Until the Feeling Sticks…

I planned a hike for this morning. I figure once school starts up again and the soccer season hits me fully upside the head (that starts tomorrow), I won’t have as much time to be wandering all over the place. I’ll write about the hike later. But I was sitting in a parking lot getting ready for this hike, and I had had a bad night and a bad morning, and I was already trying not to cry (as usual, what’s new), but…my ex emailed me (and a little while later, the girlchild texted me) that his mom had died last night…and I lost it. I’m not the most emotionally stable person at the moment, and I haven’t seen her in years, and yes I’m divorced and all, but she wrote me every year, usually more than once. And even when it was getting hard for her, she still wrote…to me. She kept up that communication for 10-plus years post-divorce and I always greatly appreciated her doing that, for not cutting me off completely, for keeping the lines open, for her news of a family I no longer officially belonged to. She was a caring woman and I will miss her spidery handwriting with her tales of music and fruitcake.

So I guess I didn’t start the hike out in the best frame of mind.

I’m not processing most of the day any better. I hiked…well, walked really. I went to the store. I weathered the teenaged girlstorm of last-minute planning (I’m kind of tired of that storm, I must say). I graded papers. I read a little.

More importantly, there was art. I think no matter the pain in your heart, whether sadness or loss or just a plain old bad day, being creative, even in a stupid paperwork kind of way, is good for all that. I’m not happier right now, but I am less anxious, more at peace.

I managed to iron down the whole Celebrating Silver quilt this afternoon…

I did it all on the entryway floor (luckily I chose to do this BEFORE we removed the very dead Christmas tree from the house, thus scattering pine needles into corners where they will not reveal themselves until some time in August). I had the whole quilt ironed together in a few large chunks: the earth base, the lower torso of the Crone with the Maiden and the Mother attached, the one bird, the upper torso with arms and staff, and the head and hair entwined with cat and owl. There were also some smaller loose pieces that couldn’t be attached until the whole thing was down on the background fabric.

It took a couple of hours, maybe three, to get the whole mess attached. At one point, I was looking at it and noticed the one dirt piece was much longer than the others…

Why? Fuck if I know. I cut it off.

Once I had everything sort of tacked down on the background, I moved it to the ironing board and tried to do a better job of attaching it, spraying each section with water and heat-setting it for at least 30 seconds.

I can’t show you the whole thing until the exhibit opens…in October. Seriously. I’m sorry. It’s really cool though! Seriously. It is. I’m happy with it.

Of course, I have hours of stitching left, so I should hold on to my feelings of relief for a bit longer. The happiness is a temporary feeling, chased away by anxiety over getting it done this week.

Despite having prewashed every fabric in the quilt, about three of the darker browns bled…

It’s not too obvious and I don’t know if I care. I have used colored pencils in the past to deal with that. I can do that again.

I set up the machine for the stitch-down phase, to start tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s under that towel.

Which is under that cat. Yeah. I know. Damn cat. She has a T-shirt that says Occupy Mom’s Quilts.

My brain is already thinking ahead to how it will stay occupied when this one is done…I have the breast drawing I showed you yesterday? Friday? Can’t remember what day it is now, let alone when I posted about that…I had enlarged it months ago and started taping it together tonight…

Once again, brain short-circuiting reveals itself. One section is copied at the wrong percentage (how the hell did I do that? Must have been unconscious) and I missed another two sections completely…so tomorrow, I will be going back to the copy place to deal with that.

I also started cutting and taping some of the smaller drawings I copied earlier during break…

I want a whole stash of drawings ready to go…this one needed to be filled out on the right. I often run out of page (I have been drawing things off the page since 4th grade, maybe earlier…the problem is not solved by bigger paper) and have to tape bits on to finish the drawing. I need to draw feet for one other one I got taped…

Anyway. These smaller ones are about 14×17″ or so. Maybe I will do one of those first? I do have another smallish quilt top that needs to be stitched down as well. Maybe I will find time for that this week…just continue the stitch-down process after finishing the big one (the big one with tons of pieces that will take me forever to stitch down, who the fuck am I kidding?).

I only got three of the smaller ones done, and now I need to fix another copy issue with one of the drawings. I really did not have full brain power when I went in to do these…amusing (or not) since they were done on two different days, about four months apart. Apparently my brain will not be returning soon. It has left the building and wandered into another time zone.

I meditated with cat on lap.

At least she’s warm. I’m always cold these days. I take my iron pills and the higher thyroid dosage, but it’s not helping. I’m constantly freezing. I need a fur coat (not a real fur coat, but a grown one, like Babygirl has…just carry it around on your skin). I’m OK with genetic modifications that might keep me warm in winter.

Meditation is focusing on feelings still…I’m good at the feels. I’m not good at good feels, just the feels themselves, mostly sad or anxious, occasionally angry. Some people think I should be angry more…more often, more angry. I can’t find a lot of anger. So the meditation says that intellectual, rational thought can obscure underlying feelings…yup. Not mine, though…I told you. I’m good at the feels. I’m not so good at the rational part. I can be intellectual, but I am ruled more by the emotion, the instinct, that gut feeling…Mr. Meditation says that feeling is about knowing what’s right for us. Sigh. That’s the part I’m having issues with right now. I know what’s right, but it isn’t making me happy. It doesn’t feel particularly good. I get little twinges of it, I remember what it feels like…sort of, when I got the whole quilt ironed down (yes, the one I can’t even show you right now)…so that is a good thing. I will just keep doing that until the feeling sticks. And if it happens to stick around for any other part of my life, awesome. I don’t expect much at the moment. But I will be prepared with lots of artwork to pull me through the coming months. Art Saves Lives. Seriously. It does.

Sleep…It’s What’s for Dinner…

It’s funny how depression messes with your ability to remember things, like the part of your brain that’s normally engaged in “oh hey, you need gas,” or “wash the damn bras, ” or “take down the stupid Christmas tree before it spontaneously combusts,” that part is on vacation. I’m not really sure where it goes or what it’s doing. It did not leave a note. There’s some sort of short circuit there that is different than the “I’m so busy” short circuit that I normally have to deal with on a daily basis. My calendar helps with that, as long as I remember to put it in the calendar in the first place (always an issue).

I’ve found that I am having other brain short circuits, though. I usually pick background fabrics for my quilts before I start ironing Wonder Under to fabric. I have the background fabric sitting right next to the table where the pieces are laid out, so I can compare and make sure the new fabric will work with the background, as well as with everything else. I am usually really good at picking appropriate background fabrics well before the rest of the fabrics are chosen. The quilt colors itself in my head, and I just follow that diagram.

Not so on this quilt. I still love what I picked, a deep dark rich purple…

But a lot of what I picked to go on top of it just isn’t going to work. Or even show up. I had a giant brain fart, I guess. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’ve never changed the background at the last minute like this. EVER. What IS that? Demon possession? If I weren’t so afraid of what I might find, I’d go back in the blog and find out when I picked the purple fabric and see what was going on then (nuclear disaster, dying pet, stroke).

Anyway, despite the brain fuzz, I finished up the ironing today…putting the owl together…

I was missing a piece, the leg above one of the claws, so I pulled the fabric for that (this is why I keep all the fabrics I’ve pulled for a specific quilt in a separate box until the quilt is done…then they can go back with the general population), opened it up, and found…

The missing piece…still attached to the fabric in there. Lucky.

And then all the thorny branches (which still don’t look good on that purple)…

And then I piled the whole mess up into a plastic box and drove to the quilt store, where I messed around with a couple of fabrics, all the while knowing what the background wanted to be…

That blue…which is much more turquoise in real life…and is now washed and ready for ironing (new blue on left, old purple on right). I had a not-work party (not a required work party, but a nice party where a lot of people from work just happened to be) tonight, and managed normal social interactions (shocking, I know). I came home and folded fabrics…

Because you can’t just buy one…and then tried to decide which I would do tonight…ironing or sewing binding on…because I also trimmed the Love (not Love) quilt (I really need to pick a name on that one)…

And sewed on the binding this afternoon…I still have to do all the handwork.

I started this afternoon, but didn’t get very far…

Plus Babygirl wanted to sit on my lap…or chew a hole in the quilt. I noticed the eye was twitching again and I’d been grinding my teeth since yesterday morning. Apparently a ton of exercise and art completion and some wine and even good news from the doctor do not make the stress disappear. Not even meditation does that. The balancing is not working well at the moment, at least mentally (ironic, since I’m on Winter Break still)…when I take time out to exercise and hike, it leaves less time to get everything done. But exercising and hiking do relax me, give my brain a break. But then I get more stressed because I have less time.

This is a frustrating conundrum. Still a work in progress. Speaking of which, apparently I looked so pained at the gym this morning, the staff needed to make goofy faces at me and talk to me so I had to take my earphones out and then they had to ask me if I was OK. Shit. Did I look that bad? I’ve looked way worse than that, I know. Sheesh. Carrying all the depression around in my face.

Anyway, I looked at the clock, calculated my wakeup time for tomorrow’s hike, thought about how tired I was from not sleeping well the last three nights, and decided to try going to bed early…now I started writing this post at 11:18 PM. In a former life (as Ms. America? doubtful), I would have been heading for bed at 11:18. Nowadays, I’m still artmaking then. I start to worry around midnight and think it might be time to stop that stuff and move on to the blogging stage of the evening. I’ve been making it into bed between 1:30 and 2 AM for the last two weeks, I think…with an occasional early night, but mostly not. I go back to school in a week. I think I have to readjust the sleeping soon. Anyway, I wrote the post and I’m going to go to bed, kind of a New Year’s resolution on sleep: do more of it and better. Or something. Sleep…it’s what’s for dinner. Nope. That’s not it. Please don’t send me any studies on how a lack of sleep guarantees you will die a horrible and early death. It’s not like I have any control over the process. I’ll get into bed and my brain will revolt against me and wander off into wakey wakey land for an hour or so.

The point was, I didn’t sew and I didn’t iron. I folded. And then I tried to sleep. Wait. I haven’t done that part yet. The cat on my lap is simulating that activity for me. She does it so much better than I do (not hard).

Brain all over the map today. Really. It just sucked. Tomorrow I will force it to be focused and aim for some semblance of what Kathy’s brain used to be. As a backup, I put everything I needed to do on my calendar. All of it. Seriously. If I don’t do it, it’s not important. Until it is.

Guardian Angel

I’m sitting in the parking structure at Radiology downtown. I have 10 minutes before I need to check in. I cried all the way here. I know the odds of there being something really wrong are extremely low, but it doesn’t stop my brain from being upset. I’m not worried, because I know that whatever it is, it already is…something or nothing…I’m just scared. Not too scared to get out of the car…trying to get my eyes to behave, my tear ducts under control. If I look upset, the nurses will be more solicitous and I can’t handle that now. Better that they’re rude so I can be irritated or angry.

They won’t be rude. They never are.

This is the drawing I did back in late June after a followup mammogram.

In June, I had my normal mammogram, and then they called me at school (strangely, I answered) and wanted a followup, but they couldn’t say why. Way to strike fear into a woman’s heart. My doctor called later that day to explain. Whoops. Timing issues. So I went in for the followup (it’s not the first time) and they did 4 or 5 mammograms and an ultrasound and the doctor came in and said there was this thing, deep behind the nipple, but it had been there for three years without changing…but he was concerned. Not so concerned to biopsy it, but concerned enough to have me back in 6 months. So I did that drawing. Ironically, it’s the wrong breast…but I guess I drew it as facing, on the left side. Anyway. It will be my next big quilt, I think. Maybe.

So I went back in today. I wasn’t worried…I was just scared. Those are different feelings. I do my monthly exams. I have no family history. I breastfed for a good long time.

They did three mammogram views and then she said they would call me, and I said, um. Yeah. Can you just have him look now, because I don’t want to have to come back? So she did. And yeah, he wanted an ultrasound. I pack myself out to the “Women’s Lounge” (a separate room in Radiology, so I don’t feel weird about sitting there double-gowned with my clothes in a pile on my lap). I tell them my time constraints (girlchild had her CT scan for today too). They take me in for the ultrasound, and I watch her, watch the screen, watch what they’re looking for. I don’t know what is good and what is bad. She says, “It’ll just take 5 minutes.” Twenty minutes later and she finally says I can clean up, but she wants the doctor to look. “You can get dressed.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” Yeah. I got dressed, and then she came back with the doctor and I got undressed again. Everything is covered with that ultrasound gel now. I think I stopped breathing normally somewhere in there. I sent a message to the girlchild, told her to meet me at her appointment. We already had a contingency plan in case this happened. Her text back made me tear up. She said good luck.

Doctor comes in. His name? Lumpkin. Seriously? (OK, it might be Lumkin, but still!) She does the ultrasound again. Shows him something. He asks about something else. They stare at my breast, then at the ultrasound. Then he smiles and says, “It’s that same thing, a shadow. It’s been there since 2007. It hasn’t changed. I just want two more views on the mammogram.” Gel off, new gown (old one covered in gel), sit in the ~~waiting room~~ Women’s Lounge (I am still not lounging) again. Back in, another two views, which makes five total. Deep breaths. They do the twisty roll thing this time. I’m laughing. The woman is on her knees on the ground, trying to position all of my parts in the right place. I’m looking up at the machine, and someone has put some sort of scented thing on the machine…lavender…to calm us. I’m calm. I’m in pain, but I’m calm. I’m not breathing right, but I’m calm. Whatever it is, it’s already there. It’s been in me for 6 1/2 years or more. Flashes of Aliens movies.

It’s OK. He says it’s normal tissue. I go back in 6 months to my normal mammogram. As long as it stays the same, I’m good. That foreign shadow is part of me.

As I head out for the girlchild’s CT scan, I wish I had my sketchbook. I haven’t drawn all break. No opportunities, I guess. Other priorities. I haven’t done much of anything, it seems. Not true, but it feels that way. Achievement low. Must fix that in the next week.

So I came home and started ironing again…

Didn’t have much time in the afternoon, because I was wrangling with the FAFSA (financial aid for college). I was supposed to know city and state for every college the boychild applied to (I didn’t).

Damn breast is sore. I got all of the torso ironed to the staff, so I pulled it off the teflon sheet and rolled it up on itself…

That’s how I store it until it’s time to iron it all down to fabric. I wanted to finish today, but ended up needing to think about sleep. I am actually fairly wide awake, even now, but I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, so I can’t stay up until I’m done. I do want to get a different background fabric tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I’ll take some of the pieces with me and toss them down on the floor, thus freaking out everyone in the store. Yay me.

In between all this, girlchild had a game…

I graded for the hour before the game…I bargain with myself about work vs. stuff that’s more fun.

Because taking pictures during the night games is totally pointless. I did more embroidery on these.

I’m working on the first two month’s worth. I’ve done all the embellishment in the background color on all 6 blocks, and now have moved on to eyes and feet on all 6. I originally estimated 2 games to finish 3 blocks, so it would be 4 games to finish 6. I’ve put in 2 games’ worth of time on the 6 blocks, so I should be done at next Wednesday’s game. I might be done with grading by then too, if I’m lucky…or at least the grading I can do while sitting on the bleachers. She played half the game tonight, so that was good, but there was all this stupid coaching politics going on, so who knows. I stitch because it keeps me calm during games. Plus I like to stitch. The one guy who’s been asking me about the birds every game asked me if I was done today. You so funny. I’m never done.

Anyway, we had been smart enough to put dinner in the slow cooker, so it was ready when we got home. I exercised and meditated, and finally started ironing really late, unfortunately.

I’m finally ironing the crone’s face…I got all the hair and the cat done, and then constructed the eyes and complicated bits down below on the pattern, so I could put them on top after…

It’s easier for me to see the pieces that way. I think each eye had about 10 pieces in it. She’s a complicated woman.

And I really like how she turned out. Deep breaths. I think this quilt is going to come together and be what I want it to be. I’ll feel better when I see it all together. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show the whole thing before the exhibit opens. I’ll have to go read the rules. You might have to wait until October. That would suck. I really don’t like rules like that.

Tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get it all together…there’s an owl to do and some thorny bits, and then I need to find a new background and iron the whole thing down. Not sure whether I can do that all tomorrow…and Sunday is a bit busy as well. But I’ll try. I also still have a binding that needs to go on.

I finished this book today…Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

I really liked it in the beginning, like 5 out of 5 liked it, but it really wore on my nerves by the end. He has a way with words, but nothing really happened in this book. It was interesting enough, but also irritating. So yeah…down to a 3 out of 5 by the end. It would have been better if it were shorter? I don’t know. I’m going to read some of his other stuff, because I like the words, but these two that I’ve read are apparently not his best, OR he’s all over the map. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really trust GoodReads reviews unless it’s someone I know who reads books I read. Otherwise, every book has been rated a 1 or a 5 by someone.

I have done a good job of keeping up with all the library holds that came in while I was on vacation…I’m not caught up yet, though. It’s been a good run…I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve also been watching Firefly, the TV series that is a Western in space. The boychild recommended it to me, and I’m almost through all of them. They grew on me. I wasn’t sure about the first two episodes, but the last four have been great. The dialog cracks me up sometimes…”That sounds like science fiction.” “We live on a spaceship, dear.” I’ll miss them when they’re gone…I guess that’s a sign of a good show.

So all the angst of the morning is still sitting in my chest, ironically, around about the same place as that shadowy invader, whatever it is. I’m calling it my guardian angel at the moment. Everyone needs one…she might as well reside in my left breast. But all the ironing helped. Getting the face done helped. It was successful. I need more successful, apparently. Eases the sorrow. The pain. The sad. I have this lockbox, open, inside my chest. It’s waiting for my brain to gather up all the feels associated with this pain and put them in the lockbox, close it up and walk away from it. Move on. Let go, says the counselor. My brain is like a pitbull with a steak in its mouth. The brain won’t do it. It picks up a piece here, a piece there, but as it’s reaching for that piece way over there, it drops one of the others. Goes back for that one and drops another. Comedy of errors, of lame-ass behavior, of not really trying? Who knows. I move on. I don’t, but I do. I move on and my brain stays back and tries to continue picking up pieces. I’ll come back when she’s ready for me.

Ironed My Way Out of a Hole…

I was OK. I made it through almost the whole day. Boychild turned 18 today…no longer a kid. Kind of a big deal. I was going through old pictures, trying to write a post about him turning 18, and I lost it. I read someone’s status the other day, summarizing their year…this is one reason I’ve been staying away from Facebook and blogs. People summarize at the end of the old year, beginning of the new…what was 2013 like? Was it good or bad? Will 2014 need to be a little better or a lot better? How can one year, one space of 365 days, hold so much power over us? If the first 6 months were good and the last 6 months bad, how do we evaluate the year? I don’t want to think that way right now. I can’t summarize anything…how to summarize what isn’t over? Anyway, this person talked about having her heart shattered last year.

Sigh. Shattered heart? Naw. That sounds fixable, like I could get the super glue out and put it back together. Just the heart? That’s only one organ…you’ve got plenty more. I feel like Chihuly glass, a whole huge strung-together sculpture of his, hung high in a building, in an atrium four or more stories high, and the cable holding it…it stretches and then snaps…and all the glass comes crashing down onto a stone floor, and shattered…yes, shattered and splintered and gone to dust even, spread all over the floor, impossible to gather all the pieces together, let alone to put them back together. Shattered heart? Nope. Shattered all.

Meditation had me come up with a question I wanted answered yesterday. Today, the same question is asked, but when I’m done sitting with the feeling that comes up (hello sad, my old friend), I am supposed to take the question and leave it on the chair. Don’t think about it and try to solve it. Just leave it and reserve it for meditation. Not trying to think my way to an answer; just noticing the feeling. Is it the right answer? I feel like some people think I shouldn’t still be sad, but I am. So. I am. I need to be able to trust my own feelings. Trust my sad. But I don’t have an answer anyway.

I took the boychild for a walk today…more about that later. Then I ironed…for a long time…

I’m getting closer to done…

and I’m finally feeling comfortable about what I’m ironing. I still think the background isn’t going to work, but I can deal with that pretty easily.

I have all these bits and pieces that can’t be ironed together until other parts are done…this needs the hand that holds the staff so I can iron the bottom and top section to the hand.

I finally started on the crone…

I do the big pieces lined up on top of the drawing, and then move it to the side so I can see what goes on top…

Makes it easier to put everything in the right place…then I finally had somewhere to iron the Mother…

And the other leg came next…with the Maiden attached to it.

This is where I breathed a little easier. It’s making more sense to my brain now. I think. It’s funny that I was so sure of the drawing and the ironing of the fabric, but when I am now putting it all together, I’m not sure. I felt the same way about the Earth Stories quilt.

I got the uterus done just in time to go out for boychild’s birthday dinner…

It must be strange having a mother who is saying, “Just let me finish ironing the uterus down and then we’ll go,” while you’re waiting for your birthday dinner.

Poor kid. We had dinner at his favorite Mexican place…

Grandpa and girlchild calculating tip. Math at the table. Boychild and I tried to find a geocache outside the restaurant afterward (yes, there was one), but we were unsuccessful. It was dark. Made it more difficult.

For his cake, we were thinking about what 18 means: he can vote, so girlchild put a little smiley Obama face on one side (OK, it doesn’t look like him at all) and a cigarette (great). She refrained from adding pictures for joining the military and hanging out at strip clubs and casinos, so I guess we were grateful for that.

He showed no interest in all that other stuff…just the cake.

They left after cake and presents and I started ironing again…

I was on a roll. When I’m ironing, I don’t have to think about sad or New Year’s or shattered anything.

I got most of the torso done, but ran out of steam…

Hands are complicated and that left hand is supremely so. Plus I have to get up in the morning for yet another mammogram to check the thing that keeps showing up and making them do followups. It makes me nervous, but at least they’re paying attention. My life would be so much better if more people were paying attention. So I’ll let them do their followup and hope for the best. It’s all you can do.

I’m about 10 1/2 hours into the ironing…I have about 30 pieces left in the 900s, but I’ve already used some of the 1000s too. I’m guessing I have about 250 pieces to go, so maybe another 2 1/2 hours. I don’t know if I even HAVE 2 1/2 hours tomorrow…maybe…doctors and soccer and counseling. Save the boob and the brain and watch the ball. Tired now. Ironed my way out of a hole. It’s OK…I know I’m going to keep falling into that hole, but at least I keep climbing back out.

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…

I’ll Let You Know When It’s the New Year…

So this is the magical change over to the New Year, when everything is fresh and you have a new slate and the whole year can be different than last year. Yeah. I bet you know what I think about that. It’s just a day, a night, an hour. I watched some of it earlier, not by choice. I reveled briefly (not really). I ventured out briefly. Then ironing fabric called me back. I spent too much of today asleep (girlchild’s bus was really late…she stumbled in around 4 AM and I didn’t really sleep until she was home), at the gym, or reading. Or just plain procrastinating, trying to give my brain some space to exist with itself.

So I did start ironing eventually, but my kamikaze plan to be done tonight is not happening. Not shocking really. I make plans so I can break them and make new plans, right? I’m not as motivated to finish as I should be. Part of my brain is squawking about deadlines and the to-do list, and the other part is trying to relax and be on vacation. They’re a bit at odds.

So I ironed the mother’s head…

I’m rethinking my background fabric. I think it will be too dark. I also think I need to do some serious threadwork or something…two of my fabrics are too close together. Or something. It may be that when everything is all together that it will make me happier. Until then, I’m stressed about it.

I was less stressed when I came back from trying to be sociable (it’s OK…I failed…) and started working on the bird…

Is it a hawk? It’s something not-raven for once…

And it has over 100 pieces in it, and it’s now done. I’m at about 550 pieces ironed and 5 1/2 hours in. Sigh. Less than halfway done…and the next three days are busy. But I think if I focus better (fuck, what’s the probability of that happening?), I will get done.

I made some more geocaching thingies today, but screwed two of them up by not remembering the instructions…

Anyway, if I have time tomorrow, I’ll do a couple more…

I don’t think it really matters how many I have…

I forgot to take an after picture, but I put two of them in upside down by accident…

So they didn’t flatten properly. Shrinky Dink science is very particular, and I am too much of a space cadet to follow instructions. So I made cookies instead. Actually, I didn’t do too well with those either, but they’re good to eat at least. Do I need cookies? Fuck no, I don’t, but I made the mistake of going to the grocery store after the gym and before eating anything, because I needed to buy supplies for the boychild’s birthday cake, and we’re all just damn lucky I didn’t buy a lot more food. Do NOT go to the store when you’re hungry and depressed…it is just a fucking bad idea.

Anyway…the mood is still rancid, so I’m dragging my ass outside on a hike tomorrow with people who don’t know me (really, that’s better for everyone involved…I can handle my kids or strangers…nothing in between), hopefully to beat my brain into some semblance of peace and calm in honor of the New Year, which again, is just the next day on a standardized calendar that doesn’t really make any sense. I’ll let you know when I think it really IS the new year. We can celebrate then. Apparently there are quail hunters on the loose where we will be hiking (I did not know this was legal, and I’ve never seen quail out here…I think…so I’d like to see one, preferably not shot, and I’d like to NOT see hunters). And then hopefully I will come back and iron the maiden (Iron Maiden, huh uhuh uhuh…) and then move on to the next thing on this beast. If I need a new background, I can decide that once it’s all ironed together.

Anyway, another loser New Year’s Eve for me…wish I could have spent it differently, but such is my life at the moment. At least fabric was involved…that’s always the best way to start a new year. Which reminds me, here’s the quilt roundup from 2013…

Not a bad year for quiltmaking, which was the good news…one is only a detail, since I’m not allowed to show the full quilt until May 2014…but 8 quilts finished (with one about to be finished this week and another within two week’s time, just like last year)…albeit, three were relatively small, but two of them were quite huge. So…achievement…in the face of nasty ass depression. At least I can still do that.

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.

Sew Together the Days

You know, I used to get really excited when I’d finish picking the fabrics for a quilt…it was a turning point past really the most difficult part of the visualization. I basically color the whole drawing in my head and hold it there until I finish ironing, sometimes for days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months (really hard and not recommended). That said, it is also probably the most creative part of the quilt, besides the drawing itself. I can’t actually SEE the finished quilt, but each fabric is going to go with the one next to it and behind it and make the image in my head. It’s challenging…I need mental energy of a certain type to do that step, but it’s also somewhat meditative. I get lost in my alpha waves for at least some of it and it brings me some peace…sometimes even joy when I finish a particularly difficult section, especially like flesh tones.

Sigh. Not so much any more. There is a certain sense of relief that this stage is done this time, just because I am so tired and stressed right now and this seems to help and also hinder. The need to get it done keeps me up late, and once I’m ironing, it’s hard to stop, and when I do stop, I can’t get my mind to stop. It just wants to keep going. Pros and cons: the high of the creative buzz but the low from not enough sleep and the NEED to keep going. I had more buffers before, more balance, more things to do that would give that part of my brain a break, but also a break from the stress. I don’t have many of those any more.

I finished ironing the fabrics for Celebrating Silver tonight…finishing the owl up.

There were 88 fabrics in this quilt, mostly browns and grays by the look of it. Lots of flesh tones too…

Not in numbers, but in volume. Now I have to cut them all out.

I currently have almost 38 hours into this quilt. It took 13 hours and 12 minutes to cut all the fabrics for about 1250 pieces. Not bad. I usually figure an hour for 100 pieces for that. It will probably take less time to cut them out, although there are some significantly bitchy pieces to cut, if you look at that bin up there…the tips of the owl’s wings, for example. I’m figuring about 10 hours for cutting, and I already have 2 hours in. So maybe I’ll be done by next weekend? You never know. It could happen.

Meanwhile, I did spend time with my stitching friends, geeky stanchions of my sanity. We played with technology, googled Katniss’ cowl/shrug from Catching Fire, which the designer calls “woven, then knitted,” which makes no sense…but whatever…

I think we finally decided that they had woven something and then knitted the woven something together. Or whatever. And all the knitted versions suck.

We talked about stitching and children and Christmas ornaments (I never did look at the damn Just Cross Stitch ornament issue…Kathy will have to bring it back in January). It was a good two hours of not having to be the sad Kathy or the stressed Kathy. I finally restarted the girlchild’s Christmas stocking (originally started in 1997, don’t laugh). I couldn’t find the cream thread at all…it must be hiding somewhere. I must have pulled it for something else, but now I can’t find it. Sigh. This is how we end up with stashes the likes of mine. I lost two pairs of embroidery scissors in the search, but found two other ones, one of which I didn’t even remember owning, sad but true.

It’s a very exciting start. It’s actually fairly large stitches, which helps with my blindness, and I’m actually doing it on stretcher bars. It’s been ON those bars since 1997, so obviously I haven’t needed them. I told the girlchild not to expect it until she turned 21 (she’s 16. I should be able to meet that deadline). Every Christmas she would complain that everyone had a handmade stocking but her. Yes. I suck.

The right eyelid is still twitching, although off and on now. Ironically, I got in a screeching argument with the girlchild before I left for the stitching meeting where I was working on her stocking…OK, she was screeching. I was holding my brain together just barely. Typical for me at the moment. Just barely held together. Just by a thread. Grades. Cars. Something else. I think I knew everything when I was 16 too, so I get it…but I could use a break. I even asked her dad (jokingly, honestly, because I already knew the answer) if he could handle the grades conversation. He said quietly, “It won’t work if I do it.” Dammit. I don’t know if I have the mental strength to lay down the law right now.

I have about three drawings in my brain…not sure when they will be allowed out. Hopefully soon. I have been picking at the Christmas shopping…not happily, but getting it done. I’m buried in Have To and distancing myself from the emotional swamp that is my brain. Let it meditate. Let it psycho dance over there in the corner. I exercised tonight, but not at the gym…I’m scheduling the gym as often as I can. I slog through the days. Too many art show rejections lately. They don’t usually bother me, but at the moment, I could use some encouragement. Is the only purpose to my artmaking to fill the days so I don’t get more and more sad? Or is there actually an audience for my work? Or is it just too damn difficult to process? Who knows. I don’t usually care, but I’m feeling purposeless at the moment. WHY am I doing this again? What do I gain from it? Is it really sanity, because if this is sanity, well honestly, it kind of sucks. I think I need to work on some goals beyond “finish this part of this quilt.” I don’t know what those goals will be, though. because I have to want something to have goals. I’ve given up on wanting, because it just hurts. Wanting is sharp stabby things in the soft parts.

Shitty week. When you feel useless and worthless and like you’re doing it all wrong. I know that’s not true, but I need to find some piece of something that makes it all feel better at the moment. Time for a hike? Wish I had time. Or life drawing would help. Also no time for that. Maybe I just need to go get the Christmas tree…that smell. Sitting with the tree, lights on, in the dark. That always helps my mood.

“Searching for a light, a thread that will connect this moment to that one, a way to sew together the days so that they make sense.” Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

I’m trying. I suck at it, but I am trying.

The Expiration Date on the Milk Is All That Matters…

I only managed 9 1/2 minutes of ironing tonight…all I really have left is the owl…

I couldn’t get my head around his coloring tonight (I always think of owls as being male…strange, that), so I did the thorny bushes around the Crone’s head instead…

Red thorns…gray twigs. The box is almost full.

But I’m down to just a few pieces left to iron, maybe 25. Then it’s done and I move out of the studio into the living room to cut them all out. This quilt is progressing quickly. That’s because I have no life. Oh well. Actually, tonight, I pretended to have a life. I went to a book club meeting with total strangers. Yup. I did that. I should clarify that this group is for “geeky women” (their term) and so I wasn’t sure I belonged (I am always the alien, no matter the group). Girlchild said that because I spent over an hour worrying about whether I was a geek and googling definitions of geeks and nerds and dorks that I WAS in fact one and I should just shut up and join. Sigh. Anyway, the plus is that it’s a group of women who read A LOT and FAST, and I got about 400 book recommendations just tonight (plus TV and movies) and sat next to a woman who said something about listening to audiobooks while IRONING FABRIC and what are the odds? She does costumes, but where else do I go where that happens? (nowhere)

The book we read, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, was pretty good…it had its flaws, definitely light fiction, but I’ll read the next book in the series…

I still have questions and the character wasn’t horrible…she had issues, sure, but hell, so do I. There are some interesting characters and it’s not often you get urban fantasy AND mystery in one book.

Anyway. I ordered the next book for the January book club from the library system. And yeah? We met in a bar. Books and wine. You cannot go wrong. There was food too, but I didn’t have a lot of money. And good music, which was free.

This week is full of social events…tomorrow night is my favorite stitching people and I don’t want to talk about Friday night. Sigh. It can’t all be good. Sometimes it just has to be.

My right eyelid started twitching yesterday. I googled it (see geek reference above). I don’t know WHY I googled it…I already know what’s causing it: fatigue or stress. You know what’s interesting is that even though I am getting even less sleep than last year at this time, I’m often not tired. Weird. Some brain chemistry thing? You Don’t Really Need All That Sleep. I know that’s not true, but I still think it’s strange.

So yeah, eyelid is stress. I spent 2 1/2 hours at Children’s Hospital this morning with the girlchild and we are now taking the next step towards surgery, a CT scan. We think we can schedule surgery between the high-school soccer season and the beginning of the club season. Yes. That’s crazy. We’re also scheduling between the ACT and SAT. Really crazy. The doctor did answer all our questions and we trust him, though, so I’m hoping this is relatively easy.

At school, we are getting closer to the kids being 1:1 on technology…which is more than a little scary. What does it look like? What is the purpose of the technology? It can’t just be a toy we trot out to make admin happy…it has to serve a purpose within the content. So the thought of flipping how we do stuff in the classroom is sort of mind-boggling at the moment. My head is trying to wrap itself around it. So it was not at all amusing today when the server went down and we were on computers doing research all day, and I had to log in 22 kids in one period on a server they shouldn’t be on (don’t ask) and there were a lot of deep breaths and meditative thinking and seriously deep brain stuff about Is This Really What I Want to Do? This is what using technology is to me in the classroom right now: a management nightmare. I can’t even deal with content issues because the technology issues are so vast and varied and fucking frustrating. You always have to have a backup plan, because inevitably, something won’t work. And the kids may be digital natives, but they give up SO easily when stuff doesn’t work right the first time and they suck at LOOKING for stuff…like a tabbed menu on a website is apparently invisible to them. WHERE does it say CAUSES? I wonder. Key words. If I put them on Facebook, they could find it immediately, but the Mayo Clinic website? Completely incomprehensible. I’m thinking of rewriting the medical websites to LOOK like Facebook with status posts on some beautiful woman who has had a heart attack or has atherosclerosis, just so they will READ them, and then turn a bunch of it into Vines so they’ll watch all SIX seconds, and then only then maybe will we be getting somewhere. Training them to be observant. It can be extremely frustrating. I’ve gotten very good at it, and I kept my cool today (even after spending most of the morning at the hospital, where they were running an hour late). I blame the meditation. I can deal. My eyelid can’t deal, but the rest of me can. I have not found eyelid-specific meditation.

I just found all these Thanksgiving food pictures.

Girlchild cooked almost everything…

We had another family over, friends of ours that we’ve had Thanksgiving with for a million years…

The food was good; we played that silly word game we always play.

Everyone is getting older.

That was Wednesday (of course) and then Thursday, we went to their cabin for a spaghetti dinner (of course)…

Where there was more food (girlchild did desserts this time)…those are not just rice krispies treats…they are brown butter rice krispies treats. They make you want to curl up and die, they are so good. They are gourmet rice krispies treats. She has to really like you to make those. I rate.

And there was more talk and lots of Snapchat (not my generation…the younger).

That’s my mom and the girlchild. And it was relatively good. I still have issues with gatherings just because of my alien status…but these were people I had known for forever. They accept me. They are kind. So I’m working on it, not being a hermit. Coming out and not moping around. Some. It’s hard.

So I’m still distant, numb, probably not a bad place to be this week. I had a good book-related conversation with ten total strangers tonight and an even more focused book/fabric/life conversation with two of the women. I talked to both kids about future stuff and driving and cars and college and soccer and stupid people and whether or not I should let the girlchild take penne a la vodka to school (it does have alcohol in it, per se, although it is cooked off/down/something). I just thought about it and wondered…is this OK? Should I worry? Naw.

I would have liked more time for art, but such is life. Life and art…a balance. I can’t just have one. I need both. The art alone is very isolating, very lonely, very in my head. Sometimes I have to get out of that dark gloomy place and wander outside in the real world. I did cry, though. Still. That doesn’t seem to have wandered off. Strange. It’s still hard to exist in some moments. Lots of them still. I don’t know when that shifts…or perhaps it’s shifting so slowly that I can’t even see it.

To bed, eyelid twitching and all…tomorrow is another one of those days. From the book we read for book club tonight: “All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.” Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire.

Uncomfortably Numb…

My head was spinning itself into a panicked mess today…yesterday…whenever. When I get like that, all harried and freaking out, just drive me to the gym, shove me out the car door, hand me a book, and make me work out until I’ve finished the book. Or hand me my sketchbook and a pen and put me in a locked room and don’t let me come out for a few hours. There should be an emergency meditation program for days like this…you press a red button on the meditation app that says Emergency and it runs and runs until you come up for calm air and the panic is gone (21 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack). I did the first one, the gym and a book. And meditation. I only had time for 26 minutes of ironing tonight, but the exercise helped numb the crazy and push it down into some hole, shove it in a drawer, wrap it up in a box and hide it on a shelf. Whatever. I’m numb now…not comfortably…just pushed everything back over THERE. It’ll come out again, but maybe by then I’ll have some distance, some ability to deal. Some strength that I am lacking at the moment.

I ironed lungs and a cat (21 Objects You Can Find in Kathy’s Quilts). It’s all I had time to do.

I was so numb after everything that I just full on gave up on removing the cat from the ironing board (21 Ways to Remove a Cat from an Ironing Board).

She’s expecting me to pull her off, but I just don’t have the mental energy. I just dehaired the board when I was ready to iron (21 Uses for Tape).

Are you noticing a theme? I actually had a rant in my head the other day about all the posts with numbered lists and how they were driving me nuts…Ten Ways to Use up Turkey, Fourteen Ways to Wear a Scarf, Twelve Ways to Screw Up Your Life…but then I ran into one where I didn’t care that it was a numbered list, because it was actually a well-written and useful list.

I shared this link on Facebook, but it got deleted and then reappeared (FB Gremlins beware)…21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You’re Depressed…by Rosalind Robertson, in response to all those happy lists about how to be freakin’ happy, like it’s something I can buy in a spray bottle at the grocery store and just never got around to using. I liked what she said about creatives and depression: “we ARE the ‘creative’ types around you. We feel more, we see more, and for that we suffer.” I don’t think being depressed made me creative or being creative made me depressed, but being creative gives me a better path OUT of the depression…so maybe I’m the more obvious depressiod in your circles…the rest are hiding in bed and not telling you what they’re feeling or thinking, because they may not even know. I’m out there in your face about it. I’m actually paying attention to how I feel instead of running away or hiding from it. Dammit, I’m going to write my way out of this depression…

It is thoroughly annoying to have people tell you that you make a choice to be depressed when you are doing all the things on that list, like you’re an even bigger failure than you already thought you were…or putting a time limit on your depression. “Well, it’s been X months now, so you really should be moving on.” Rightio. Getting on with that right now. Now get the fuck away from me.

Robertson refers to an article about the upside of depression from the New York Times in 2010, which you can read here (yes, it’s a lot of words…they are interesting words, though, and there’s lots of science in them, and science is often good).

“He cites as evidence a recent study that found ‘expressive writing’ — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes. The reason, Thomson suggests, is that writing is a form of thinking, which enhances our natural problem-solving abilities. ‘This doesn’t mean there’s some miracle cure,’ he says. ‘In most cases, the recovery period is going to be long and difficult.'” Great. Well, that’s what my blog has been since mid-July…expressive writing about how I’m feeling and a little bit about what I’m getting done. I wish it were more “getting done” and less “having to feel shitty,” but there does seem to be a purpose to my madness.

What I find really interesting is that I am already doing most of the things on the list…that I have some inherent ability to know what will pull me out of depression, a toolbox, as it were, and I employ the tools in it as needed to get out of that damn hole. It’s not just up and out, though…it’s up a bit and fall back in. Sometimes you make it further up the muddy wall, just to fall further back into the hole, but up the wall you continue. Slowly. Bleeding fingers, nails pulled back and ripped from trying to hold on, covered in mud from the repeated falls…but up the wall you go. I would argue for me that my natural state is not in the hole. I know what “normal” for me feels like, and it’s not this constant melancholy, as Robertson calls her natural state. I know I don’t belong in the hole, that I’ve spent most of my life out of it. I’m hoping that with increased iron in my diet and an adjustment to my thyroid meds that I’ll see some improvement in moods…I’m not expecting miracles, but some more sleep would be good. I can’t do anything about the hormonal stuff except survive it…the wonder of perimenopause. Fuck those who don’t understand that transition. It’s so easy to be someone who doesn’t have to deal with the hormonal fuckitude.

In positive news, the girlchild finally passed her driving test today and has her license, thus freeing me from spending every night sitting in the high-school parking lot to pick her up. Just to clarify, she didn’t ever fail…her dad’s CAR failed to start and then the second time, his registration hadn’t been renewed, so this was the third try to actually GET to the DMV with paperwork in hand, and she was finally successful. Life will change as we know it. Tomorrow, we go to the orthopedic doctor to talk about back surgery…it will be a difficult conversation, since all three of us are on different pages…should be interesting.

Anyway. Definitely a numb night. From the book I’m reading, “A dreadful array of feelings yawned. Which should I elect to overcome me first? I could not decide. The dog came and put his head in my lap and we sat there until I realized that one of the reactions I could have was numbness.” Louise Erdrich, The Round House. I’m going to let Louise take me and my numbness to bed now…tomorrow is a long day and I really need more resources to survive it than I had today. Sleep might help with that…I read that in a list somewhere.