freakin’ sense. Basically I ate pure simple sugars there, and my body flipped out. Sigh. So I logged it and dealt with the ensuing exhaustion that follows, and the blood sugar came back, but it just annoys me that I do everything I’m supposed to and it still doesn’t behave. Story of my life.

So I didn’t get much cutting done, because I drew instead (plus I graded a ton of papers, which I really needed to do)…

But there are the bins…some slightly fuller, one slightly less full. It’s not a short process…it takes for-freakin’-ever, basically. I had hoped to be done cutting out last week, though, and you’d think with having a full day off for fires I could have pulled that off, but my brain and I don’t always agree, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. I do have a goal for this weekend, though, so I should get that set up (means sorting pieces into bins again…that’s a truly boring part of artmaking). But before all that, apparently I have to be a ~~good citizen~~ ~~mommy~~ responsible adult and go to work.

Earth Stories: Drawing It Big

The Earth Stories exhibit opened at Michigan State University Museum in Lansing, MI, on May 11, and continues through November 26. The opening reception is May 16 from 4-6 PM. It then travels to the University of Central Missouri Gallery of Art and Design, Warrensburg, Missouri, January 19 – February 28, 2015. This means I will finally be allowed to post the pictures of this quilt as of the 16th…I thought I’d spend a few posts reviewing how these two pieces came to be.

I was accepted into the exhibit in October of 2012. I wasn’t even going to enter. I got into this huge discussion with the family, intellectuals all (although I qualify as an emotional intellectual…nowadays only barely rational apparently) about what could actually SAVE the Earth. The original plan for the exhibit was to pick a group or person who had made a significant contribution to saving the Earth, to keeping our planet livable, whole, sustainable even. I kept coming back to science in general, but the thought of doing a quilt of people in labcoats with microscopes and water-testing devices seemed kinda lame.

Then I watched this video:

It was Monique’s fault. She posted it. And it clicked a switch in my brain. A huge one.

Understand that I teach life science. I teach biology to 12-year-olds. I teach human reproduction. What do we need to do to save the world? We need to stop overpopulating it. We need to make sure that the available resources are distributed fairly, but also that we don’t overwhelm them with too many people (it may be too late for that, honestly). So when I saw that there were groups that were trying to help women who actually WANTED to control the number and timing of their births, the size of their families, to keep them within the constraints of what they could afford, of what they could handle, THAT was the group I was going to put the strength of my convictions behind.

That was the International Planned Parenthood Federation. They provide voluntary birth control to women in countries where it’s not allowed or where they have financial or religious difficulty in getting the medications they need to make sure they can take care of their families. They can decide how long to wait between births, which is healthier for both mother and child, but she can also decide when to stop having children. Imagine, giving women a choice? Plus helping to conserve our natural resources? All good.

Once I was accepted into the exhibit, which is an interesting story in itself, I sort of looked at how much time I had during the school year and how much time it would take to make a 72″-square quilt, and I planned my time. My goal was to have it drawn before Spring Break, traced onto Wonder Under during Spring Break, ironed to fabric before Summer Break, and then get the whole nasty beast done over the summer.

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men, and overwhelmed single moms who don’t even know what kind of shit might hit their fans.

I did OK with the first part, actually…OK, well, not really. I had about 4 or 5 mis-starts to the drawing…in fact, I think I started drawing in February (Spring Break being April). I already knew what position I wanted the main figure in, but I couldn’t quite visualize parts, so I asked the girlchild (who was running a nasty fever at the time that turned into the nasty flu that messed up her system for a while) to pose…

She was thrilled. As I’m sure you can see. Yes, my carpet is that beat up.

She didn’t have the right look on her face. She’s supposed to be Earth Mother. I decided not to make her old…mothers aren’t usually super old. They’re frazzled. Plus she had live trees on her, and it’s not supposed to be alive.

A few days later, I tried again.

Serious issues with the thighs. And the mountains are lame. Plus that left hand? Both hands…way too small.

I don’t usually fuss this much over drawings, but that was the thing with this one. I needed it to say the right thing and I don’t usually care so much that the viewer is getting the message. I figure they will get SOME message and that’s all that matters. On this one, the message mattered.

So I tried again…

Much better belly/thigh area (and the pregnancy finally shows up…notice it wasn’t there before). Her face, though…too spacey. Like she’s contemplating what color nail polish might go with those shoes.

I gave up for a while…a month actually. Then I realized Spring Break was bounding towards me, so I started again…

Ugh. Too small, arms suck. Whatever!

A few days later, though…BOOM!

There she is. There’s the start. Much bigger and the right look on her face…but I filled an entire page just with this part of her torso. I copied the bottom part and taped it to another page and then drew the bottom half…then enlarged those and taped them together.

I finally had the beginnings of this thing.

Now realize that light table is 3 feet by 4 feet, so it gives you a good idea of how big this thing gets. I started in a 14×17″ sketchbook. I think I enlarged the drawing 200-300%. Then I drew the rest of it to size (which is always a crazy tiny-piece mistake for me, and yet I do it every time).

I spent about 20 hours drawing this thing. I’d draw for a while and then step back and look at it (or stand on the piano bench and look at it, because it was the only way I could see the whole thing).

Most drawings take me a couple of hours, maybe four or five for a super-complicated one like what I’m working on now.

I had TV shows running on the laptop (the computer in the back is too slow and sound is an issue) to keep my brain occupied. Here’s me drawing the thought cloud that shows a happy world with plenty of food…

This is back at the beginning, right after I had taped all the extra paper around the enlarged figure to make it 72″ square.

It was a huge endeavor. I’ve never spent so long DRAWING a quilt, but it really did need to be forcibly pulled out of me…it took a good chunk of Spring Break to get it done. This was before all the shit hit the fan at work, so my brain was mostly OK for this type of task. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that now. It was really difficult. Maybe the art brain would prefer that level of involvement in a drawing to all the other crap I throw at it.

Next post? Numbering and tracing pieces…

I Think I Did It Wrong

Yesterday. I think I did it wrong. I tried to do it right. I went to the gym. I did not engage the girlchild in any squawkiness until I knew she could handle it (basically waited until she was asking me for a favor…ha!). I even got done with the gym early and went to FINALLY buy my new camera. Decided that I was never going to find exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t really that crucial, but the Canon has gotten to the point that it randomly refuses to open the lens unless I eject the battery (I think I did that about 20 times on the last hike) and I didn’t want to do that again. I knew my price range (gift card and birthday money…I actually didn’t spend it all!). I knew I wanted rechargeable batteries. I knew I wanted real zoom for part of it, not optical all the way. I also knew that I’m hard on cameras and it will only last a couple of years, so stop freaking worrying so hard about this little tiny decision that will NOT be the end of the world!

Anyway. So I did that. And then I tried to deal with my normal evening plan and fell asleep in meditation, even though it was early. So my brain had this argument about whether I needed to go to sleep, because I was really tired, but my blood sugar has also been off the last couple of days, and I have a long hike tomorrow, and I don’t want that heavy-leg feeling, which might be hormones and might be physical rest. I wanted to FEEL rested. But then balance that with my mind. Either my body’s rested or my mind is. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium (or even a content medium).

What decided it was that damn wolf. I don’t know what color to make the wolf. Usually when I have a problem picking colors, I put that piece of the quilt in my head and let my brain work on it all day (or days). It’s not really conscious work…it’s just up there, like a little neuro-reminder, and occasionally I’ll see snippets of trying to solve the problem, coloring here or there, and then all of a sudden…BOOM! There’s the solution.

Mar 12 14 001 wolf crop

There are parts of my brain I love. Not all of it, for sure. Seriously? I’m being artistically bamboozled by a section with like 20 pieces in it that might MIGHT need 5 or 6 colors of fabric in it. My brain is like, gray wolf? Brown wolf? Red wolf? Can’t be a black wolf. Won’t work with the background. Dark gray? Light gray? Can’t see light gray against the arm color. Pink wolf?

Fuck. Maybe that’s it. The wolf is like a freaky color because it’s obviously a major issue for me.

Sigh. So I did that last night. Tucked the wolf drawing up in there and told my brain to go at it. Went to bed early. Woke up this morning and I still don’t know! Oh well. I have all day.

But the morning has been hard. I have a stressful meeting today that might NOT be stressful, but until I know what it IS, it’s stressful. Hate that. Thank you, brain, for your PTSD crap. I’m getting significantly behind in grading again. Suck. I wanted to be done with the fabric ironing. Not. Despite saving one baby possum this week, I found his sister in the pool this morning, along with some other baby rodent that I don’t recognize. DEAD BABIES. Fuck. Way to go. I’m going to Home Depot this afternoon, I think, to go get something to put out there for water so they don’t have to drown on my account. I can’t handle any more dead babies at the moment. Because if I put a pond out there and they STILL drown in the pool, well that’s Darwinism and I can handle that? Whatever.

I am trying to get back on track. My brain is really in wander mode and I have all this stuff I’m responsible for (shocking, I am an adult) and I’ve slacked off on some of it because I’m finding it hard to care about it, or really it’s just that it’s overwhelming to care about it. My SIL said I needed to simplify. Huh. OK. I should stop hiking so much maybe. Except that’s sanity in its own way. I know she wants me to clean out my house. I’m trying. I have two major issues on my plate right now…it’s my goal to get them taken care of this weekend, so they stop weighing on me. I’m going to work on them tonight and tomorrow and Sunday, and they will be done so I can cross them (violently with a big black Sharpie and a Fuck You yelled at the top of my lungs, because that’s what they deserve) off the list.

Then I can maybe be less of a blithering sobbing idiot for a while. Maybe. It’s good to have goals.

Little Pieces

I’m 18 hours and 23 minutes into ironing fabric for this quilt…this quilt that does not yet have an exhibit to call home, and is probably destined to be like a couple of the other quilts I’ve made, where no one wants them in a show. Oh well. I like them to be in shows, but honestly, that’s not why I make them.

I’ve made it into the 1400s, but not very far, about 20 pieces in. So I’ve got about another 350 pieces to go. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m in the fussy little piece section now…

See all those little pieces? There’s like two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THIS gray and two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THAT gray. It’s a little piece bonanza. So it takes more time. Or maybe it’s just that this thing takes X time and X seems to be a larger number than normal. It’s still not taking as long as the Earth Stories piece. But it seems like no matter how much ironing I do each night, I still have about 4 more hours to do…I find that strange. Like time is stretching out and the fabric is breeding or the Wonder Under is undergoing mitosis.

Or I’m thinking too hard.

At least there will be no shortage of things to work on this summer (besides my sanity, a clean house, and a better yard). I have a lot of stuff in progress and a whole new quilt I have to make by November that only barely exists in a sketch in my brain.

I’m not worried. My summer is pretty empty. Well, except for soccer and working and all the other shit that will rain down upon me that I don’t even know about yet.

You know, like it does. All the little things. That’s what’s overwhelming me at the moment is all the little detailed crap that I’m supposed to be handling and getting done every day, and which is really NOT getting done because I keep doing healthy things like meditating and exercising and making dinner and then I do other things like making art, because if I didn’t do that, I don’t know who I would be. I’ve really thrown the balance up in the air this year, and I don’t know how successful it’s been. I think I need some distance from it to decide.

Here’s what it looked like last night when I was picking fabrics for the face-in-a-cloud section, which is only like 8″ square…

Each fabric had no more than 4 pieces on it…and some only had one. I’m running out of room on the ironing board.

See the face in a cloud in the top right? That’s what I was ironing.

I also ironed the headphones and cords…basically all I have left is the wolf, the iPhone, the snake, the bird, the dog, and the giant skull eyeball. It doesn’t seem like much when you realize how much I HAVE done, but it requires some mental attention. I quit last night right before the wolf, because I was too tired to think WOLF. I had done over an hour of ironing, which seems to be the right amount for working every night at the moment. In my old life, I would work on it every other night, but for longer usually. I actually didn’t usually get ironing of big projects done during the school year at all. So I guess that’s changed.

Everything’s changed.

I was going to write all this last night, but WordPress was having issues, so I went to bed (a little early!) instead. I should try to do that more often, but then I’d get even less done. It would be nice if I could get some sense of life fulfillment from my job…and you’d think as a teacher, I would, but it’s so much hard work and paper pushing that it’s hard to see the good stuff until you’re 6 months past it.

I realized how much irritation I was carrying yesterday at work, but then I remembered that we don’t have much of the school year left, and this is normal. The kids want to be on vacation already. There’s all these end-of-year pressures of awards, grades, cleaning up, preparing for next year…I have a boss who sends messages demanding meetings at certain times without ever thinking that we might already have things on our calendar. I seriously get emails that say “See me during Period 2.” or “Meet here at 3:45.” and you’re thinking, wow. Dude. I already have a parent meeting during Period 2, thanks for asking, and at 3:45, I’m doing this presentation thing. And there’s often no information telling you the purpose of the meeting, so then you’re left wondering if this is a bitchslap event or just a check-in. A decent boss emails you and says, hey, we need to talk about X, here are the times I have available. I realize you’re busy doing your job; when would be convenient for you?

I guess that is too much to hope for. I just take a deep breath these days, do a little weird dance in the hallways to make the kids laugh, or randomly yell “Dress Code!” into the hallway (that’s actually really fun to do…I’m not even dress coding anyone, but they’re so paranoid it will be THEM that they all jump). OK, yes, it’s time for vacation. Someone on last week’s hike (which is still in a picture file and not in a blog post) said they were surprised I wasn’t in a tower surrounded by a bunch of guns. Well, isn’t THAT a nice image to put alongside my teacher image.

Now you know why I exercise so much and make so much art. Otherwise I’d go even more nuts than I already am. I’m leaving the guns alone though. I do better with pen and paper. And honestly? The kids aren’t the problem…they may drive me bonkers on a regular basis with their shenanigans and laziness and moody crap and drama, but it’s the adults that cause the real trauma. I know the kids aren’t old enough to control their shit. I wish the adults remembered that they are.

In My Head, There Are Wobbles

I’m reading a book that is a lot like many other books I have read. There is a person who wants one thing and is forced to follow what’s expected of him, until they try to kill him, and then he becomes something larger or better. I can’t decide whether or not I like the book because the plot is so standard, and yet it’s not, because of the specifics of the story. I want to keep reading, because I’m interested, but I already think I know the gist of what will happen.

This is like the opposite of my life. I don’t know what will happen. My story is pretty typical (OK, except for the part where I stay up all night and make art while y’all cuddle with your pillows and mammalian bedfellows), and maybe I’m the character with the crippled hand or the one sold to slavery by her uncle. Where I’ve left the characters now is huddled in a tiny, hot, dark room, waiting for the command to rush out and vengefully kill everyone who wronged them, to somehow right all the wrongs with violence and death.

I don’t know why my brain is focusing on this now…in my head, there are wobbles. Hazy areas that I travel through where the brain just sort of wanders off and explores weird ideas (yes, art comes from this). It’s hard to let it wander freely, though, because I have a counselor who tells me that those wanders are often what pulls me back into the serious bit of depression that I seem to be having a hard time shaking. That part of my brain tends toward the negative, the depressoid, the hopeless. Unless I’m outside hiking. Or staring at my sketchbook. Then it can still be unhappy or dissatisfied, but the clean fresh outdoor air pulls that black smoke out of my head and it disperses in the sky. I can almost watch it. If you hike with me, you’ll hear it…you’ll hear me take a few giant breaths, great big sighs, like it’s a relief to finally be in this place (because it is). I can’t explain that.

The drawing, the sketchbook…hell, I just draw the damn wobbles. I draw the negative. I draw the pain. I draw it and then it is less in my chest. It’s less in my heart (my heart, so small, so broken).

While I’m waiting in this tiny, hot, dark room, looking for vengeance? I don’t want that. I just want an explanation. I want answers. I want it all to make sense, and the fact is, it probably doesn’t make sense. It’s someone else’s messed-up brain that caused all my pain, someone else’s delusions. And you can’t do anything about what someone else’s brain is thinking if they won’t listen to you. If they aren’t paying attention. That’s their deal. These are the wobbles.

It’s been really hot here this week, up to 100 degrees. I can handle the heat, but it makes it hard to hike. We joke in my hiking group about going earlier and earlier (I think in August that means we hike at night and not during the day…I do have a headlamp!). I have a hike for tomorrow, when it’s supposed to cool down to 83 (wow)…and I’m a little concerned, but will take plenty of water. It’s a big group tomorrow, which I’m not thrilled about, but my regular group is all training for Mt. Whitney, so they’re up in Idyllwild doing San Jacinto…and I’m not. I’ll still be on the PCT tomorrow, though. And yes, I still have two hikes to report about, but this weekend really has a huge pile of to-do messing up its pretty, so who knows if I’ll get to that.

Yesterday I was tired, so I didn’t post. I survived work by being a little on the crazy side. I’m leaning more and more that way as we get to the end of the year. Keeps the kids on their toes. Keeps me from crying in class. After counseling I had told myself I had to go test drive cars. I need to make a decision, and my parents are helping because I am significantly poor (ask UC System…they said I was) and can’t afford to fix the old car, let alone buy something that won’t die tomorrow. So I drove. I, who hates dealing with salespeople, went to three different dealers and told them what I wanted to drive, and did that, and then they all tried to double-team me and force me to buy TODAY TODAY TODAY and I did the tough old lady thing and gave them all fake phone numbers (OK, I didn’t actually do that, but I thought about it) and walked away. So we have a plan and Dad is helping me because I basically said I couldn’t deal. I had too much other crap to deal with, so he’s looking and he’ll be my filter. I need that. I need someone to be my secretary, my assistant, my aid. Too bad he can only do the car stuff.

By the time I got home, it was after 6. I graded, I cooked, I exercised, and the girlchild finally came home and that was explosive. I get tired of people not listening to what I’m saying, not respecting anything I’m saying. It was too close to all the shit that’s in my head about the last year, about not being respected, not being a part of the conversation. Except she’s 16 and that’s normal for the mom/teen girl relationship. So I walked out.

And came in here and then went in the kitchen and washed all the dishes and the boychild came in and confirmed that I wasn’t crazy. Thanks kid. Who’s gonna do that when you’re gone?

So then I ironed…

Oh wait! You know what’s funny? I didn’t iron anything. I’m still trying to find all the flesh pieces on the main figure, so I spent 48 minutes sorting and trying to place them by color value…you can see above that fabrics 1 and 2 in the flesh range are where all the big pieces are (the one on the top left is cracks…the fabric for all the cracks; flesh 1 is actually the second from the left on the top row). I have all of the body picked out and sorted…now I just need to do the face and THEN, only THEN can I start ironing. That’s my goal for tonight. And when I actually start ironing, it will probably take me two hours just to do that, so I might need to budget my time carefully. (MIGHT?)

Today is not a free day. It has things poking into it that have to be done. I can be lackadaisical about school planning because I’ve taught this stuff for 12 years now and although I tweak stuff, I’m not starting from scratch. I do still have to deal with a bunch of college and tax stuff, though, and then there’s grocery shopping and the gym.

But I will finish ironing that damn body today if it kills me (it might).

The funny thing is that I’m not done picking all the bits INSIDE the body: the lungs, heart, weird tattoos, the uterus, all the details I stuff into the body shape…

Because they will be all different colors, so I just put them aside until the main figure is done. Because there isn’t room on the damn ironing board for all that right now anyway. All those pieces? They’re all waiting for me to finish ironing the body. The body has pieces from the 700s-1300s. I’m finally in the 1200 bin, searching for flesh pieces, but it was midnight last night and my brain was tired and I knew I would have to get up at a reasonable hour this morning and deal with piano recital. So I decided to embrace sleep for once.

But then I had to cover the ironing board so the cat couldn’t jump up on it. I’m super paranoid that she’s going to knock the whole thing down at the moment…

This is probably the biggest reason I want to get the flesh done today.

I don’t know what occupies YOUR brain when you are trying to wake up on a Saturday morning or go to sleep on a Friday night, but this is what mine does. I know you’re jealous.

I forgot to post this picture of my daughter’s Christmas stocking that I started before she was born (yes, she is now 16), just to keep documenting the Incredibly Slow Progress I’m making at my monthly stitching meeting.

Yup. That’s a lot of cream colored thread. I’m amazed by how slow this is. Maybe I should stitch the damn leaves first and then stitch around them with the cream? Fuck. I’ll think about it NEXT month.

More progress next post…fewer wobbles maybe. Or maybe the wobbles will be let out onto paper or into the sky. Need more of that. Certainly I will have finished the book where the once and future king with the crippled hand is in the dark hot room, waiting to kill his uncle…and then maybe I’ll know how my own story will go.

Quagmire

I really do need to go to sleep. I shouldn’t be up this late. I’m debating leaving this and writing the post in the morning. I could do that. I finished grades; I finished that silly essay for the damn application for a summer job (short…a little bit of money to supplement, but still leaves me time to get the quilts done that I need to get done…talk about the ultimate balance…I need money, but I also need to make art. So I don’t sleep enough and I work too much. It’s all wrong.).

I’ll type for a bit. I’m not quite tired enough yet. I like to be so tired when I go to bed that I can barely find the energy to set the alarm. That’s the best, because then I fall asleep right away and sleep straight through (well, almost). I hate waking up and evaluating my level of tiredness with the level of darkness.

I got started late today. Girlchild and I did a short stint at the gym. She’s allowed to bike and go on the treadmill now, and she’s chomping at the bit to get exercising again. Me? I just want an excuse to get serotonin going and to read a book. I love to read. I really love to read. I had a conversation on the hike this weekend wherein I tried to explain how much I like to read, and when I told them how many books I had read last year, they were a bit shocked. And then I said I read at the gym…so they said, what do you do at the library? Work out? Yeah. Well. I read a lot. I guess that makes me some sort of freak. Here’s me being a freak.

Then girlchild was nice enough to make dinner (this was after we had a screeching argument about how many years of foreign language she needed AND the data plan on her phone AND something else that I don’t remember. I’m kind of done with the part where I know nothing even though I don’t know nothing, although there are apparently lots of people who think I know nothing and most of them are under the age of 18, except for a few who are my age or so and have decided that I know nothing, that my knowledge is always wrong.).

ANYWAY. She cooked and I input grades. It was ugly. I’m not being nice this time of year. Turn the work in. Remind me over the summer to analyze the numbers of kids turning homework in this year vs last year. If it hasn’t changed by a significant amount, I’m not doing these damn detentions next year. I don’t think it’s working.

Boychild and I spent some time looking at cars online…still trying to deal with that issue. Running out of time. Then the Franchise Tax Board is still messing with me over my Head-of-Household status for one year out of the 10 or 11 I’ve claimed. Assholes. Such a waste of taxpayer dollars.

So I thought about not ironing tonight, about taking a break, but my head was swirling into the abyss…and I just don’t want to be in that place. I want some peace, dammit. Some happy. Some content. Some quiet. A portion of time when my brain isn’t berating me for bad decisions and bad people and just plain bad. A moment when I feel like I’m doing something right. That’s it. That’s what I need.

So I ironed.

Electrical thunder bolts…I finished monitor head.

Then I started on the arm I showed yesterday…with Dr. Scully looking on…

These are all the same flesh colors used in the two other smaller figures in the quilt. I’m still debating the large figure…do I make it a different set of flesh fabrics (the original plan), or do I make them all shades of gray? I kinda did that in the Earth Stories quilt, but I don’t know if I want to do that for this one. I’m still debating it. Flashing an image behind my closed eyes of the large figure in gray and then in flesh tones. Two very different images. Two very different commentaries. Flashing back and forth between the two.

I ironed pieces 626-720…

Not EVEN 100 pieces tonight. Oh well. I did the whole arm on the right of the quilt. I still need to do the DNA and then the headphones, and then I’ll be able to start ironing the larger figure…

Which should take me about a million years.

There’s the left leg. With a hand grabbing it. That hand is attached to no one in the quilt. It creeped me out when I drew it. It creeps me out now. This whole quilt creeps me out sometimes. I know where it came from, the depths of the bad shit in my head. The pieces of menopause that are scratching at me. The sense of loss and grief. The splintered mind. Trying to reconcile the brain that is sad and depressed and disconnected and hopeless with the part that makes the art, that doesn’t give up, that doesn’t stop, that is always re-evaluating and trying to find The Way Out.

Deep breaths. Making art shouldn’t make you cry. Life shouldn’t make you cry (nonstop). I showed a video in class today of a family affected by Huntington’s Disease as part of our genetics unit. The mom with HD talks about how she can’t be a good mom because of the disease, and she’s so sad and fragile. I almost lost it about 5 times today.

Am I doing it right? Are my kids going to be OK? Did I hamstring them by putting them through divorce and another bad relationship? Will they be able to do it right with absolutely no role models? Neither parent is competent in relationships, whether it’s the actual BEING in one or PICKING the right person. Either way, we both failed. Me, multiple times.

I hope not. As a parent, all you want is for your children to be happy. The boychild is so observant and aware of human interactions…I’m impressed, because I know it is a learned behavior, not built into his wiring. I did that. Girlchild? Sigh. Emotional hurricane still. She will figure it out. She’s better than she was. I pick my battles, and unfortunately, today there was more than one battle. I fought them all bravely and with minimal emotional investment. I feel it NOW, but in the moment, I was OK.

Here’s the current pile of fabrics…growing…steadily.

Sigh. I wish I could say this process is making me happy, but it’s not. I am in a quagmire. Hey, when boychild and I were in New York, we saw a real quagmire. One with a name. It’s such a lovely word, quagmire: a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. That’s kinda like my brain. Boggy and giving way.

Next step? Big body. Need a decision about color. Then it will take me a few nights…because the body is pieces 744-1347, a little more than 600 pieces. That WOULD be 6 nights, but all the fabrics will be the same for the whole figure. Let’s hope I have a better chunk of time Wednesday or Thursday.

Yeah. Sleep. She’s right there, tugging at my arm. Begging me to head down the hallway. Claiming a warm bed and trouble-free thoughts. Wish it could really do that.