Damaged Goods

Before you get all freaked out about the title, which surely is appropriate for so many things at the moment (the exercise bike is currently duct-taped together because boychild went a little macho on moving it…and then there’s my brain, which I would use duct tape on if I thought it would help), I got invited to this last night…

It was great. There were three writers who told their stories while 3-4 dancers interpreted…well, the boychild was disdainful of the phrase “interpretative dance,” and I wouldn’t call it that…I would call it a multimedia presentation: words, video, dance, a little music/sound. Kind of like a play, but not really. So the dancers were part of the act. It was put on by the Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater with So Say We All, which you might remember from the winter, when I went to a couple of their events where writers read their pieces on a particular theme, often with powerpoint pictures in the background, illustrating their words. This was similar, except the dancers were not illustrating…or really interpreting…but adding another facet to the literature. During the first piece on PTSD, Justin Hudnall spoke passionately about what PTSD feels like, while the dancers became the feelings, vibrating or falling, or at one point, grabbing his limbs and torso and lowering him to the floor in uncomfortable positions.

In April’s story, April Ventura tells about being diagnosed with an STD and its effects on her life, with an amusing twist, while the dancers interact with a shopvac. And in the last one, Brian Simpson tells a story of a gun and being in foster care. All three writers/speakers performed their stories well, with a touch of sarcasm and humor in all the right places, because their topics were uncomfortable, and the dancers did not shy away from enhancing that feeling. The dancers were Rachel Holdt, who also did the videography, Liv Isaacs-Nollet, Zaquia Mahler Salinas, and Trystan Loucado.

It was a good last-minute invite. I have always enjoyed dance, more the modern stuff, for the movement and ideas it puts into my brain for drawings, how limbs move and fit together. Storytelling has always been a love of mine, so this was the best of both worlds.

It did mean I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I had planned, but that’s OK. I had a good reason. I came home tired, but also to teen drama, so that didn’t help. I guess it says something that she already knew she was in trouble.

Earlier in the day, I managed some quilting, finishing Bird 5…

And then Bird 6…

I spent some more creative energies on quilting 6 because the quilting shows better on the lighter backgrounds. Plus it’s in the air, flying, so I wanted to emphasize the movement of the wings affecting the space around it.

At some point, the machine was doing that stupid excessive thread-breakage thing, so I fussed with it, changed a needle, used something on the thread, which is probably old. Tried to slow down. Less herky jerky.

I set up for Bird 7, but didn’t find the time or energy to get going on it. Maybe today. I’ve already been to one game in a soccer tournament, at least two to go, maybe four.

When I got back from counseling (yes, twice this week, which might give you a clue as to how things are going in my head; basically I summarized it to the counselor as alternating between raw blinding pain mixed with gut-wrenching sadness and completely numb. Neither seems right. Or healthy.), boychild had emptied like 8 boxes of books into 3 bookshelves. He’s super-efficient…

whereas I’m sitting there with that one tiny bookshelf, trying to decide whether I need all these books, finding one acrylic painting book from my dead great-aunt where she had obviously torn out half the pages in the book (huh?) and it was mostly useless. We worship books in my family. It’s very hard to trash anything, let alone get rid of it, especially if it seems to have some historical significance. So in my section, everything is piled up on the floor as I try to decide what to do with everything.

Piles of sketchbooks too…I’m trying to reduce the crap here. Anyway. No, I’m not done. Leave me alone. And I find if it’s not out where I can see it, I forget it exists.

When I got home from performance, I realized that waiting around all day for the plumber who never showed meant that I never copied the drawing from the night before. The copy place doesn’t close until 11 (score!), so I left teen drama central and went and did that…so I can maybe work on it tonight? I want it done!

I’m trying to leave space at the top for the tree. But they need feet too. Or do they? Have not decided what happening at the bottom. Actually. Wait. I lie. I have decided. Just now. Huh. The brain works well sometimes, at least on things of significance, like finishing drawings. Cuz that’s gonna save my world.

And then I finished my book, another of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. I’m ignoring his sexist crap for now, because I think he truly believes he’s on the side of women, although that is another topic of discussion, as I’m reading Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, current CEO of Facebook, formerly of Google. And doing that drawing. And wondering about how comics treat females. Or for that matter, how anything treats females. And wondering if I can drop that whole issue into my own book somehow (how many major issues can you have? Probably not a lot). I actually like the Dresden Files…I just know I’d have to knee him in the proverbial balls if I ever met him…Butcher, I mean…not Dresden. He’s fictional. He has an excuse.

So lots on the plate for today and tomorrow…forcing myself to consort with humans and return house to normal…but also pushing the art stuff in there to keep the duct tape in the right parts of the brain.

You Can’t Be Trusted with Feathers So Hollow…*

In my original plan, the whole house would have gone back to normal today. Everything would have been put back in its place, all boxes emptied, all furniture in a permanent home. I even have it on the calendar: “House back to normal.” (not really. It just says Furn Move.)

I should know better.

So it’s still chaos here. New moldings are in, but I can’t paint them until tomorrow morning. Well, I could paint them right now, but that seems a bit crazy. Then we can move some stuff back, but it seems we will be culling big pieces of furniture. I think I’m OK with that. There’s some things to solve, some issues with where to put things and whether we actually need certain things, but it will all work out, right? We also got a new screen door installation out to the deck to replace the piece-of-crap thing that’s been falling down for 10 years or more now. I remember when the kids were little that I read if there was something they were doing that was driving me nuts that I should find some way for it to go away. So when the boychild felt a need to remove all the CDs from the shelves two or three at a time while screeching, I finally put a baby gate up in front of them. He continued to screech for a while, and then gave up. Well, then he headed for the bookshelf, so everything important went up a few shelves and we bolted the damn thing to the wall so it wouldn’t fall on him. Remove the frustrating item.

Hence the screen door. Of course, if I really apply that theory to my WHOLE life, there won’t be much that survives. But I keep doing the things that help the frustrations be smaller. My credit card number was stolen earlier this month and over $1700 of charges showed up, so when I went to pay the bill today, there was a bit of a shock. I don’t know whether to blame meditation or depression or both, but I just dealt with it (again…this is not the first time) and made a list of the companies where I would have to change the autopay card number when I get the new card.Reported it. Fixed it. Moving on. No panic. No anxiety. Deep breath. Move on. Who the fuck cares. It’s just one more thing to manage. So I managed it.

I guess I have the mental distance to do that now. It’s interesting, because the sadness is right there, about to spill over at a moment’s notice, but the stress…I’m about 10 steps away from it. It’s over THERE. I can watch it, but I don’t have to BE it. I guess that’s good. It would be good if I could do the same with the sad, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards at the moment.

I finished stitching down the Menopause quilt today.

It’s really long. It took almost 8 hours to stitch it down. I was comparing it to the Celebrating Silver quilt, which is about the same size, but I did some research on that. First of all, it only took 5 hours to stitch Silver down. Plus it only had about 1237 pieces and this one has more like 1764 pieces. So it took 14 hours to quilt Silver…I’m thinking it will be more like 20 hours to quilt this one. So that’s gonna take a while. I’m hoping to sandwich and pinbaste it tomorrow, assuming I have a big enough piece of batting. I can piece a backing easily enough. I’ve gotta kind of work around a plumber visit. Apparently he is a born-again Christian. Possibly this quilt taped to the entryway floor might perturb him. Hell, it might perturb me. I’m going to quilt the Mammogram one first anyway. It will take less time.

I quilted 4 birds today…about 45 minutes per bird…

These are the smaller ones…

They don’t take long.

This one…I wanted it to look like the bird was diving through the air, so I tried to quilt it so it would look like that.

Maybe he’s just falling.

Six more to go. I thought I would work on them this evening, but after the gym and dinner, I was in a sad mood again…plus I know I need to finish this drawing for gender equality…or maybe I should use the word ‘equity’, because I’m not sure equality is the right word. No wait. Equality is right. Equity is nice, but Equality is right.

So drawing seems to help when I am depressed. Quilting and stitching down are problematic because they don’t engage enough of my brain to shut up the whiner, depressoid part. Tracing Wonder Under does. Ironing fabrics does. Cutting stuff out does. Maybe that’s why I need to get this drawing done…so I can balance the quilting with the tracing Wonder Under…have days with both tasks, and when my brain starts to wig out, to fall into the depression hole, I can do something else to bring it back out, or at least hold it on the edge…keep it out of the soul-sucking mud at the bottom.

Sigh. Big Fucking Sigh.

So here’s the drawing…

I need to go copy it and draw the rest of it to size. It’s actually smaller than the one I’m working on now. I guess that’s a good thing. If I can get it to the ironing stage by the time school starts, I think I’ll be OK. And by next Thursday’s meeting, I want to have all the birds quilted, trimmed, with binding on and ready for hand-sewing. Remember what I said about setting crazy-ass goals? Yeah, well, I can get close to that, despite this weekend’s soccer tournament and all the furniture that is still inhabiting my hallway. The office could use a serious clean-out too, but that just sounds crazy when I have all this quilting to do. I still have one, maybe two major projects to get done before the end of August. And the teachers I was hanging out with today reminded me of an online thing I need to do soon as well. School. Damn. I’m not supposed to think about it for another two weeks. Fuck.

Midnight’s not thinking about it.

Funny how the carpet changes colors during the day. It’s gray, it’s blue. Here it’s brown. And it’s really not.

Blog title from Rufus Wainwright’s Go and Go Ahead…

Rufus and I also have a troubled existence. I love him, but he reminds me of many things that just cause me pain. I wish I had gone to see him in December, despite all the shit that act would have dealt me. He is an awesome performer. Concerts. One more thing I can’t afford to go to…movies too.

Speaking of things I CAN afford to do…I’m still writing this crazy book. Over 14,000 words done. Meeting with a group about audience on Saturday. Not sure whether meeting with people really helps me write, but maybe. I don’t know what helps. Telling myself to write. A little every week. At this rate, I will have a finished book (within the acceptable range of words) by the end of the year. Maybe sooner. Probably I should figure out how it ends by then. I know what I want the notional ending to be…but the real-live ending? That’s something different. A story within a story. What I care about versus what readers will care about? No, that’s not it. It’s like the art. People are so, like, “Oh, you’re an ARTIST, that’s so cool, you make ART, and that’s COOL.” Yeah. I make art because I have to. Because if I don’t, I get sick. I make art because there’s some weird chemistry in my brain…actually, I think of it more as a steampunk/techno device that forces the issue: YOU WILL DRAW…OR YOU WILL DIE. You think it’s cool because it’s not like that for you. It doesn’t solve world hunger. It doesn’t fill an empty heart. It doesn’t cure depression. It doesn’t make an empty house feel better. It doesn’t stop you from hurting or crying. It’s just art.

Yup. So there we are. Hollow bones. Hollow life. Really the key is “you can’t be trusted.”

Brain Wanders Off…News at 11…

Interesting day. Bad anniversary. The word anniversary seems like it’s supposed to be good. There should be a different word for bad anniversaries…like anniversaries of someone’s death or planes crashing into buildings or bombs going off. We shouldn’t use the same word that we apply to getting married or hired or being born. It should be like a maliversary or a downerversary or a shitversary. Better, huh?

Yeah, whatever. It’s all about distraction for me at the moment. The whole summer, a distraction attempt. I fail.

I stitched a lot of things down today while listening to Pandora. Pandora and I have a troubled relationship. Sometimes she rocks my world and I get up and dance around my office, out into the hallway, where if my kids look up from computers or phones, they see mama gyrating, pumping fists, in the hallway, yelling out (scary huh?) But so often, she’s lost in this young girl YOLO mentality or romantic shit that I don’t believe in anymore. Maybe I never did. Pandora, when you get like that, I don’t want to hang out with you any more.

That’s wrong. I did. I’m not sure I will again.

So I stitched for almost 4 hours today…and I almost finished.

I probably have an hour left, maybe two at the most.

View of sewing machine and yard while filling yet another bobbin…

It was hard to force myself to keep going. It’s really hard to do this part. But then it got late and I just wanted to finish, but I have to be up early again tomorrow, so I stopped.

Seriously, though. I could just stay up all night. Why not? I have no life. I can just stitch for 24 hours straight and then go to bed. Whatever.

Who’s gonna care?

I got on a roll at some point. But then I had to stop and deal with girlchild’s wisdom teeth. Apparently she is too wise and they have to come out…

There they are. What sucks is that we can’t get her in for the surgery until the week I start school. And boychild leaves (aargh). I am not going to be a good or happy person that week. I am going to be a mess. Naw. My counselor says not to assume anything. I am actually really good at that now. I just don’t think I will be or do anything. I just show up and go from there. I go with the flow and if I don’t like it, I step right out of the flow and watch everyone continuing on. And I crawl back into my hole and hang out there for a while. Hermit is the antiflow.

Yeah. I didn’t say it was the healthiest thing in the world to do. It just is what I do at the moment. I set a goal every day and I try to reach it. Most days I don’t, but that’s because I have high expectations for myself. I guess that means I should be regularly disappointed in myself, but I don’t think that way. I think, Oh Hey, you tried. You’ll finish up tomorrow. It’s OK. Because none of it is life or death.

So yeah. My goal to finish stitching down today didn’t happen, but I got close, so I’m OK.

The back…

And more of the front…I just have the head and the thinking bubble with the yelling face. That’s it. Then I can sandwich and pinbaste it as well. I don’t know if I’ll get to that tomorrow, just because of what’s already on the plate for that, but definitely Friday. So that’s good. It’s progress. I won’t think about the show I didn’t get into. I really don’t care. I don’t. I will keep entering. Eventually I will get in. That’s how you know the maliversaries are going badly…because I’ve progressed past the constant crying (not that it’s stopped) into not feeling at all. I’m not sure which is worse. They both worry me.

Go read another book. Anaesthesia for my brain. Side effects? No engagement with reality. You know, you can’t see the cat in this picture…

But you can see the yelling face. I love that face. I mean, I don’t love it because I know what it means, what it represents, but it’s so well done. The angle is perfect. The teeth. Midnight agrees. But she wishes I would stop making the desk vibrate. She doesn’t like it.

So the carpet went in today…part of why I had so much stitching time. I was trapped in my office.

I couldn’t distract myself by moving stuff. Until later. Padding going down…

They were quick. They asked permission to play music (conflicted with mine, man). It was funny…they played the same stuff the girlchild listens to, except they were way older than her.

Speaking of girlchild…she experiences new carpet in a different way.

We moved a bunch of the big stuff back in the house, but girlchild wants to try a different furniture layout, which probably means getting rid of some furniture. Might not be a bad thing. It’s just a storage issue with some of it. I have a lot of thread and other supplies in the living room that probably don’t need to live there. Or they can live there in a different way. We agreed to try her way out…

This is not it. Grandpa has moldings to put in tomorrow, so nothing can go anywhere really at the moment. I have a couple of places to patch. We need to make some decisions about bookcases and the TV and other stuff. Honestly, I felt like I had already made more decisions this summer than I could handle, so I just gave up. Maybe I will have more of a brain tomorrow. Maybe not. It certainly seems to have wandered off. Unfortunate.

Insert Quote about Tomorrow…

Stitching down. I had to negotiate with myself to keep stitching tonight. I started late…today was exhausting and I didn’t sit down at the machine until almost 10 PM. Tomorrow will hopefully be better. I have 3 1/2 hours into the stitching-down process and I’m about a third of a way through. I could finish tomorrow. Maybe. If I’m crazy and don’t listen to my chiropractor. Place your bets now.

I had to re-iron some stuff because it won’t stay stuck. It’s humid here; in fact it was raining yesterday afternoon and misting this morning. So the Wonder Under is releasing.

I’m still down in the water section…I think of it as the aquarium section, like she’s sitting in front of a giant aquarium, except I think she’s really IN the aquarium. There’s a lot of stitching in there…

Those damn octopus tentacles…

Those fucking beautiful octopus tentacles. So I made a deal with myself that I would stop when I finished the water section, except then it made more sense to finish the silly boat above the water…

So that was the new deal with myself, except my self kept trying to say I’d stop at midnight, because I have to be up early to deal with carpet people, but mostly because this stitching-down stuff is mentally and physically difficult and I get upset and bored. Anyway. I finished the fucking boat. That boat that is the bane of my existence. All my pain rides in that boat. And it can’t even face me.

Sigh. Have I told you how much this month sucks? Please time travel me to a new place and time. I’ll even deal with Dr. Who if I have to, but only if it’s this one…

He looks like a nice guy. The others, not so much.

Hey, signs that you raised a Geek Girl (besides the fact that she’s seen every Dr. Who episode): She wanted me to sit with her on the floor this afternoon (I actually fell asleep down there with the dog curled up next to me…she was also freaked out by the lack of furniture)…and was reading me stuff from a Harry Potter Pinterest board. Yup. That’s a geek.

SIL, she says change is good. I don’t argue. It’s usually true. Except when it’s not. I know the change in my house WILL be good; right now, though, it is sorta hellish. Maybe the change is good once the changing part is done, and the process of change is just painful and torturous.

All the furniture is out except that damn light table (and the girlchild)…

The light table would have to come apart to get out, and it’s just not worth the work. They say they can move it around as they work. It’s not that heavy. It’s lighter than the piano and we moved that.

It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get everything out…on the deck, on the driveway, and in a variety of rooms…and as soon as we did, girlchild brought in a pile of pillows and blankets and complained that we hadn’t reconnected the TV properly. There was a web of cords back there, and we untangled it, but I’m not sure we’ll ever get it back right. It may not matter. There were two cords that were attached to one thing but not another.

Why I fell asleep on the floor with the dog? Stayed up too late last night, plus all that work. I was tired. My doctor called me her hero because of my blood tests. My A1C is normal. Let’s ignore my daily blood sugars. But we’re reducing another med. My liver says thanks. My diabetes is CURED! Not really. No one cures it. Stop telling people it’s cured.

There’s at least two places on the walls that are already damaged and there’s a molding issue and boychild’s damn dirty feet already made one wall dirty (seriously?). I think I’m going to hang a sheet where his dirty feet go. The kids want a new chandelier (and so do I, because this one is uncleanable), but that’s not on my list at the moment.

Although it’s fun to Google those…

Maybe I should make my own…

Because these aren’t wild enough…

It’s a big space.

All those white walls, all they do is make me want to go grab a bunch of spray paint cans and graffiti the shit out of them (reasons why you shouldn’t let me help you remodel), but then some sense of reality takes over and I realize I don’t ever want to do this again, so I leave it alone. White will do. I actually HANG art on my walls, unlike most people, so it will not look this blank for long…although the boychild likes this and girlchild complains about the dark furniture.

The great Rift Valley…where the carpet seam was, where the dogs nibbled and feet wore away at it. These carpets are from the early 80s.

I did actually sit in the middle of the floor by myself for a bit to eat my dinner. I’ve been sitting at the table on the deck since we started painting, but it’s hard to get to at the moment. I was visited by two different cats, seriously confused and perturbed by the lack of furniture to (a) scratch, (b) hide behind, and/or (c) lie on.

You can see we managed to get the piano into the entryway. Boychild likes the acoustics there (less fabric, higher ceilings), but I’m not leaving it there. Maybe I should take up piano again.

Tomorrow we get carpet. Then we move everything back. Well, I’m reconsidering some of the everything. But I’m not sure how much I can really not move back in.

I’m trying to keep control of the emotional landslide I’m currently living in, so I’m being good about food, exercise, and meditation. I suck at sleep, but there are other factors that affect that, like my thyroid meds, which I’m trying to be better about taking as well. Because that was the one number that was off…STILL. Meditation has gotten easier, in that I don’t have to focus on someone I’m not happy with any more…instead I’m taking on the whole world and taking in all their pain and suffering and “sharing my feelings of joy and happiness.” Um. Mr. Meditation, I don’t have any of those. I have feelings of relief sometimes. Some mental peace at times. Some thoughts of, Oh, Thank God, That’s Done (when the couches made it out of the house and no one died). That’s all I got. Perhaps someone else who is meditating can forward me some of their joy and happiness so I can share it out.

Things that made me cry today:

1. The season finale to Sons of Anarchy (yes, I’m behind in watching stuff). Dammit, SOA, I count on you guys for a good dose of violence and none of that pulling at the heartstrings shit. This is why I watch you and X Files. Don’t fuck with me. Oh yeah, and that fork thing? You jumped the shark. Plus I knew you were gonna kill her. It was the meanest thing.

2. Elton John (goddamned Pandora)

3. Meditation (see above)

4. Random shit at the gym, including a sweet kiss between two people I used to work with in a former life, who weren’t together then but now are. It wasn’t a bad thing that they kissed. It was sweet. So I guess that’s my issue. Sometimes things that make me cry are all about what’s missing.

Tomorrow I stitch. Tomorrow, the world rights all the wrongs in my living room. Tomorrow, I can start putting it all back and the Hoarder house will go away. I’m hoping that helps.

Never Feel Bad Anymore*

So Friday night, I was going to iron more birds, but I like to watch things while ironing (it keeps the bad/sad parts of my brain occupied so they don’t make me cry) and the kids were hogging Netflix. So I decided to stitch stuff down instead, because I’ve got plenty of that to do, and I listen to music while I’m doing that, but it doesn’t do a very good job of occupying the bad/sad brain. In fact, I think it brings it out more, which is not necessarily a good thing. That said, this part of the quilting needs to get done and I’m just going to need to suck it up and stitch…and let’s be honest here, I cry while stitching. I try not to. I try to distract myself with stuff in my head, I try to pseudo-write the story I’m working on, I try a lot of fucking things that don’t fucking work at all, so maybe I should just accept that this is the crying stage. And just make sure I am well-hydrated.

I started with the mammogram quilt because it’s got fewer pieces and will take less time, and my plan was to get it done and sandwiched before the carpet guys come Wednesday, so I could quilt Wednesday if I wanted to. Not that I’ll be done with everything else, probably, but it’s good to have plans…

I got about halfway done before I got tired. It was late at night, almost midnight when I quit.

I fold it up on the machine, because otherwise I will find a cat laying upon it at the first opportune moment, and then I will have to remove all that cat hair. It will take about another hour to finish this, so hopefully I will get to that today. I’m sitting here, only sort of awake (sleep is a real bitch at the moment…can’t fall asleep, then nightmares wake me up, then can’t fall asleep again until early morning. HATE IT), trying to persuade myself to go to the gym, and the quilt brain is like, “Don’t go to the gym. Stay here. Sew. You know you want to.”

It’s true. I want to finish that one and then do all 10 birds. But I need to go to the gym as well. Grr.

So yeah, I finished ironing birds yesterday…Number 6 was a strange one…

but its shape appealed to me…

In the actual drawing, there’s a face next to it. That drawing does not exist as a quilt. Then I did number 7, which is actually on the Mammogram quilt that I’m stitching down at the moment…

I think this one has the fewest pieces…

Number 8 has the most pieces, with 61, and is also kind of the weirdest one…

Jul 13 14 010 small

I liked the feathers though. Making these little quilts is really about my messing around with pieces of my work, which I don’t usually do, but someone liked a bird and thought they might like a small bird quilt. So I figured it was worth a try.

I don’t really know whether I like this process or not…it’s quick, but it’s like Quilting Lite to me. No depth to it. I’ve always had that problem with smaller quilts.

I think that’s why I don’t make very many of them.

They’re too easy and I don’t engage in the process.

That might be why I made 10 of them…it makes it a large enough project for me to have to pay some level of attention. And I think it’s funny that one of the most complicated birds is the one that’s getting the most attention…

First owl I’ve ever done was this one on the Celebrating Silver quilt. I looked at a bunch of owl pictures to draw this…and decided there’s definitely a Harry Potter feel to it as well…

Anyway, the next step is to stitch them down, hopefully today. These will all be for sale, and some people are already in line for choosing one, but I’m not allowing any of that until they’re finished and priced, because I know that might be an issue. I do value my time and although these are small, so far the smallest ones have taken almost an hour to do (not bad, but only about halfway through, if that) and the largest ones have taken almost three hours to do. So I’m trying to be fair to myself and keep track of the time so I don’t rip myself off.

Anyway, more of that today.

On Friday, we also did a lot of moving stuff out of the living room area, prepping for the last bad day before the carpet guys come. We needed the entryway clear (which is why it would be a good time to get that quilt done and sandwiched, because that’s where I do that), so we moved all the boxes and books out of there into my bedroom mostly. Then we moved anything smallish or that would fit in my bedroom or the hallway, plus the piles of stuff we had stored in the little living room as we cleared out the dining area for painting. I am glad to announce that I could in fact have a full Hoarders house, complete with really skinny hallways full of crap.

Seriously, I get totally claustrophobic walking through this…

I could not be a serious hoarder. I would go crazy. My bedroom at the moment is like some sort of junk cave…

The cat is freaked out by it and so am I. That’s the view back down the hallway toward the more open part of the house. I will be so glad when all this is done and I can move everything back and put it away. It will be a pain in the butt, I’m sure, but I am going nuts living like this. No earthquakes please.

I hiked last night, which was nice (will post it later)…still no knee pain, so that’s good. But I didn’t get home until after 10, and then I showered and meditated (trying to be better about that), and then I had no energy for anything after that really, so I came in here and stared at the computer, and the story in my head knocked at the door. So I started to write. And I kept trying to stop, because I was tired, my neck hurt, my fingers were still going, but I mentally was done, but apparently I wasn’t, because I wrote almost 4000 words before I could stop. I seriously tried stopping in 5 different places, and my fingers would keep going. I guess that’s a good thing. I’m hoping to do some more tomorrow, because I wasn’t really trying to tell my brain how to write this thing and it went off on a tangent, which is good, because I didn’t really know where the story was going next, and now I do. Well, sort of. I have a vague idea of what’s next, but it’s turning into something scarier than I started out with. I’m at 12,000 words. Not great, but not bad. A good solid start.

Then I went to bed and read for a while with the heating pad under my tweaked neck…same place as before, dammit. Might have to call the chiropractor again for another emergency appointment. I had to read because my brain wouldn’t shut down.

For the post title, I was looking for a song I knew I had heard lately about “can’t control my brain” and this one popped up. And the video is sweet, all puppies and kittens and wild animal babies, and it’s a nice sentiment. To never feel bad anymore. Weezer: Islands in the Sun…

I think I was originally thinking of a different song, though…not the Ramones, I Wanna Be Sedated (although there is that sentiment), but there’s another one…tickling around in my brain somewhere, but these two are crowding it out. That’s probably a good thing…

What It Takes to Iron an Owl…

Yesterday would have been my 25th wedding anniversary. I had actually gotten to a point in my life where I wasn’t reminded of the date every year post-divorce, but my parents’ anniversary is 25 years before mine, so it was the big five-oh for them this year and I forgot…or did not remember…or blanked it out…or something. So that kind of became an issue and reminded me of my own lack of anniversary. I apologized. Some part of my brain is still trying to figure out what to do about it. Apparently if I had planned ahead, I could have had the White House send them an anniversary greeting. That would have gone down well, I’m sure.

Failed marriages are not uncommon, and mine was not any more or less tragic than any other. I do wish that I had the support and relative stability of 25 years of marriage right now, between teen angst and one kid going to college (and leaving FOREVER!). But that’s not part of my life. I think, I hope, I believe it would make the daily struggle easier to deal with, but I have friends in not-so-good marriages who argue that it doesn’t. I’m not pro or con marriage…but a stable, loving relationship that provides support for the really bad days, the days where I really almost want to grab my keys and my purse and run the fuck away, just get in the car and drive and drive and drive and maybe come back in a week or two. Yeah. That. Because what really happens is that I internalize all of that, and sometimes I cry about it, but I’m really carrying it around inside me and I don’t know what to do with it. There is no one I can turn to and say, holy hell, I can’t do this, and they say, it’s OK…I’ll deal tonight. Go take a bath. Go to a book store. Just go. I’ll deal.

I figure I’ll just keep doing what I can to move this brain in the right direction and at some point I will be able to get through a day without it hurting. Like a WHOLE day. I can get through short periods of time, like on hikes or while ironing fabric down, but there’s no long-lasting effect. The chemistry in my brain is the stronger…it wins at the moment. And by then, the teen drama will have moved to a college dorm, where I’ll still get bits and pieces of it, and hopefully I won’t have to fly or drive somewhere and put all the pieces back together…hopefully, by then, she’ll have it all together and be able to deal on her own.

I’ve been watching my mood the last 4 or 5 days and realizing even more what affects it…the biological flows of receptors and hormones and all that crap, plus blood sugar wavering in response to all that. I can have brief periods of time when I can change those, with exercise or some moment of separation from the sad, maybe during a conversation or a good book or while painting a wall. And then it’s back. It’s no wonder that the book I’m trying to write is about biogenetics and human body chemistry and how to fuck with it. It’s what fills my brain. I keep having to research stuff for it though…I’ll think of something really cool, but I don’t want there to be bad science, so then I have to go Google things for the next three hours to make sure I’m writing accurate science, or at least believable science. At some point, I need to have a long conversation (or 10) with a geneticist. Or a botanist. Or both.

We finished painting the last of the walls yesterday. That should be a party in itself. We did two coats because we were painting over the plaster and the mastic. One area of the mastic actually needed three coats. So that part is done. It took a LONG time. I’m looking at my bedroom and the hallway, and anyone who thinks they can bang it out in a day, I will feed you pizza and beer while you do it. While I lie on the bed reading a book and eating bonbons (not really, because I’m allergic to chocolate). Because it gives me a giant-ass headache to even think about it (although it would be somewhat easier…just push everything into the center…as long as I don’t have to deal with carpet too…which of course, at some point, I will have to do that too). Now we can seriously concentrate on getting everything out of that space for carpet next week.

Meanwhile, a woman has art to make…Bird number 6…

I ironed the fabrics for 4 more birds…I only have the owl to go. I didn’t have the energy for it last night…it’s the most complicated one in there I think. This one isn’t…it’s the bird from the Mammogram quilt, which I hope to start stitching down today. That’s the next step in the quiltmaking process. This is Bird number 7…

I mimicked the colors on the original quilt…not quite exact fabrics, because that was too much like work.

A couple of these took 30 minutes to choose fabrics for, because they were actually semi-complicated. This one had 60 pieces in it. It doesn’t exist in a quilt yet…I’m not even sure what drawing it came from…Bird number 8…

This one is in a quilt and I looked at the picture because it’s a pretty old quilt and I didn’t remember what color I did the bird (um. Kathy. Really? It’s black.). Bird number 9 came from a quilt of my son…back when he didn’t have long hair, I think…

Here’s the drawing with the fabrics cut out…

I wrote the next paragraph before I went to the dentist and then came back and dealt with screaming and spiders and the cable company and a new modem and 9 bags of thriftshoppery and 37 pounds of clothes shipped to the cousins in Seattle and moldings that don’t match the old ones because they don’t make them any more and piles and piles of dust and going through a container of stuff to be filed from 2007 and 2008 and finding that damn title to the old car, which I was sure I didn’t have, and crying because I saw my itinerary for Alaska.

Fuck. Can’t even CLEAN without getting upset. That is just dumb. It’s lame. It’s stupid. I am not dumb, lame, or stupid. One part of my brain is. And it can just fuck the hell off.

So. You’ll see my plan for the day below…and then you can laugh with me…

So today I’m going to iron down the owl and start stitching the two quilt tops down. I’m hoping to have the presence of mind to draw tonight, so I can really get focused on the next big quilt…I need to be tracing Wonder Under by next weekend, which means about a thousand things need to happen first. I think I will cut out the fabrics for these birds tomorrow at my stitching meeting. I might be able to iron a couple of them down as well…I think I only have an hour and a half between the two stitching meetings, but these babies are small. We’ll see. Maybe I will pick backgrounds before I go over to my friend’s house and I will iron them there. They are not very complicated.

Most of the birds, it took about 15-20 minutes to pick fabrics. The most complicated one took 35 minutes.

Yup. It’s 5 PM, I’m sweaty, tired, and dusty. Every Single Thing in the kitchen cupboards where the moths have been reproducing has been removed. Everything with a trace of mothiness or that has expired got tossed out. The brown widow that was living in there (hence screaming) is dead (the cable lady got to hear the screaming while she was trying to help me get my phone and internet working again…I asked her to kill the spider too, but apparently she does not have the technology for that). The cupboards are clean of moth leavings, dirt, spider guts, and oh my god are those EGGS? Of WHAT??? At which point, the girlchild gave up, left everything on the counter, and left for soccer. The only reason I am in here now, typing this fucker out, is because I’m waiting for the cupboards to dry, so I can go back in and put everything away.

Plus I’m fucking tired.

OK. Going to put things away. No more excuses.

Then maybe I will come back in here and iron a fucking owl…

Thanks for Asking…

I’m trying to get back on my planned art and remodeling schedule this week…I had a real hard time last week being motivated. It was too much, I think. But finishing the ironing on that big quilt and realizing how many hours of stitching down, quilting, and binding remain on that one and the other one, PLUS needing to do some other art things, made me realize that I have to stay focused. I’m not really ON vacation. This is my other job and I have to take advantage of the time I have to get that work done, because it will become increasingly harder to do that as the summer progresses into that crazy hell we call Fall…it really is FALL…from sanity (what little I have).

So Focus Goggles on. It’s easy to say that right now, because I’m not actually awake yet. I mean, yes, it seems like a reasonable hour for people to be waking up at almost 9, but I really can’t get to sleep before 2:30 or 3 at the moment, and I had to get up early to go to the lab and have them take my life force (aka blood). Fun stuff. Now I will freak out at regular intervals during the day when I check my results. I’m not expecting them to be good right now. Oh well.

So I had wanted to have some small quilt tops of birds ironed by this Thursday…that was my original deadline…so I started ironing Wonder Under to fabric yesterday. The plus with these is that they’re small and quick…

The minus is that they are so small that it actually takes me longer to pick the fabrics because there’s only like 5 of them and I get fussier about their going together in the way I want, because there’s nothing else to distract you from them. In a huge quilt with 80 fabrics, you wouldn’t notice if one gray was slightly off, but in something this small, I would. Maybe you still wouldn’t. Anyway, so that’s slowed me down. That said, I got 5 of them done yesterday…which isn’t bad.

I start with the drawing and the tupperware with those Wonder Under pieces in it…

Then I lay those pieces out and try to figure out what colors I’m using. I picked these as possible backgrounds, but there are more…

I’m trying to keep it simple, so I am reusing some of the fabrics in more than one bird, like the beak colors and the whites of the eyes.

This one actually really threw me with the grays for a while. I thought about finding a picture of the original quilt and trying to copy the fabrics, but I didn’t.

On this one, I actually pulled up the picture on the iPad to try to figure out what I had used in the previous quilt, but that’s because the person who likes this one liked the original bird…

Not all of these birds are in existing quilts. Some were just pulled from drawings that are in the quiltmaking queue.

On the next version of that bird, I changed it up and used different fabrics.

Eleven fabrics for this one…amazingly small number of fabrics for a Kathy quilt. Granted these are smaller than I ever work.

This one is very muted…looking for a different background for it.

So 5 down, 5 to go today, once I get my refi signed. Oh yeah, and the wall painted…

I’m just going to paint and see if the texture is irregular enough to pass with a couple of coats of paint on it. I’m not sure I care enough to spend more time on it. The wall under the window doesn’t show at all and most of the rest of the wall will be covered by bookshelf or art. Plus it will all be a lovely unifying white. I put a second coat of plastery stuff on it yesterday and then sanded it and washed it down.

We have to paint this little section too…

Not a problem with the texture here…it did much better for some reason…no mastic maybe helps.

Once all that is done and the carpet is in, I will still need to deal with putting in shelves to the right of the fireplace and finding something for a mantle. I have a decorating friend who might be able to help with that, but it’s going to have to be cheap…in fact, I’m thinking of raiding my dad’s wood supply and just throwing an old barn board up there. Not really. But I don’t want fancy; I want natural.

This is looking back at the rest of this area, which is been in chaos since school got out.

It’s getting there. Slowly. Sitting on the couch is not happening much at the moment, unless you’re willing to climb in and be crowded…which we all have done (we are nesters). We’re still eating dinner on the deck. We started moving boxes and some furniture out of this area, just so next Tuesday will not be so heinous, but it’s hot and trying to find room for stuff is challenging. Girlchild just exploded all over the place when I asked her to deal with her stuff, so that makes it so much more fun. We did get the giant box of my CDs down into the garage, and then in trying to find a shelf that it would fit on, boychild started tossing stuff (he did ask first), so we filled a trashcan with stuff and found 6 boxes of clothing that either needs to be sent to the cousins up north or to the thrift shop…so that is girlchild’s job today, to go through those boxes.

At which point, my dad asked me when I’m going to clean out the garage. Holy crap, man. I can only handle so much chaos at a time. I need to get the art stuff done. I have another quilt I haven’t started yet that needs to be significantly started before school begins. I need to DRAW that. I can’t even trace Wonder Under until the carpets are done, but I need a drawing soon. Like before next week.

Yeah. So. That. Not happening right now. But thanks for asking.

Under Construction

I’ve been trying to adjust my mood. It doesn’t help that it’s hot during the day or that I am at the most frustrating part of the renovation (although moving furniture for the carpet install might also be frustrating…we just haven’t gotten there yet) or that yesterday was the day when I am alone for the longest period of time. Strange how being alone is both good and bad. It messes with my head, but then I NEED to be alone to do some of the art stuff I’m doing. There must be a different version of alone that works better for me (you know there is. you had it once.).

So summer is turning out to be difficult, and I finally stopped avoiding that and/or trying to bully through it, and tried to do some things that would actually change it. Going on the hike was the first one, and it was fine. So I signed up for another hike next week; I might do two…kinda depends on the weather. I also signed up for a few more meetup groups that were doing things I might be interested in, like writing sci fi. I think I have to admit that the story I’m writing is more science fiction than anything else. I have 7000 words. That’s more than I had last week. If I get a chance today, I have another 3000 or so roiling around in my brain that could be vomited out onto Google Docs. Or is that INTO Google Docs. Webspace. Not real space. Typed characters. I also went to a movie with a meetup group…will write about that further on. I’m not sure that was successful for a variety of reasons, most of them probably in my head.

So I have been ironing, about 2 1/2 hours yesterday. I started with the face…

This is actually like a thought bubble that’s yelling at her and crying. It’s easier to iron the eye as a separate unit and then iron it on top of the already completed face.

Maybe that’s my brain. Or some part of my brain. It’s true that with depression and perimenopausal symptoms that often you hear things in your mind that don’t make sense, the irritation for no or very little reason, the sadness, the moodiness, and then your brain gets in your face about that as well. Demands an explanation. Honestly, I don’t know how much of that is just me and how much is some symptom of any of the things that might be affecting my mood. Even the thyroid has been screwed up lately, and because I’m not on a school schedule, I keep forgetting to take my thyroid meds (symptom of underactive thyroid? Memory issues. Seriously.), so that doesn’t help. Excuse me. I’m getting up right now to take them…late.

OK, I’m back. It won’t work as well because there’s tea in my stomach, but it’s better than not taking it at all.

There’s a wolf…I kind of think of it as a protector, her familiar maybe.

Usually I have cats as familiars in my quilts, but it seemed she needed something bigger and more wild. I’m not sure. I know there’s no cats in this one.

Bird attacking the snake that’s in her…

I actually researched the coloring of hawks to make sure I was doing this one right…the red-tail hawks who hang out in the tree outside my studio. Beak’s wrong, but whatever.

So I’m done with the 1500s…I don’t actually have much left to iron (if you ignore the fact of the octopus tentacles from hell). I could finish today. That’s good. A week later than I wanted, but still good. Deep breaths. I might actually finish it this summer. Easily could do that. With the other one (wait, panic moment). And…and…don’t let the brain think about the ‘ands’. You will lose it.

Someone commented that I should get a tall stool for ironing (and tracing probably too). I have one. It even rolls. And has padding. Came from a thrift shop or something like that. It’s old. But I can’t seem to keep my butt upon it. I just slip right off. I’m not that comfortable sitting for long. I am used to standing all day for work. Plus, here’s the available space when I’m ironing…

The pieces are to the left on the white table and there isn’t much room between it and the ironing board. I suspect the tired-of-ironing feeling is more because ironing is difficult at times, trying to get all the pieces in the right place and figure out where the missing pieces are (I found two more missing pieces yesterday). One of the biggest issues I have when I start stitching is all the sitting. And tense shoulder stuff. Which doesn’t help. So the rolling chair has become a rolling storage depository for stuff like lead for mechanical pencils and tape dispensers, which is probably not a good use of it.

I didn’t iron more yesterday because I was trying to make this wall work.

Fucking wall. I started with an online recipe for texturing and used a small roller to apply it to the patch sections. It wasn’t right. I fussed with it, sanded it a little, and tried it again with a thicker mix. Still not right.

Fucking wall. So then I rolled the whole thing…

Which is what I did on the wall next to the fireplace, rolled it twice though. This one, I’ve only done once…and there’s some issue in that the part where the window is has the original texture. Do I care? I might. I have to make that decision today. I have to sand the whole thing just to knock the peaks down and then probably put a second coat on the whole thing, and then maybe I just paint it tomorrow and assume that’s as good as it gets. Do I really care that much? There’s an entirely different texture on the dining area attached to this, as well as the wall behind the piano, which is also part of this room. It’s all white. Is the world ending because of the texture?

No. Stop freaking. Just do it. But it’s hot and I hate sanding. Really really hate it.

So. I love going to the movies. Always have. In college, I would buy one ticket on Friday at the first matinee, student matinee price, and then I would sneak from theater to theater until I had seen like 3 or 4 movies in one day. I missed the first few minutes of some, but I didn’t care. I just loved hiding in the dark with the big picture in front of me. The last year has been mostly movie-free, not by choice. I tried in the beginning to keep going, but it made me incredibly sad being there alone and silent and I stopped. Plus it’s expensive, ticket plus parking. And I have to be picky about what I spend money on these days. College is going to kick my financial ass (which was already kicked to the ground by divorce, single-momhood, teaching not being a well-paying career, expenses for school, etc.). So I stopped going. I went to Catching Fire with the kids, but that was the last movie I saw, and that was back in November. I hate that. I hate that the one piece of my life that I absolutely loved has been so damaged by all this shit that I can’t enjoy it any more. OK. Not just one piece.

I had joined a couple of movie meetup groups, thinking that would help, I wouldn’t be there alone and there would be people to discuss the movie with afterwards. Sounds good, right? Except they usually schedule them during the week or Sunday evenings, and it just wasn’t working for me. Finally someone scheduled one for a Saturday night and it was something I would actually consider seeing, so I took a deep breath, thought about trying to change the summer mood, and signed up. Got there and introduced myself, and then realized they were all going to sit together as a group. Oh. Yeah. I hate sitting in the middle of the theater. I’m a 2nd-row person. I went on a date after the divorce with someone who told me they couldn’t continue dating me because of that. He liked the back row. That shit is never going to work. So I suggested that since we were a relatively large group, maybe some others would want to sit up front. I got one. No problem. We talked for a while before the movie, it was totally awkward, made more so by the fact that her mom wanted to sit way in the back. I’m not entirely sure why she sat with me. She said she likes being IN the movie, that feeling that being up front does for you (that is why I sit up front by the way), but it was weird. She sat still and upright for the entire movie. I fidgeted because I can’t sit still that long. I felt weird fidgeting, wondering if I was annoying her, wondering how she sat STILL for all that time.

Then afterwards, she got up during the credits and left without a word. I’m weird. I watch all the credits. When I got up, the theater was empty. Yup. I’m really weird I guess. I went out to the lobby and there were groups of people talking about the movie and I tried to join in, but I was getting texts from the girlchild about her code for the AP tests earlier (scores came out yesterday) and I knew she was expecting me to send her that soon, so I left. It was weird. And what was worse was how I felt afterwards. I love the moviegoing. I love being in the theater and experiencing another world for two hours, but the after feeling is fucking awful. I cried all the way home and into the house and found her the code and then logged in as her (like you do) because she wasn’t answering (apparently she gave up on waiting and went to a dance instead, which I am totally OK with her doing). And texted the boychild to see if he had checked his scores. I guess I’m glad I had that distraction when I got home, because the after-movie feeling was just really bad. Like crawl into bed and put the pillows over your head and sob like the world has ended bad. I have been getting better over the last few months, but this whole experience threw me back about 6 months and it sucked. I can’t live there. I can’t be like that.

So we had 7 AP tests between the two kids: they scored 3 4s and 4 5s. I texted the girlchild that she rocked (she’d been so stressed about these, thought she would be crying herself to sleep over her scores), the boychild the same. I’m proud of them. And some part of me realizes that despite the divorce years ago and all the emotional mess I’ve been this last year, that they still were able to fucking rock it academically. And as yet another person told me congratulations last night at the movies for raising a kid who’s going to Cornell, that I have smart kids, but that I had something to do with their successes…and I hope they keep having them, because I can’t do a lot about it from here on out except be the crazy mom who’s texting them at midnight about stupid stuff. The mom who stays up until 3 ironing because making art is important to her. The mom who is depressed and jokes about it and apologizes for being such a lame-ass. My house may not be clean (hell, it’s a fucking disaster at the moment), I may be a mental disaster myself, but I did OK with them.

The movies? Yeah, not so much. That part is still under construction…

Not Good with the Waiting…

So one of the triggers for my bad moods, the sad stuff, is not getting anything artistic done. I know this. I tell myself this all the time, but I get to this place where I can’t DO anything…except pick up a book, even though I know I need to. I’m physically tired, mentally exhausted, and the only thing I can handle as I’m standing in the chaotic space that is currently my house is a book. So I’ve read a LOT of them in the last two days. I really just need to shake off the mood and DO, and I think it will be better. There’s a lot of waiting around when you’re doing renovations though…waiting for contractors to show, waiting for things to dry. I hate waiting. I suck at it. Really. I do. I fidget and I can’t get anything started because I don’t know how much time I have, and I hate that.

I don’t wait well. Best if you don’t make me wait if at all possible, or if you do make me wait, give me a fairly accurate time of unwaiting or I will get irritated. I try to deal with my dislike of waiting by playing stupid games on my phone or reading blogs (they don’t take long to read), but at some point, I’m fairly sure I have better things to do than wait. Really, it’s rude to make me wait beyond a certain amount. But there are plenty of reasons why you have to wait…I’m better when I know there’s a reason (like the carpet has to come from some other state or the contractor already has jobs lined up). I get those. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t bug me. I don’t like waiting when it’s just because you forgot or you lost track of time…and yes, I know there are people like that. I gave birth to one. You tell her we’re leaving in 5 minutes, and when that 5 minutes is up, THEN she gets up and gets ready. Which is why I tell her “5 minutes” when it’s really 10. Yeah. Someday she’ll figure out that I’m doing that.

Anyway, this house stuff is a shitload of waiting. My life, honestly, is tons of waiting without really knowing what I’m waiting for or how to make it stop being waiting and instead being. Remember that interview question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Oh hell. Fuck if I know. With both kids graduated, me completely broke (like worse than now). That’s all I can see. The rest is unknown. I can’t predict it. I don’t even want to hope for anything, because then where are you at when you get there and that’s not where you are? I thought I knew where I’d be this year at this time, and I was completely wrong, and that still feels like shit and probably will for a while. So what’s the point of that question? I know, they want to know what my ambitions are: “I see myself more sane than I am now, and hopefully the house is cleaner because the kids will not be living here.” Beyond that? Don’t know. Can’t see that far. Don’t want to see that far in case it’s just more of this.

So yesterday I waited for the mirror guys…see that wall o’ mirrors, the wall o’ 70s flashbacks?

They showed up with their fancy tools and their hang-loose hand gestures (seriously, he did the hang loose and then said “ciao”…) and in 20 minutes, they had all 4 panels down and out of the house.

OH MY GOD. Why didn’t I do this 17 years ago when we moved in? I thought it would be a lot more expensive than it was. The kids say the room looks smaller, but I don’t see it. I just see a Lack of Mirrors and I have to tell you, that is the closest I’ve gotten to happy happy joy joy in a year.

It didn’t last long, though, because then I’m looking at this.

Giant Sighs of Drywall Damage Hell. The plus is that my college art degree qualifies me to fix this. OK, really, it’s not that hard, right? There is texture all over this wall, so I’m going to have to patch the texture.

The carpet guy showed up in here too (didn’t have to wait for him…he just showed up without calling, which honestly is better). Unfortunately, we’re not getting carpet NEXT week, so I will have to live with chaos through the middle of July. AARGH. Sigh. I knew that might happen and I have a plan to move stuff a bit more slowly and stash it in my bedroom and the boychild’s bedroom (because the girlchild’s room looks like a hurricane hit it, which technically it did, and there is zero available floor space. It’s just damn scary in there)…and then the day before, we will deal with the major furniture issues. But I need to get those two walls done first…

I spent yesterday scraping mastic off, with dad helping, and then when I went off to an appointment, he started patching…the hole on the right had a speaker wire in it. I don’t know why. We don’t have speakers. It didn’t appear to be attached to anything.

I had book club last night, which turned into an interesting discussion of women in science and how it’s STILL an issue to be a woman and to do science, and so many people, men and women, believe that it’s so much better, when really, it’s not. After the last few book clubs I’ve gone to, I find it impossible NOT to evaluate a book’s ability to be fair to female characters, and the comics industry is even worse when it comes to this because of the art involved…you aren’t just imagining what a character looks like and what they’re thinking, you have a freakin’ picture of them. So now I read both comics and literature with this eye towards how we represent women, how we treat them when they are dealing with things that are purely female (periods, pregnancy, sex–which is different for women, menopause, aging). What questions do we ask in interviews of women that we don’t ask of men? Can you tell the gender of an author merely by reading their text? Dan Simmons? Obviously male. Robin Hobbs? I thought she did a relatively good job with males and females. And dogs, for that matter, although she needs to stop KILLING them. OK, it was for the story. I get it. I thought it was interesting to read LOCAS II, because Jaime Hernandez is a male Hispanic artist, but almost all the characters are female, and he does a relatively good job of portraying a wide range of truly female emotions and actions. His men? His men are a little freaky. Ray’s probably the best…

ANYWAY, I came home tired and ate and exercised and read a whole ‘nother book, because it’s all I could handle, and then went to bed and was awakened by the phone ringing, which I ignored, but probably shouldn’t have, because it was followed by dad knocking on the door to finish spackling.

Well, and there was THIS noise…I don’t know what the damn cat was doing, but I came in to this.

And there’s dad, sanding up a storm. He finished all the spackle, but I’ll be spending Independence Day texturing stuff. And hopefully ironing, because REMEMBER?

This is my road to a decent mood. Not the wall. The art. I gotta do some waiting before that though. Sigh.

You Must Read…

So, if you were my neighbor, then just a few minutes after midnight, you saw me wandering my front yard, barefoot with a flashlight (actually, the first time I was barefoot WITHOUT a flashlight). That’s because Amazon claimed they delivered my tea (very important) and my book club selection (also important, since the library will not be coughing up a copy for a good long time) yesterday, and we hadn’t seen it…and it’s not a small box…I get 480 teabags (British) at a time…although Amazon sells them for half of what I used to pay locally. Since tearing out three tall skinny trees to put in the new septic leach field, there’s an opening to my front lawn that did not used to exist, and increasingly, delivery people believe it’s the access to my front door. I had even checked out the door from my bedroom that goes to the tiny deck off that front area, which is normally enclosed by bushes and trees and completely invisible to everyone but the gas meter guy, and I don’t think they even check that any more. Sure enough, once I had the flashlight and started checking all the available greenery, I found the damn box in the middle of nowhere, hiding behind a tree.

Yo Dad. I’m buying trees this week, if even to just put them in their pots where they will eventually be planted, because this is getting silly.

So. Yeah. Soccer. Driving. Dry wind. Hot. Hotel room. Stomach-cramping breakfast. Tired. I managed to finish yesterday’s drawing while sitting in the middle of the soccer team before the 2nd game…

I don’t usually draw with people around because they ask questions, but my head hurt and I was tired and it was what I wanted to do, and honestly, it’s not as rated R as most of my stuff. I also stitched and read, but I was reading Stephen King, which is like a whole ‘nother issue. I think the only benign thing I did, the only thing that no one could question, was the stitching. I’ll photograph them tomorrow after the third game (and 4+ more hours of driving…I drive half, girlchild does the other half).

We could have stayed up there another night, but I needed to get stuff done here, like sanding and washing the next set of walls…we moved a piano!

The next two walls to be painted are the one on the right, where the piano used to be (seems almost pointless to paint it when it will be 80% covered by piano and bookshelf, but whatever) and the wall with the sliding glass door and giant window. Then all we have left is the wall with the mirrors, which are coming down on Wednesday, and the one next to the fireplace, which has a mastic issue at the moment. Carpet is next on the list. Picking it this week, hopefully installing next week. I can only handle this level of chaos for a short period of time, and then I start to go a bit bonkers. (GO…ha ha ha. very funny)

So the soccer…this is the first tournament since girlchild’s back surgery in March. She didn’t do physical therapy, because she didn’t need to. They put two pins in her back and some growth hormone to persuade the bone to heal, but this is it. And it’s a joy to see her play…

Because she was really playing, seriously kicking some people’s butts, even though she’s totally out of shape…

And that girl jumps way higher than she does (the LA team was a little frightening in many ways)…

But she played half the game today and is physically tired, but not hurting in a bad way, despite all the contact during the game.

This one…our player and the girlchild both hit it with their heads, but both had their eyes closed, and it basically rolled down the girlchild’s body.

You can see the goalie behind them. If some other player had had the brains to be standing right in front of them, it would have been a goal, but no such luck. This is not really a tournament you win…it’s a college showcase, and basically girlchild has decided (quite intelligently) that she will be picking schools for their academics, and once she has her short list, she’ll start contacting the soccer coaches there. Soccer doesn’t bring the big scholarships, but I think she’d still like to play if she can.

So while we play in these, she’s not really super-bothered about who’s watching her…as she puts it, mostly it’s local schools (Southern California) and she wants to go farther than that.

So there’s one more kamikaze drive tomorrow and then we’re done for a couple of weeks, when there’s another one. Meanwhile, she communes with her friends…

Listening to music and talking and snapchatting, all at the same time.

We saw this sign up in Pomona…

Which reminds me, I’m making a phone call tomorrow to see if I can get a scholarship for a mindfulness class locally. It’s way too expensive otherwise. The director asked me to call, though, so we’ll see what they can do for me. Maybe nothing, but if you don’t ask? Then you don’t ever get…right? I don’t know if the Bible says that.

One of the reasons I wanted to come home tonight is because the ironing is talking to me, the talk of the artist-addict. I finished ironing this guy together…

And then did the arm on the other side…

It was about 100 pieces. I’m 9 1/2 hours into the ironing, a little less than halfway through the pieces at 720 or so. I found two of the missing pieces, but am now missing two more. There’s some weird universe-balancing aspect going on there…not sure I understand it. I do know I want it done and that I need to get working on the birds too.

Moodwise, spending time with the girlchild falls halfway between really nice (at dinner, at one point in the car) and absolute hell (when you can’t say anything right, it’s all wrong and I often just can’t deal with that). I know that’s normal for teens…wish I could manage my own reactions to it better, but it is what it is. It does make it hard, though…because I feel like I don’t have anyone I can check in with on weekends like this, there’s no one to commiserate with, to help talk me through it, through my emotional reaction to constantly being railed at. There’s no mood stabilizer. It’s all on me, and I don’t have it in me.

So I cry. Again. And then I get to iron for an hour or so and things get calmer, more peaceful. Note to self: less drama and teens, more artmaking. Oh, if only that were truly possible.

I finished a book this week. It took me a long time to read this…China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station…

partially because of all the work on the house and partially because it was long and DENSE (boychild’s words), but really good. What’s also interesting is googling images for the characters in the book. I think the artists have done fairly well with Lin, but I didn’t see a good Garuda, as far as I had seen Yagharek in my mind’s eye. The slake moths, yes, and the Voldyanoi…but the Cactucae? Not so much. I work really hard at visualizing a place and the characters, and I think part of what makes this level of fantasy/sci fi difficult for many readers is that it is hard to do that…Hyperion was the same way, with all the different planets and species. I will read more books by Mieville, although he apparently wanders genres like my brain wanders during staff meetings, so who knows what that will look like. Again, these literary worlds are much nicer places to live, even when filled with nasty creatures out for your brain’s emanations, than my brain is right now…so I’ll keep reading.

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”
― Giovanni Boccaccio