Vacuuming the Brain

Another no-posting night. I was drawing instead…

I’ve done drawings of the bent-over figure before…but she has an umbrella this time. These are people who are weighed down by life, I think. My people are always damaged and cracked these days. Not surprising, I guess. Drawing is a way to move stuff out of my brain…to dust out the corners, vacuum the floors. I really should draw every day (time! not enough of it!).

Once I was done drawing, there was nothing left in my head but sadness, so I took that to bed, tucked it in, and tried to get it to stay asleep for a reasonable amount of time. It likes to wake up around 4 in the morning and torture me. Sure enough, it did. I told it to shut up and rolled over, put the pillow on my head. That got me another hour or so of not-pain. That’s what these weekend mornings are now…painful. Work mornings are such a rush of having to get up for work and all that, so I can’t get bogged down in moody crap. Weekend mornings don’t have the same urgency. I’m tired, I want to sleep in, maybe lie about in bed for a while, but it’s a depressing place, so I don’t do it. Which in itself is depressing. Vicious cycle.

I get to this point in my head where I just say to myself that everything is depressing…move on. If you’re moving, maybe you’ll see something that’s not so bad. Maybe you’ll even FEEL something that’s not so bad. Standing still? Depressing. Don’t do it.

Whatever.

So yesterday I did a long, semi-painful hike (in that I am still feeling it today…it wasn’t hard, just fast), I did a lot of financial aid forms, I wrote three blogposts for groups I’m in (although I’m waiting for info on two of them to be able to finish), and I finally finished cutting out all the fabrics for Ivy’s Memorial quilt…

Wool on the left, which actually needs to be trimmed down, and cotton on the right, which will be appliqued (yes, by hand) down to the wool bits. It took just over 4 hours to pick everything out, longer than normal for me, but I think that was because of limited wool options slowing me down.

I can’t say this piece thrills me…I mean, it’s a memorial to a dead dog that we miss a lot, and maybe in the mood I’m in, memorials to dead things are not a good plan, but it is something I wanted to get to the next stage, so I did. Usually I take a photo of all the fabrics used in the quilt, but this one isn’t really one of my art quilts and I couldn’t be bothered to try to figure out what in this pile (including cat) I had actually used…

So I didn’t (I used a lot of it). And then I took all the wool bits and zipped them into one of those plastic bag things that bedding comes in when you buy it…I love those bags and never use them. I don’t use wool that much in the stuff I do, but I do want to keep it all together. I don’t want to waste a drawer in my office with it, though, and honestly, it was going to be two drawers, and I need those for cottons (which are taking over the space), because I use them so much more…so I think I will store this under my bed with the crazy-ass flesh-colored crazy-quilt fabrics. There is sometimes an issue with storing under the bed, in that you forget they are there, so that’s a problem, but when the kids move out, I am just going to turn this whole house into a scary Hoarders episode of fabric stash, so who cares?

OK. Not really. OR! If I do that, then you know I’ve gone completely off the deep end. Note to kids: good luck cleaning mom’s stuff out when she dies. I’m not making it easy for you.

I finished the second book in the Zita the Spacegirl series, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke…

These are quick reads for adults, and really are meant for elementary-school-aged kids, maybe middle school. I actually liked this one more than the first one. The story seemed to hold together better.

There’s a robot that pretends to be Zita and the two try to save a planet. There is a third book, but I didn’t get it from the library yet. I probably will, just because now I want to know what happens (and yes, they both end on cliffhangers…if you’re like me, you can’t NOT read the next one).

We do have a 3-day weekend (thank you, Lincoln), so I have an extra day, which is good, because the to-be-graded pile is deadly, I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished much yet, and I still have a to-do list that is a mile long. It starts this morning with a trip to the gym, which is a good thing…the muscles from yesterday are complaining and the best thing for them is to make them do more. Plus it’s good for the depressed part of the brain…well, people keep saying that exercise helps with depression. Then again, there’s a lot of things that people say about how to fix depression, and sometimes I think it’s just not a fixable thing. It’s there and if you’re lucky, you’ll figure out a way to live with it or persuade it to go away. I can’t take a screwdriver to it or make a list of things that make me happy and have it just disappear.

More drawing tonight I think. Hope. It’s like vacuuming the dust bunnies out of the brain.

No One Else Can…

The new meditation visualization is easier than the last. It starts as a pinprick of light in the center of the body that spreads to take up the whole body shape. That’s much easier than a football-shaped oval of light running up and down the center of my body. It kept getting snagged on my liver or my solar plexus, whatever that is…seriously, he keeps using that term, and I finally had to Google it. I knew it was in the middle, but that’s all I knew. Deficient education.

I spent a lot of time cooking tonight. I’m not sure why. I made barbecue sauce from scratch. It was pretty good stuff. I froze the extras for later. I made BBQ burgers with the sauce. They were really good. I made some potato things that were mostly eh. And I made a blueberry cheesecake galette that might kill people with joy. Seriously. It was fucking good. You’re jealous now because there isn’t any for you. Well, honestly, if you came over tomorrow and asked nicely, I’d give you some…I might have to wrest a serving out of the kids’ sweaty palms (I had to delineate ownership of each piece for tomorrow, so boychild wouldn’t eat all of it), but I’d give you some.

I’m not sure why I had a sudden urge to cook good stuff, but I did it. Maybe it was to make up for the largely useless day at school, where very few people listened or changed their behavior based on my directions. I love days like that. Those are the days when teachers wonder what it must be like to work with adults. Having spent the first 13 years of my work life working with adults, I can tell them it’s not a whole lot different…except that you have more control over your own stuff and politicians don’t expect you to work miracles with rocks. Or teenagers. Because sometimes they’re hard to tell apart.

There was definitely some frustration involved. So the cooking helped. And the girlchild cleaned up the kitchen. It almost looks normal. We had a discussion the other day about available hours in the day and why I don’t care as much about cleaning as I do about fabric. I explained to her my theory that in a household, whether you are married, dating, or roommating, that if there is something that really truly bugs you about how things look or are being done, then you should do them yourself…it’s not OK to force your ideas of cleanliness or household importance on other people. It’s about the only good thing I got out of marriage counseling a million years ago…and since I’m the only adult here, that’s how we roll. She’s welcome to mop or sweep any time she likes…and when her friend came over on Sunday, because we were the only household in East County that wasn’t watching the Super Bowl, well then she cleaned what she thought she needed to clean. It was different than what I would have done in some ways, but I was grateful for any help…because honestly, I don’t usually get any help.

Things I’ve learned from the girlchild: how to use fresh garlic and ginger, how to embrace weird-ass ingredient combinations, how to use every dish you own for only one meal. She’s an amazing cook. I don’t know where she gets it from. I am a much better cook now because of her. It’s her fault that blueberry thing got made…and all the calories that were in it? Probably also her fault.

There are only so many hours in the day. I choose to do the things that make me more at peace. If I watch a Hoarders episode, my priorities might change…but only briefly.

I’m not sure where the rest of the evening went. I did have detention and tutorial after school, so I was home late…and I did meditate and exercise and talk to my health coach for the last time and work on more of these crazy financial aid forms and help dry dishes and help pick out boys soccer photos for the school newspaper and butt heads with the boychild about the next college interview (sigh. if you want to go there, and this is your first choice, then stop bitching and set up the interview. or don’t. just don’t give ME shit about it. I did not design this world. I am no happier living in it than you are.). It’s his third college interview…good sign. I hope. But I didn’t do art stuff, and that is starting to wear on me…nothing in two days. Need a fix. Tomorrow is staff meeting, soccer game, and gym. It will be a miracle if anything else happens. No photos even today. Barely even got to read my book. Feel disconnected from my own head at the moment. I can stitch during the game at least. Have to remember to take it all with me. Car full of supplies so I can survive a game. Boots, sweatshirt(s), gloves, stitching, blanket, chair. Tea.

The awesome hike I was going to do on Sunday got canceled…the trail is closed. I picked another hike. I’m not as excited about it, but it will be semi-challenging…although I’ve done it before. I was looking forward to the other one. Sigh. I rarely look forward to anything any more. Sad but true.

OK. I need to do that sleep thing…even though it doesn’t work right. Too much of that stupid sad brain talking back to me. Actually, it doesn’t even do that. It mutters in a corner and when I say, “What? What did you say? Repeat that?”, it replies in a surly fashion, “nothing. I said nothing. Shut up. Go away,” like I’m just going to stop paying attention to it. I mad dog it a little, giving it the eye, getting up close and personal with it, and it gets nervous, fidgets, uncomfortable, tosses some now-painful memory out at me, a picture, a scene from the past and I seize up with it, with the view of what the artist-formerly-known-as-happy looked like (this one was from Oregon), and it takes the opportunity to duck out under my arm, slipping past me, and I feel it slide gently past into another space, out of reach. Damn brain. You talk too damn much. Heal thyself. No one else can.

San Elijo Lagoon

This is another one of those…is this really a HIKE or a WALK? I think the latter, although it’s a very nice walk at that. We did about 7 miles…there’s a group picture somewhere, but only my arm is in it (not quite on purpose, but you know how I am about pictures). Here’s the trailhead in Solana Beach (California, by the way…I often forget most people reading have no idea where I live)…

I’ve always wanted to do this walk…driven past the lagoon on the freeway and said to myself that I should go do it, but it never happened…I mean, like for YEARS I’ve been saying this. It is a long drive from my house. That doesn’t help. I can’t just pop up there after work and do a quick walk, although many people are using it for a quick run.

There are many birds in the lagoon, including this Great Blue Heron…who posed…

Yes, I am beautiful. And then flew…

But not very far…just enough so we could get his/her good side.

I do not know how to sex a heron. Sorry. Apparently it’s by size. Well. There we are.

The walk was mostly flat, with only a few minor hilly bits, nothing challenging. There were also some rocky and narrow bits, especially going under the freeway bridge, but most kids and seniors could handle it.

There were about a million ducks.

This is the view towards the freeway and housing areas that surround the lagoon.

This is the view back towards where we started.

And the lovely view under the freeway.

It’s strange to hike with all that freeway noise, but eventually we got out into THAT below, and the noise faded away.

There’s less water in this section, fewer birds as well, and still lots of flat.

That’s the thing…it’s 7 miles, but a flat 7 miles, so we hiked it in less than 2 hours.

And it wasn’t very challenging. Sometimes that’s OK…apparently I felt like I needed a bigger challenge? Who knows. I spent most of my time walking with a Russian yoga instructor who had saved a turtle in Malaysia by massaging it. We talked about the mind-body connection, even in turtles, and lots of other enlightening stuff, from kids, to travel, yoga, Seattle, college, financial aid, self-employment, art, and men. It was entertaining at times, depressing at others. She and I walked fast, ditching the strollers. Again, walk? Or hike? Or run?

There were Torrey Pines about…

And it was definitely a beautiful day for a walk or a hike…

San Diego is great this time of year for such things. There were many flowering plants, even in the “dead of winter”…I sucked at taking photos of most of them (moving too fast), but got this acacia…

And a view of the clouds reflected in the water…

I bet this is a really popular walk during the summer, when East County is unbearable.

We made it back to the trailhead quickly and finally gave up on the rest of them…which was probably a good thing, because they stopped to take a bunch of group photos.

I’d do it again. I might run it though. Put it in the file for summer evening walks…

San Miguel Mountain: A Metaphor for Life

Saturday I hiked San Miguel Mountain…this mountain was a bitch. It was incredibly difficult, so difficult that if I were a different person, I would have given up about 700 times. But I’m not that person. Once I started, I think I would have had to pass out to NOT make it up the mountain, so I stopped a lot to catch my breath, because OXYGEN. But I kept going and I made it. All the way to the fucking top. And no, I don’t ever EVER want to do it again, but I can’t promise that I won’t, because sometimes the crazy takes over, but I did it. It’s about 5 miles round trip from Butterfly Way in Chula Vista, and about 1725′ in elevation gain. There are no switchbacks and no shade, and there’s rocks everywhere.

Once I had signed up (committed myself) for this hike, I kept staring at it…here it is from the parking structure at my doctor’s office…

Although I can see this mountain from just about everywhere in the town where I live, I had to drive south quite a ways to get to this trailhead…you can see it in the distance here from the 125 toll road portion.

You go into a residential area to park at one of the trailheads…and there it is pointing up in the distance.

There’s a fairly easy hill up to the electrical tower…in this photo, San Miguel is right in the middle.

We stopped here for the obligatory group photo…

About half of us had never done this hike before (and one of them would drop out before we even got to the flag). Most of us carried poles. It was the first time I’ve used poles, and hell yes, I needed them, especially on the downhills.

I didn’t notice them going out, but coming back, the wires were humming.

This is the first section of the trail up to the flag, which is where most people seem to turn around and go back. Yes, it’s steep.

This is about halfway up the first slope, looking back at where we started, on the left in the middle, which is where that tract home community was.

From about the same place, looking up toward the flag (which I never actually went up to, but it’s up there somewhere).

This is the view of Otay Lakes and Chula Vista, with Mexico in the distance. It was a gorgeous day, a little warm, but not bad.

We did start early-ish to beat the heat. From here, you can see the trail is leveling off (the flag on the rocks is to my left), and San Miguel is in the distance.

The saddle between the two mountains is mostly flat…well, sort of. There are some ups and downs, but not too bad.

There are great views in all directions…this is east, with Lyons Peak pointing up in the middle.

This is looking north, toward El Cajon and Bonita.

And south again…

This is north, and that little pointy mountain on the left is Cowles Mountain.

This picture actually shows the gym where I work out…not that you can tell…but I see this mountain from the gym parking lot…ironically…

From the saddle, you can barely see the skinny brown trail snaking up the middle of the mountain to the antennas…I still have to go down into the valley and back up from here.

I’m still not all the way down. It’s a little daunting looking at it from here…

Honestly, I tried not to think too hard about it. I would hike until it hurt my quads too much or I felt dizzy, and then I would stop, turn around and look at the view, and breathe for a minute. Then I would turn around and keep going. This was at the very bottom of the saddle looking up at the antennas.

On the way up, looking west towards downtown San Diego, which is right in the middle of the far distance.

This is looking back at what I’ve already come up and over…

And looking back to the south toward Otay Lakes.

The antennas pull you upwards…they are a good landmark for judging distance.

This is Liar’s Rock…because you’re NOT almost there…I mean, I guess you are in terms of the whole trip, but you’ve still got some serious climbing to do.

This is looking back at where we parked, way the heck down there.

And finally, at the top…this is the view to the east, with Lyons Peak in the middle.

The antennas are fenced in at the very top…

And a photo of the group from the antennas…

Yes, that’s a road. There is a road. We didn’t walk on the road. Apparently you can also drive on the road.

I took this panoramic shot, which is just the southern 180 degrees of the view…

It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get up to the top…and much less time to get down.

I used the poles a lot going down…I had surgery on one knee about 18 years ago and this kind of steep, slippy, rocky downhill is tough, but I did it. On the flat areas, I would jog to keep up with the group. I didn’t take many photos going down, but here’s one pretty close to the end of the golf course next to the last bit.

And as I’m driving home, there it is again…

And after I got home and showered and ate (burned a billion calories and felt it all day)…there it is again on the way to the library to pick up new books…

This mountain was a challenge…I’m glad I did it, because now every time I look at it, I think, yeah, you climbed that…and I see that sucker every single day. It was hard…no, it was REALLY REALLY hard, but I climbed it. Kind of a metaphor for my whole life at the moment. It’s hard. Every day I get up and it’s hard and every day I try to climb that damn mountain. I hope someday it’s less of a daily hardship, but I guess once I get past all this, I’ll be able to say I survived it. I’m kind of a persistent, stubborn bitch that way.

And before you freak out about two posts in one night, I wrote most of this in the morning…I was just waiting for the organizer to post the official group photos so I could slot those in…

Draw More. Make Art. Be Content. Find Happy.

From my first post of 2013: A year ago, I wrote my 2013 resolutions: Draw more. Make art. Catch up. Sleep some. Clean up. Throw out. Use up. Be content. Find happy. 2013.

Wow. Nothing’s changed except the year. Well, and me. Sigh. It’s good that I have the same goals, even though my life is a fucked-up mess and so is my brain and everything in between. It sucks that I didn’t really achieve any of those in 2013, but I do still have them in mind. I sleep less now. I am less content, less happy. I make more art. Not sure what to say about that. Haven’t figured it all out yet. Maybe I never will.

This song kicked my ass today…

That’s the problem with quilting. I need to have something on to occupy my mind, and it used to always be music, but music just fucks with my emotions now, and there’s no way to tell Pandora to lay off the sad stuff. It doesn’t know what will set me off, stuff from high school or last year. I don’t even know until I hear it and have that bad reaction. I finally gave up and turned the TV on, which is distracting in another way…but at least I wasn’t crying and trying to move a needle up and down at 500 miles an hour around my fingers at the same time. It’s really better that way. I think.

Fuck, I don’t know.

I hiked this morning, early. The mountain (San Miguel Mountain) tried to kick my ass too, but I’m way more fucking stubborn that that. I’ll post about the hike later, once I get all the photos dealt with, but I did it. And it was good. And I’m feeling it now…some serious muscle pain for tomorrow morning. Oh well. It’s a good thing. My counselor wanted me to promise that I would admit to being an artist at the next hike, during all that stupid introductory conversation stuff that happens, instead of always answering the question of “what do you do?” with “I’m a science teacher.” She says that’s not who I really am. Yeah, but who I really am is a really long explanation and uses more words than I want to right now. Anyway, this was not a talking, chatting hike. This was a kick-your-ass hike with very little talking, so I failed at my task (not the hiking, but the admittance of being an artist). Oh well. She says I am isolating myself. Damn straight I am. I’m trying not to, but honestly, people kind of drive me bonkers at the moment. I just want to crawl into a hole most days, even now. Depression is a fucked-up monster. People suck. I can’t deal.

I managed to quilt some today, about 3 1/2 hours’ worth. It’s also not easy, but I got through the rest of the Mother and all of the Maiden, plus up the Crone to the breasts, and one of the birds. I wanted to be further, but it is what it is. I need to deal with school tomorrow, but I’m hoping for two or three more hours of quilting. I am trying to pretend school isn’t starting. It’s not working.

All I’m doing right now is outlining things. I have to decide what to outline and what to leave alone. I don’t think too hard about it. I just stitch and it tells me what wants outlining. I missed part of the milk ducts below…that’s why the pin is in there…to remind me to fix that.

I managed grocery shopping too, but hell…there is something so depressing about grocery shopping on Saturday night by yourself. It makes me want to just eat desserts. Not healthy. But at least I don’t have to deal with it tomorrow.

I ate Brussels sprouts instead of desserts. I don’t really like food any more. Girlchild was upset because her dad didn’t want to go somewhere interesting for his birthday dinner. I tried to explain to her that her dad likes his routine, not change. I think I will just take her out for mine. She and I can go somewhere interesting. Maybe I will be able to afford dinner out by March.

Meditation: I’ve made it a third of the way through a year of meditating. I finished the Discovery series and now they are moving into 40 days of Creativity. I probably don’t really need any help with that. I’m pretty damn good at it. It might be the only thing I’m good at. He talked about visualization and the connection to creativity. The first thing he says is, “Imagine the body is transparent.” Wow. He’s channeling my art. He says too much thinking and tension restricts your creativity. No shit. That’s why I can’t draw right now. Too much stress. I’m going to schedule some of this stuff out tomorrow, the stuff that HAS to get done in the next three weeks, because the next three weeks is a little ugly fugly. Then maybe I can fit some freewheeling creativity into my life.

It was 7 PM and I was feeling low. I was dealing with some lame-ass dinner and finishing a book (more about that later), and was just not feeling happy about life. Girlchild texted two words: “love you.” That’s it. Some day in the future, I will be able to explain to my kids how they held me (pulled me) up this year without even really trying, how their mom wanted to give up on everything about 400 million times, and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t think all this shit had really affected the boychild, but he said something yesterday that made me realize that he HAD been affected and he would basically beat the crap out of people for me. Nice to know. They got my back.

We just recycled almost all of the college crap the boychild has received over the last three years…it was two huge piles of brochures and cards (and that doesn’t even count the hundreds of emails). It’s a whole new world. One of the things he asked for for Christmas was The Color Purple…I’ve been watching the movie tonight and it still makes me cry after how many years? Awesome story.

This is the rambling post for the week. My brain is kind of a mess.

I finished All Clear today…

It’s the second of two books, starting with Blackout, by Connie Willis. Honestly, I don’t think you can read the first and NOT read the second, because they are the same story…and I think she should have edited better. I am not a history fan, and there was way too much history and worry going on. There were about 500 pages in each book that were engrossing and good…and really good, honestly. The book club I’m in is only apparently reading the first book. It will be interesting to see if most people read both, because it’s about 1200 pages total, but you can’t read one without the other. That said, the story was good, even with my dislike of history, especially war history. There were too many words. This could have been one fucking amazing book with a good editor.

So there we are…life, reading, and a fucked-up mood. Nothing new.

Geocaching in Hollenbeck Canyon

I knew I had New Year’s Day free, and despite my No-Resolution attitude, I did want to start out on the right foot (ha ha ha), so I picked a hike. I’d been curious about geocaching for a while, so I picked a hike in a group I belong to that went back to Hollenbeck Canyon (was just there last week), but would explore the geocaches hidden all over the park.

I haven’t hiked with this big of a group for a while…it was different…

It was a gorgeous day for it, though…all you people back East, it was about 75 degrees max, beautiful blue skies, light breeze…

We found about 17 geocaches during the whole trip, which was interesting and fun (well, for a while…). The first one (which I didn’t take a picture of) was in the parking lot, a microcache with just a log in it. The second one, though, had dropped into a deep crevice in the rocks and we needed a long curvy stick to get it out…

Which we did…ammo box with stuff inside.

Honestly, most of what was left in the caches was crap…there were a couple of decent things, especially farther out. It’s not surprising, because a lot of young families come here and they probably find the closer caches and so there’s lots of hairbands and plastic toys.

And expired Souplantation coupons (really?). The caches were in a wide variety of containers…this one was a mini-M&M container painted over…

Some just have logs in them where you can sign your name and the date; some have stuff. This one was a Bob Dylan theme…

And contained a book (not to take)…we had to struggle up a steep slope to find this one, and getting down it without poles was difficult…I guess I can see now why some people carry them.

I just slid down on my butt. This one was cool…each geocache has a name and this was Someone’s Watching You…and there she was…

The cache itself was hanging on the lower screw. There were a couple we couldn’t find and one we thought had been stepped on and broken. I was traveling with a group that were half veterans and half virgins of the geocaching experience.

This was Mike’s Star…

The same people didn’t find all the caches…and there were a wide variety of types and hiding places. I left some of my Shrinky Dinks in some of them but didn’t take anything in return. There wasn’t really anything I wanted.

One thing I will say about geocaching is that it is SLOW…it’s not a hike. It’s a lot of wandering around and looking, and then standing around, and the people with the technology are trying to find things, and it’s not necessarily the most interesting thing to do for HOURS. At least for me. YMMV. I could see doing it for a couple of hours with the kids. I did download an app onto my phone, the Geocaching Intro (which was free)…it was fine when there was internet. That’s the problem, though…there isn’t always internet, and it didn’t have all the caches. You can pay for a premium membership, which is only $30 a year, but you’d have to think that one through and decide if it’s worth it. I did log 15 caches (although I had to do some when I got home because internet was spotty and it wouldn’t show me all the caches even when I was standing on top of them). The app wouldn’t let me log two of them without the premium membership. The guys with the GPS devices were the most useful in this place.

This is what standing around waiting for the next PING looks like…

At least the landscape is nice, eh?

We spent about the first 3 hours geocaching (and stopping for lunch)…

I even found one…it was here…you can just see the corner of the plastic box poking out from under that rock…

Lucky find. I actually suck at this stuff…

Despite being a highly observant person. I think I don’t have the patience for it.

That’s Lyons Valley Peak…

Apparently there’s a crazy man on it with a gun who won’t let anyone up there.

A pill container for a geocache…

A heart-shaped box (I might have been the only one humming the Nirvana song when we found this one)…

Sandwich container…

Microcache on a fencepost (see, you can see a different person is finding them every time…it is a nondiscriminatory game)…

Around about here, we realized we were a good 3 miles out from the parking lot and it was getting late. I suspect a smaller group might move faster. Plus we kind of had the mentality that we had to find ALL the caches, which I think is crazy when there are so many of them…

So we lost a few people here who had to get back to somewhere…

And we sped up the walking part…love the old California oak trees…

Weather still good…

Meadows stretching endlessly…

This was the last cache we found…

And then we had some trail issues…it doesn’t seem to matter how many maps and devices you have…

Or how many brains, for that matter, because at some point, we went the wrong way…

and the trail ended. And someone said, “Hey, let’s just go to the top of that hill (mountain) and see where we’re at,” and then we were ALL climbing the mountain (it’s only 5 minutes…and 1000 calories burned…up that thing). So in this view, we’re at the top of the saddle (I did not go to the top of the mountain, just the saddle)…and where we NEED to be is through all that brush in the horizontal dark stripe about the middle of the photo…

So we bushwhacked…and climbed down into and up out of ravines (at least three) and avoided snakes and barbed wire and found an opening in a fence so we didn’t have to climb through barbed wire and eventually all of us got down the mountain. In the picture below, the mountain (OK, it looks smaller here) is in the middle…my group came over the saddle to the right…

So. What do I think? The hike was fun. I enjoy actual hiking more than geocaching. I would geocache again, but with an understanding of how slow it is. I don’t have a lot of geocaching stamina…it gets boring for me after a while. Now I know all these things…and at some point, I will realize that all hikes take at least an hour longer than I think they will, even after I add on an extra hour.

Not Resolving Anything…

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

Worth it for that tree alone…

And these…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She went together fairly quickly…

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

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

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

Sideswiped…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then colored them in and put them in the oven…

Which is powered by a 60-watt lightbulb…

They came out teensy weensy…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earlier today, Babygirl was helping me use the mouse.

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

Then Midnight was standing watch for a while too…

Actually, she spent most of her time sleeping.

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

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

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

I’d like to decide to be asleep now.

Hiking in Town

East San Diego is great for hiking close to home, yet seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We’re within 10-20 minutes of some seriously good hiking areas where you will see few people and only traces of civilization. Of course, in summer, these hikes are unbearably warm, unless undertaken in the early morning hours or in the dark (not recommended for most), but at this time of year, even when it’s 80 degrees in wintry December (seriously, that’s been the high temperature the last few days), it’s a nice walk with plenty of water at hand.

On Christmas Eve, the boychild and I took the dogs on a hike in the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge near Jamul. We picked Millar Ranch Road as our start…the road goes out into the foothills…

It wasn’t too hot or cold…which for December is nice. There was still some green on the hills, showing the effects of the little bits of rain we’ve gotten this month.

There was still mud in some areas on the trail. We hiked out the dirt road for about 30 minutes and came back. There were lots of offshoots of the trail, which goes around the back of Mt. Miguel. We saw one coyote in the distance melt into the bushes, and then there was this guy…

Wow. That is some gorgeous winter coat. He watched us for ages, while the dogs panted along, oblivious. He was quite a ways away, which is why the picture is fuzzy…but clearly sitting there and watching us.

Then on the day after Christmas (Boxing Day to the Brits out there), we dragged both dogs and the girlchild with us to Hollenbeck Canyon, which is about 15 minutes away, east of Jamul proper, so a little further out than where we’d been two days prior. Yes, Jake was excited…

We spent about two hours hiking through here, getting lost at one point (yes, we had a map…no, we didn’t get TOO far off of it). There are many crisscrossing trails in this area, and random signs with mileage markers to unknown areas.

It was a gorgeous day, but hot, over 80 degrees. Yes. In December. I think hiking here in summer would be difficult in the heat of the day.

But it was OK…we did leave a little late in the day (I had to visit the vet with a couple of animals).

We brought food and water, although we forgot a bowl for the dogs…a plastic bag that had been destined to carry poop managed to hold water for them though.

There were some “quad-busting slopes” (not my terminology…someone described a couple of climbs that way).

And some beautiful vistas…

We all peed in bushes…OK, the boychild didn’t. There was poison oak that the girlchild tramped through unknowingly…luckily, no one seemed to get a rash. I did wash Calli when I got home, mostly because the vet had told me to anyway, but it seemed like the possibility of her having the poison oak oil on her fur (it won’t bug the dog, but it will bug you if you pet the dog) seemed high, since the girlchild had dragged her through there. I loved her comment…”But LOTS of plants have three leaves…” Um. OK. But this one is pretty damn obvious. I guess my years in the Girl Scouts came in useful, but I did not transmit information well to the girlchild. The boychild seemed to realize it.

We definitely tired the dogs out…five miles.

At some point, the girlchild stopped whining about how tired she was and how hot it was and how downhill sucks and uphill sucks and it all sucks, and she took off without us.

She had headphones on. It might have helped.

All in all, lots of calories burned, nature enjoyed, time with kidlets, dogs exercised, new vistas explored. Not a bad couple of days. I’m looking at going back to Hollenbeck for a geocaching experience…apparently there are multiple caches in the area.

Both of these are within a 20-minute drive of most of East County, San Diego. Bring lots of water, even for the dogs, and always bring food. Oops. That’s the diabetic talking. There is a map at the beginning of the Hollenbeck trail…it was sort of useful…except when we wandered OFF of it. Probably more our issue than theirs. We didn’t see anyone on the Millar Ranch walk until we were almost done. We saw more people at Hollenbeck, although mostly on horses and a few on bikes. That said, they were both technically workdays for most people…weekends may be different.

To Settle My Soul

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

The day is quiet…

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

Calli is quite happy with her new toy…

And with all attention thrown her way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is my Christmas fabric haul…

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

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

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

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