It’s Not the End of the World…

I have this way of dealing with life at the moment. I just divide it up into these blocks. There are the blocks that are mindless, things I have to do and can almost do in my sleep (strangely, school is one of these blocks). There are the blocks that are sleep; they’re short. There’s the blocks that are art…I try to fit one in a day. There’s exercise and meditation and a hike a week. There’s the grocery store. I divide each day up again. The block that gets me up and out the door for school. The block that deals with the time right after school. Blocks that aren’t already filled or designated, I make sure there’s a plan for those, because it’s the fucking down time that messes with me. There are some blocks I used to have that I don’t have any more. They’re the hardest to fill…and they need to be filled. It’s kind of ironic, because it’s not like I have time to add groups of new friends or activities, but I almost have to in order to make sure there’s no down time for the brain to sink lower. I need to keep it occupied.

That said, those of you who are parents (or just empathetic to parents) know that you can plan all you like, but life is gonna bitchslap you some days. Tuesday the girlchild had some things that looked like bug bites. She showed them to me, they were itchy, there were like three of them. Wednesday, there were more, but they were moving around and we talked about washing her sheets this weekend (except Tuesday night, she wasn’t at my house), still thinking bug bites. Thursday, they were somewhat worse, and I decided they were hives. We talked about stress (she is still making up work from her surgery AND AP tests start next week…good enough reasons to BE stressed, but she said she wasn’t). We talked about food and soap and lotion and all that good stuff. Nothing new. Apparently Thursday night (again at her dad’s) was bad, but eventually they went away and she went to sleep. When I texted her during the day on Friday and suggested the doctor, she said no way, it was fine, she was better. I got home Friday, she was not home yet, she slammed in the door about 15 minutes later yelling for me, lifted her shirt, and holy shit. Hives everywhere. Solid. Yeouch. I called the nurse, who asked 17 questions, then sent us to Urgent Care. Meanwhile, the kids have been watching way too much House (and I’ve already seen them all), so we were diagnosing her. (Lupus…no, not really). We took her in…you know it’s bad when the staff at Urgent Care gasp when they see it. Anyway, a couple of tests later and we still know nothing, but she has Benadryl in her and they’re prescribing an epi-pen. Sure enough, she was asleep (love Benadryl) by the time she got home, pretty much, and the hives were gone by midnight. Hopefully, whatever freakish thing that caused it is gone, out of her system. Impressive bumpiness, though.

So that was not a block of time that I had planned. It never is, when you’re a parent. I do think that most parents (the ones who pay attention) are much better at dealing with life because of shit like that. You have your afternoon/evening planned, and hives just fucks it all to hell and back. Seriously. It happens all the time, so often, that you always have a contingency plan. It’s how I survive. The back of my brain is always trying to budget time here or there to deal with bumps in the road like that. Like What Will You Do if the House Floods with Human Waste? And you already have a plan for that…and the zombie apocalypse…and random visitors.

So I dealt. Ordered dinner instead of cooking it. Did a little grading, but not a lot. Blew off the exercise in favor of meditation. Made it to bed at a reasonable hour because I knew I had a hike…a hike that might get moved due to weather issues. No problem. I can adapt. I just roll with it. I’m not always happy with the adjustment, but in the end, and I don’t know again if this is the depression or the meditative practices talking, I just need to go with the flow. It’s not the end of the world. There will be another day for ironing fabric. One day of missing exercise will not end my life. So we joked with the doctor about how she needed to send her staff over to check BOTH houses for mold and drugs, and girlchild was probably lying about sex or drugs, because they always do, and when would they start random medication? Yeah. We do watch too much House.

So no art last night. I did hike this morning…interesting story. I’m now three hikes behind on the blog! Aack! It’s OK, one is a repeat…the morning hike did not turn out to be strenuous enough to count for exercise, so I dragged the boychild and the two dogs (girlchild and ex are in Lancaster for National Cup, which no, she is not playing in…just supporting her team) out on a long, bitchy hike…

Because I’m nice like that. Jake on the left, Calli on the right. This is Mt. McGinty, take 2. I think I can do it by myself now. Maybe. More on that hike later. Whenever later is (did I mention grades are due on Tuesday and I’m not done with them? Whatever. They’ll get done. It’s not the end of the world.). The dogs were extremely tired by then and were apparently huddling together for support.

Then we came home and I managed the depressoid hour of grocery shopping (Saturday night just sucks bigtime. The only plus is that it’s quiet and there are no lines). Drove to Sonic for dinner, because there was no way I was cooking. Plus I am feeling down and out and overwhelmed by shit that I can’t control, so I have not been eating great the last few days. But I got time with the boychild, and he’s moving away to college in a few months, and he won’t call, text, or email when he’s gone, so I’m kinda saving these moments up with just him for later. For when he’s gone. Makes me sad to think of it, but he’s an adult now and this is what he needs to do. I’ll be OK. I’m not a child. I can handle him leaving. I’m just sad about it. It’s OK for me to be sad about things. It better be OK, because I feel it a lot. It’s OK to not be happy when things don’t feel happy. It’s not abnormal. It’s not broken.

OK, I AM broken, but not because I am sad. I am sad because I am broken. Or I am sad AND I am broken. Hard to say.

Then I graded for a while, trying to get all the loose ends tied up, or at least enough of them to make a difference. Or something. I still need to input everything, but I’ll deal with that. It’s not the end of the world.

I feel like I already survived the end of the world. Like three or four times. Godzilla wasn’t there. No one was. Just me.

So then I started ironing, awfully late. Later than I had originally planned for today, but today’s plans came apart at the seams at about 5:20 this morning, or maybe even last night, and so I just two-stepped it and dealt. I’m good at that.

I’m through the 400s…into the 500s. I could have started ironing the 500s, but didn’t feel like starting it. Depressing subject matter. Couldn’t look at it. Need some distance from it. Maybe tomorrow night. I just ironed all the leftover bits from the body…the heart and the nipples and the eyeballs and the hair and the eye she’s holding onto, or is she trying to catch it? Who knows.

Tomorrow is gym and a meeting and chaos and grading and exercise and meditation and maybe ironing. Hopefully ironing. A little bit of progress a day makes it better…

It does. This is the pile of fabrics used so far…I’m not even a third of the way through, so there will be lots more.

There is a lot on my plate at the moment. I’m trying to divide it up into doable chunks, things I can handle. There are a couple of things I can’t deal with at all. So I’m not. It’s not the most mature way of living my life, but it’s what I can do at the moment. Really, there should be times in your life when everything is smooth sailing and then times when you are challenged to even get through the next 10 minutes, but that challenge…that’s probably what makes you who you are. Not how you deal when it’s easy…but how you deal when there’s too much and you have no help and stupidity reigns around you. That’s when it’s important. And if you’re a selfish asshole when that’s going on, then you suck. I’d like to believe karma will kick your ass, but I have no evidence of that.

So yeah. I’m ironing. I’m making art. What more do you need to know.

Stupid Fucking Titles

One of the things that’s been out of whack the last two days was my blood sugar. I kinda blamed it on going back to school, but it turns out it’s all hormones. My body went all girl-ballistic today after 2.5 months of nothing. I’d be OK with that, with having an explanation for the random-ass flurries of crying in parking lots and into my pillow…at least I have a good reason now…but today was not a good day for hemorrhaging. Luckily, I wore my black (OK, I have lots of black…this is not a new thing), because right about the time I was thinking, yeah, this method of staunching the flow is not necessarily working, the whole school went into lockdown. Some (as my boss put it) “bad guy” was being chased around the neighborhood by police, and there was some possible danger to our students, so we covered windows, locked doors, shoved kids under desks. Kids were convinced it was a drill. Hell, I knew better. It’s testing. No way in hell would my boss do a drill of any sort during testing. So we waited a bit, with a few freaking out and a couple showing me their true colors (please get your head out of the window before you become a target), and then they told us we could “continue to teach” with lights on etc.

Teach. During a lockdown. With middle-school kids who were supposed to be released to lunch 10 minutes ago. Are you smoking crack? I put in a movie, turned the lights down, realized I needed to deal with blood flow, and asked my co-teacher to watch my class; I think she thought it was a blood sugar issue. They released us about 30 minutes later and adjusted schedules, and I dealt with blood again. Hmn. This is not working. I still have three classes to get through. I’m in trouble wardrobe-wise. I love being a perimenopausal woman. Really, I do. It’s a challenge to not go out and kill people some days, because the sleep issues, the erratic bleeding, the hormones, the mood swings, fucking hair falling out…there is no fucking way to be a normal person when all that is going on without some serious help (mind-altering drugs, alcohol, I don’t know what else). Deep breaths. My workplace has a nurse’s office. Nurse offices have additional supplies…I brought in the heavy artillery and made it through the rest of the day, medicating myself for the cramps from hell. This is why we female teachers have very little patience with a 12-year-old who says she has cramps. Sweetie, I just lost a tenth of my blood supply and I’m still standing…what’s your problem again?

Anyway. The quilt I’m working on is so fucking relevant at the moment.

Before all that happened, during my prep, I made the mistake in my delicate frame of (weepy) mind to preview some videos about Huntington’s Disease for next week’s homework. Yeah. Watching videos of people you know will die a nasty death. Watching videos of people trying to decide whether or not to get tested. Hell, I should have just watched videos of babies been born and promptly dying in their parents’ arms or young cancer patients falling in love. Crying ensued. I’m a freakshow at the moment, a disaster area of salty proportions. Watch me lose it!

Like I said, at least now I know why. But I got home and was supposed to go to the gym, but between blood flow and cramps and general crappy feelingness, gave up the ghost on that. Sat around and read for a while, then watched those two episodes of House where Amber dies (OH MY GOD, because that’s not weepy at all) with the girlchild. It made her cry too, though, so I felt a little bit more normal. A tad.

It’s OK. I have the bike at home. Eventually the meds kicked in and I could sit on the bike for a while, plus I meditated and ate and did a little grading. I read.

Then it was ironing time, my special time with fabric, when my brain wanders off to its Not-Quite-Happy-Place (we still haven’t found happy…it’s a fucking lost cause), where my scissors and iron cheerfully dance in the summer surf. Or something.

It might be past my bedtime. Or I’m lightheaded from blood loss (certainly a possibility).

I knew I had to iron the lower body figure tonight, and those are generally a bit more time- and energy-consuming, trying to figure out what shade of flesh-colored fabric each part needs to be…I started with a run of 7, but that strangely turned into 9.

I’m not sure how. OK, I think it had something to do with not having enough of the first two fabrics, but wanting to start with something lighter than the third fabric, but not finding exactly what I wanted, so I kinda used the first two interchangeably. I can tell you the last one is something I hand-dyed myself. I call the formula FleshMud. OK, not really, but I have no idea how I got the colors in there (it’s not as black/gray in real life).

So I ironed down a bunch of pieces.

While Director Skinner observed. He’s a nice guy. He was very encouraging.

This is the chick I was ironing down…

This was in the early days of the drawing. She ended up being way more complicated than that…just like in real life! Wow. So philosophical tonight.

She started at piece 316 and went through 469, but then I had forgotten to number the face, so that was piece 1211-1247…or 1248. So 153 plus 36 (ugh, math in my head…) equals 189 pieces. Ahright. I’m up to about 6 hours in this thing. The ironing part, that is. I really need to do grades this weekend too, though, so I don’t know how much I’ll get done over the weekend. Hike. Meeting. Boychild in the house due to soccer tournament. Not a lot of free time.

But I am getting it done. There is progress. I can get my head around progress. It makes it somewhat better…it being LIFE, the practice of living. I actually find it very difficult to STOP ironing and go to bed. I just want to keep going and going until I’m done…like 1776 pieces done.

Anyway, with any luck, tomorrow will have less blood flow, no lockdowns, grading success (really unlikely), exercise, meditation, and fabric fondling. Hopefully there will be less screaming obscenities in my head as well, because I’m not finding that helpful. The section of meditation I’m doing now is about releasing bad feelings towards other people by imagining them happy. You start with yourself (this is very difficult for me, imagining my own self happy…I usually fail in the time frame they have allotted for that), then someone you see as a role model or someone important to you in some way (I have about 3 people I slot into this section), then the second person is someone you’re very close to (my kids alternate in here, based on which one seems to need it most, like today it was girlchild and her hives), then the third person is someone who don’t know very well (there are lots of these at work and on hikes), and the last person is supposed to be someone with whom you regularly have a negative reaction or negative feelings. There are two people that are obvious picks for this, but I am supposed to imagine them with happiness suffusing throughout them, and I just don’t think they deserve it. Mr. Meditation realizes that and tries to persuade me that my anger/frustration toward those people is hurting me, not them (fuck you, Mr. M…do you think I don’t KNOW that?), but I just can’t let them be happy in my mind. They don’t fucking deserve it. Anger strong. So there’s all this conflict in my head over meditation at the moment, which, shockingly, makes it hard to meditate.

Insert crying there too. Fuck me.

Seriously Mr. M…I can imagine them dying in volcanic explosions, as firebombing victims, in horrible plane crashes, from nasty cancer that makes them vomit profusely. And you want me to imagine them happy? I can only be ironic about that and imagine them in situations that would make NORMAL people happy (like weddings or traveling to foreign countries to lie on the beach and party), knowing damn well they would be miserable. Then I smile. In a sort of evil manner. Really, I shouldn’t be allowed out.

So yeah, not so healthy.

Back to the fabric. There’s a meditation that doesn’t inspire anger.

Yeah, I also gave up on a good title tonight. They all sucked.

Fish and Seaweed

I tried to post last night, but WordPress was being cranky. I finally gave up trying. As the week drags on, my brain is more and more challenged. Tiredness kicks in harder, kids are more frustrating. They’re testing right now, the first version of Common Core, but they don’t count this year, so it’s kind of a strange place we’re in. Usually testing is a really big deal, like you don’t teach anything that might challenge their brains, so they have all their brain power for the tests (honestly, there isn’t a lot leftover for anyone after 2 hours of staring at multiple-choice questions). You don’t give homework. Usually it’s also about 3 weeks later in the year and NOT right after break (a challenge in itself). None of it applies, this year, though, so I’m trying to teach genetics when they’re spending two periods a day testing. Not necessarily the best choice. Hopefully it will schedule better next year. Hopefully they’ll be done soon.

Luckily, last night’s ironing was pretty simple. Of course, I didn’t DO very much ironing either. I was too tired. I ironed fish and seaweed…

That’s it. Can you see the seaweed? Exciting. I also ironed some blood. There is blood in this quilt, ironic, since it’s about menopause, when the blood is supposed to stop. But that’s not the only blood out there, of course. (A vision of Dexter pops into mind, probably a disturbing thing)

I stopped watching Dexter eventually. It got old. I stopped watching a lot of things in the last year. I’ve been watching X Files while picking fabrics. They all start to melt together, but basically I’ve got weird images and events and aliens on my mind. And I read a lot of fantasy/sci fi as well, so that doesn’t help. The kids are both watching all the episodes of House, so if I’m in the living room in the evening, that’s what’s on. When I was a kid, you couldn’t serial-watch all these shows like you can now. You had to wait each week (or all summer) for the next episode, and if you missed it, you missed it. We didn’t even have a VCR. We couldn’t tape anything.

I don’t know if this is better or not, being able to access so much right when you want it, but I’m sure it changes how we deal with the world. A relative made a comment about “this generation” (speaking of her own kids, who are about 7 years younger than me), that when the going gets tough, this generation bails (she spelled “bails” wrong though, resulting in hilarity in MY household, where jokes about baling cotton and hay ensued. You can’t be a bad speller here…you will not survive). Huh. I don’t think I’ve bailed. I’ve been bailed upon, but haven’t bailed myself. I don’t know what that means, and technically, her kids are a generation younger than mine. My students don’t have persistence, many of them, true, but they are in middle school. It takes time and energy to develop persistence. I do know adults my age who bail. It seems like an easy childhood makes it more difficult for some people to deal with hardship. Then again, I think some people just know how to step up and some don’t. How much of that is the generation, how much is parenting, how much is the world we live in now, the environment? I’m sure someone is writing self-help books about that.

I was reading an article about how the Brits assumed there would be all this psychological trauma during the Blitz in London, with all the bombs dropping, and the people in charge set up all these psych centers to help people deal with the psychological damage, but in the end, most Brits just went on with their days, going to bomb shelters at night, going back home in the morning. Suicide rates went down. It actually helped them feel better about themselves if they continuously survived the bombings. There was some sense of achievement, however illogical that seems. Obviously, those that died…well, they died. But their psychological health wasn’t an issue any more. Those that survived seemed to rally in a way that the government really hadn’t expected. The psych centers closed because they weren’t needed. Interesting, that.

Anyway. Yes, it’s possible I think too much. Or read too much (naw, impossible).

I didn’t iron for long. I was tired. I mentioned that. Tired. Still tired this morning.

More fabrics in the pile now…added orange (fish), green (seaweed), and red (blood).

I would have ironed more, but the next thing is one of the large figures or the guy in the boat and that requires way more brain power, time, and energy than I had last night. I try to iron all of each section before I move on, so it would have been another hour and a hundred or more pieces, and that wasn’t an option. I did grade, exercise, and meditate…all good. See, I do better with a routine. Or do I?

Part of the problem was the night before. I went to bed and had crying issues. Not sure why. Couldn’t sleep, brain goes into overdrive, unhappy. Finally slept, woke up, that mood is still there. Cried going to work, couldn’t get it to stop even in the damn parking lot. Don’t know why. I hate that. Used to be I could pin that to hormonal stuff, time of the month, and it would be really short-lived, but who knows at the moment? Body doesn’t know if it’s coming or going, thyroid meds finally kicking in? I hate not being able to figure out where a specific emotion is coming from. That’s the stuff that makes you feel crazy, out of control. If you hear something sad or feel something bad, crying makes sense, sometimes is even a relief. But just randomly? That’s just crazy talking. It’s been a salty year. So done with it. Someone says something or I hear a song or see a stupid ad for a stupid movie and I’m almost bawling (that happened last night with the girlchild in the room…I got up and walked out…don’t remember what movie…just know I won’t be going to see it).

I had to go buy some AP study guides for the girlchild, which meant venturing into an actual bookstore (because she left it until the last minute). This is just as dangerous as going into a fabric store at the moment (can’t just buy ONE), so I rewarded myself (and the boychild) by buying Saga Vol. 3 (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples), which came out recently…

It was good. More weird alien stuff and creatures making moral decisions plus things haunting you and making you crazy. And wings and horns. Nothing bad about that. That’s the kind of crazy I can handle.

Seeing Patterns

I used to always go back and read old blogposts, especially from a year ago or two years ago at the same time of year, to try to remind myself of the fact that I’ve been there before, buried by school or grades, getting lots done over Winter Break, never getting anything done over Spring Break. It helped me see the patterns of my life and not be so hard on myself when I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to get done. I just wanted to improve the bad stuff each year, and I was doing an OK job with that.

But I can’t go back and read the old posts any more. They’re just upsetting. It’s a world that doesn’t exist any more. I don’t even want to read who I was a year or two years ago.

It’s too bad, because it was part of what kept me focused, grounded, at least in terms of making art. It helped me see what goals I was successful with and what goals needed more support. I was able to see progress over time, in the big picture. Now I can only see progress in little pieces. Today, my little pieces were all about the skeleton and the water.

The skeleton actually ended up needing 5 fabrics…

I drew a more complicated skelly this time apparently. This drawing was in fact all about adding detail…to kind of a crazy level. That’s my life, though. All these tiny little details that I’m trying to keep track of, hold on to, and it’s by the skin of my teeth that I manage to get most of it done. It is crazy. But I do it. Not very well, I think, but it gets done.

I was pretty tired tonight, but wanted to get further along than just the bones, so I figured I would need about 10 water fabrics…I laid them out light to dark and started putting the appropriate Wonder Under pieces on top…

but then realized that I meant to do darkest at the bottom, not the top, so I had to flip all the sections. At least I caught that before I started ironing.

The next step is seaweed and fish. I’ve ironed about 250 pieces down at this point, and am about 3 1/2 hours in. I had the same problems with the blue fabrics that I did with the browns…I needed to make sure I had a big enough piece to iron the wider pieces down. Luckily, I seem to have more large blue pieces than brown, probably because I often use blue as a background, and that leaves these random skinny yet wide pieces that work well for water.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far (well, all the grays and blacks are hiding underneath)…

Doesn’t look like much right now. Fifteen hundred pieces to go! (god, that sounds awful)

Going-back-to-school tired is already catching up with me. I am already behind in everything. I can’t get caught up on anything. I make these silly goals to do 30 minutes a day of cleaning or yardwork, but can’t get motivated or I just forget by the time I get home. I did go to the gym. I went to the bookstore for the girlchild’s AP books. I meditated. I started ironing at a reasonable hour…I just kept going for longer than I should have. So now I am more awake than I was two hours ago, but if I were always going to bed two hours ago, I would make no art, my house still wouldn’t be clean, my yard would still be a disaster…so I would be well-rested, but a total crank.

Doesn’t seem like a good option. I dream of retiring (ha!) and just making art all day. Maybe volunteering somewhere. Maybe traveling. I’m so far away from being able to do any of that. Instead, I’m writing an essay explaining why I should get hired for a summer-school thing (I need the money). I’m paying bills. I’m running errands. I’m cleaning up the girlchild’s dishes yet again and trying to decide how to force the kids to take out the recycling (I put post-its on the TV and computer this morning before I left for school…STILL not taken out…am considering hiding the relevant cords until it’s done, like a crazy ransom thing…leave a note: Your cords will be returned when the recycling makes it out of the house!).

I am usually (in my former life) so much better at straightening up, staying organized. Right now, it feels like a giant flail. Arms windmilling around, trying to catch me as I fall. Hey, I think I dreamed that last night? Or it’s in the book I’m reading. Were there aliens? Too much TV, too many books, too many words.

Last summer, at the beginning, in like June, I ordered fabric and socks for dying. I ordered discharge paste to try a new process of surface design. They’ve been sitting on my office floor since then. It seems like that is my life at the moment, in stasis on the office floor, waiting for me to trip over it yet again, but never to have time to pick it up and DO something with it.

Too introspective for a peaceful night. I’m going to go to bed and read about some other people’s sketchbooks or art. It’s better sometimes not to look too closely at one’s own life. It can be too distracting, disturbing.

Let’s just assume all that bad stuff will just wander away if we don’t look it in the eye.

Fabric Meditation

I have to prepare myself mentally for picking fabric. It’s a big part of the process. I don’t color my drawings beforehand…I stare at the drawing and let it color itself in my head. I often have no idea of what it will look like until it’s ironed together. I trust my instincts, my years of practice, to put it together right, the best way. I do better when I pick fabrics in big chunks of time, hours at a time, like during Winter, Spring, or Summer breaks. It’s easier to keep all the fabrics and colors in my head if there aren’t big gaps in time between ironing sessions.

So I had planned to iron this sucker down to fabric over Spring Break. With that many pieces, almost 1800, it’s going to take over 20 hours of ironing. But it didn’t work out that way, so realistically, even with weekends (this weekend might as well burrow into a hole and die, because it’s buried already), it’s going to take me 2-3 weeks to iron all these down with school every day. Damn job. Gets in the way of my art career.

But man oh man, is it meditative. It lets me access that part of my brain that is pure art, pure alpha wave, deep and dark in my brain, where none of that stupid sad depressoid shit can venture. It kicks depression’s ass. It tells it to fuck off and find some other sucker. It is one serious bad ass.

Too bad I can’t do THAT full-time. OK, it probably wouldn’t work full-time. But it’s an interesting thought…that this state and the drawing state and the tracing state…these are places where my brain can escape all that stupid shit and just be at peace. Someone wrote to me today about that’s when I have control…when I’m in that space mentally. I can control the artistic process and nobody else can fuck with it. They can’t stop it, they can’t change it, they can’t make me do it their way or listen to their stupid lame rules. It’s mine. So no wonder I find it peaceful…calming.

One thing about Spring Break is I got very bad about meditation, the stuff on my app (Headspace) where the guy talks me through it. It’s hard to do on a plane or in a hotel room with the boychild. I just didn’t do it regularly, and I think that was part of the problem. I drew more, which does also help (another form of meditation), but I needed to focus on that process daily. So I’m back to that. Trying to be good about it.

I cleaned out most of my studio last night (by “clean out”, I mean straighten up and Swiffer…the room is still a disaster area and probably will be until both kids go to college and I have time and space to deep-clean…OR…I will succumb to hoarding tendencies and live in the glory of dust-bunny hell). Tonight I put away all the fabrics from the last quilt that were lying around, and then hung up the drawing for the current quilt…

It’s LONG. Actually, when I started ironing parts, they were down at the bottom and I got tired of leaning over to see them, so I pinned the bottom part up to about eye level.

First I sorted the first 100 pieces into piles by 10s…

It’s a very controlled process…I try to number them logically so picking fabrics can also be done logically.

I ended up thinking I needed 10 dirt fabrics in a run for the bottom section…

Yes, that’s Dana Scully…X Files, Season 3. It’s easy to watch because I’ve seen them all before and I don’t have to pay particularly close attention, but it doesn’t fuck with my emotions either. That’s a plus, because some of the other stuff I’ve been watching lately just makes me cry, and I really don’t need more of that.

I actually changed some of these browns around in the end, because some of the pieces were quite long and the fabric wasn’t big enough (stupid fat quarters) to iron the one piece down…plus I think I needed 11 in the end. That number 4 fabric (from the right)? It didn’t work. It’s gone. I added two more in its place, one lighter, one darker.

For instance, this one needed to switch fabrics for one that had a full width.

I usually buy 1/2 yards because it gives me the width I need, but not so much fabric that I will be using it up until the end of time (I have some from the early days when I used to buy yardage where I will probably NEVER run out). I like to have more variety in my stash…so I don’t buy huge pieces unless they are background or binding. Sometimes I have to buy yards if the quilt is really wide…usually that’s for the base pieces, the dirt and water. I like my quilts to be grounded…to have a base to stand on visually. In the dirt or the sand and in the water, they need to stand somewhere…so you will notice more solid sections at the bottoms of my quilts (and drawings). It’s not that I think about it while I’m doing it…it just happens. I don’t want you to think that I’m this artist who thinks every move, every line out. I don’t. It just happens.

This is not magic. I’ve been practicing art for years. Think about sports…how many years until you’re really good at it? You may have some raw, natural talent, but you still have to practice, to hone your art. I’ve been making quilts since I was 23; that’s 24 years. Holy god, I’m old.

I ended up having to pull about 10 pieces from the 100-199 bin, because they were in the dirt section and I wanted to do that all at once.

I finished all the dirt pieces…about 70 or so. The skeleton (there’s always a skeleton these days…I don’t know what that means) is the other 50 or so pieces in the 0-100 section…and they’ll be pretty easy. I usually only use 2-3 fabrics for the skelly…I don’t cut them all out separately in Wonder Under…I group them together so that all the same color of bone are lumped together and only need to be cut out once. Saves time. Plus it’s easier to iron down one big piece with a lot of little pieces drawn on it. Takes less time.

So hopefully tomorrow I’ll finish up the skeleton and move on to water or seaweed or fish. I have a meeting on Sunday, and it will be good to have stuff to cut out at that meeting. I have another quilt I need to start working on, at least get it drawn and traced before summer, so I can’t be lazy right now. I know, I never really seem like I’m being lazy, but I did sit there and read for quite a bit tonight. I also graded, though, so I don’t feel bad. I try to explain to my students how to balance the stuff you don’t feel like doing (homework, they are big whiners) with the stuff you love to do (for them, video games or Facebook or mall). I tell them I do an hour (or so) of grading BEFORE I let myself do the stuff I like to do, like draw or whatever. My job isn’t my life. I walked in this morning about 30 minutes before school started…and I hadn’t been at school since the Sunday the first weekend of break, when I went in to straighten up for the cleaning team. My room was a mess this morning, so I had the kids help me put it in order. I had a lab planned for today, and I had lists of what needed to happen…I dealt with some of it on that Sunday two weeks ago and the rest during prep today. I’m learning to be more efficient. I’m learning to spend less time and energy on the job. I still am there for my students, I hear them, I help them, I tutor them, I work for them…I stopped a saber-toothed tiger today with my rolled tongue (genetics joke)…but I come home and try to live for myself. I have to have a life outside of the job. I have to have an existence that isn’t just work and the shit that follows it.

So I’m ironing now. The process of coloring that picture in my head and choosing the fabrics that match those colors…it’s supremely meditative. It’s peaceful. It fights the demons away, tells them to fuck off and find another place to reside. At least for a bit.

More tomorrow.

In Which I…

I’ve read a bunch of books lately with chapter titles that all start with “In Which I…”, as if someone asked what you had been doing and why, and you tried to come up with an explanation for your behavior of the last two days, 15 minutes, 43 years of your life. It made me start to classify the parts of my day, my life, into things I could explain with a phrase starting with “In Which I…”. It’s an interesting exercise…maybe silly also. It’s OK to be silly occasionally, as I remembered during the 2+ hours I was in the car with the girlchild yesterday, and the 2 hours I was with myself in the car today, because everyone else fit in the carpool car but me. Sigh. Because I didn’t yell loud enough fast enough. It’s OK. That’s who I am. The loner. The chick who drives by herself. I can be that person. “In Which I Carpool with Myself…” (cue Billy Idol…)

Oh yes. That was worth it. “In Which I Learn to Sneer like Billy…”.

Anyway, the hike will be posted later, when I can rip off the group photos that someone else took, because I never take those. Strangely, although I made sure to charge my battery the night before, it looked uncharged when I started taking pictures on the hike and died about halfway through. I had the phone with me, though, and took OK photos with that. Me and my birthday money are looking for a new camera, although the one that was recommended to me is way out of my price range. I’ll figure it out, though. Gotta go read some websites. “In Which Kathy Buys Yet Another Camera…”. Seriously. I’m deadly to cameras. They just don’t last.

I managed to keep the blood sugar under control today, unlike yesterday. Ironic in that I could do that while burning a million calories on a long and strenuous hike, but couldn’t manage it while sitting on a soccer field watching the girlchild play. Stupid that. Oh well. I emailed the doctor finally. I had talked myself in and out of sending the email about 10 times, and finally did it so that if more tests were needed, they could be done at the same time as the others that I have to do, and I won’t have to go in for the bloody poke more than once. Hopefully.

Most of the rest of the day was the Have-To’s…”In Which Kathy Does the Shopping…”. Not exciting. Annoying really. I graded a bunch of stuff. I got ready for having three days off of school, the longest I’ve ever been gone in a row. I tried to get the girlchild to calm down enough to go to sleep. She won’t admit to being worried about surgery. I’m worried, not because I think something will go wrong, but because I just worry. I wish I didn’t. “In Which Kathy Worries about Worrying…”.

Then after all that stuff was done and I had meditated, I decided to try to finish cutting and taping the newest drawing, just because I know I have to copy one piece again, so I wanted to see if anything else didn’t match up…

It didn’t. Sigh. Oh well. I’ll do it tomorrow afternoon. I want to get the Wonder Under traced and cut out before Spring Break, so I can iron all the fabrics down in a concentrated chunk of time.

Then I came into the studio to try to deal with that damn bird, get it ironed down. Apparently I hadn’t ironed the lips or the eyeball either. It didn’t take long for me to be done…here’s everything ready to be cut out for the Mammogram quilt…

I should start doing that this week. So that means I finished ironing all the fabrics for that quilt. Someone said something to me about artists being free spirits. Well, yes, but then there’s that other part of my brain that likes to record and document and catalog everything. The part that keeps track of how much time I spend and how many fabrics I use…that’s a bit more of the OCD or at least the controlling logical part. “In Which Kathy Uses Both Sides of Her Brain…”. I won’t say I’m using ALL my brain, because obviously that’s not true.

Only 44 fabrics were used…

Mar 16 14 020 small

And it took 6 hours and 18 minutes to pick them all…that’s kind of long for me. I usually can do about 100 an hour. I think it’s because I did it in small chunks. It takes longer to get my brain into the right place to pick stuff on weekdays too. “In Which Kathy Tries to Make Art and Be a Responsible Teacher…”. Yeah. And add “Mom” into that as well. Consider “Homeowner” (no yardwork done at all this weekend, despite oath taken to self LAST weekend. Yes, I am that lame.).

OK, I need to do that sleep thing again. Make art? Don’t sleep. Don’t sleep? Get depressed. Don’t make art? Sleep. Get depressed because not making art. Damn vicious cycles. “In Which Kathy Does Her Best to Make Herself Insane…”.

What I Do While You Sleep…

First of all, I’m not sleeping while you’re asleep. You’re cuddling up with a pillow, all nice and warm, breathing slowing down and becoming more regular, and I’m standing for hours at an ironing board (at least that’s what I’m doing these nights…other nights, it might be sitting at a sewing machine or standing at the light table or sitting on the couch surrounded by Wonder Under). My brain isn’t slowing down, preparing my body for rest so it can then process the day and make it orderly and presentable, filing away this and that in the corners of the mind. Mine’s entering some weird alpha state, where it does slow down, but it harmonizes with something, some THING that breathes peace into my head, my heart, I can actually feel muscles in my chest and abdomen relaxing for the first time in hours.

Actually, I usually try to meditate first, and that helps even more, but meditation last night was a giant fuckwad of fucked-up-ed-ness, so that didn’t help.

I turn the iron on, and it makes that clicking noise that tells me it’s heating up. I pull the ironing board around and take off all the storage boxes that keep Babygirl from climbing on and disrupting fabric and Wonder Under piles. I start up Netflix, tuning into whatever I’m watching at the moment (I’m in Season 3 of the X Files, which yes, I’ve seen all of, so that’s why it’s easy to watch while ironing…it just distracts the small part of my brain that would otherwise fuck with my ability to pick fabrics).

I look at the drawing, hanging up on the bookcase, and I look at what pieces are next in the picking range…and I start processing the picture into color in my head. This current one is complicated enough in some small areas that I write the color progression in pencil on the drawing…this part is fabric 1, this is fabric 2, etc. Then I lay out the fabrics in progression and start finding the pieces and placing them on the fabric where they will eventually be bonded for life.

OK, the glue will get bonded…the paper is just thrown away at the ironing stage.

This piece is mostly flesh colors, and some of them are quite big. On Sunday night, I ironed everything (almost) that needed to be on the two fabrics I chose for the lightest parts of the body. I didn’t go further than that because I knew it was already late and the next step wasn’t something where I could stop halfway…I needed to get most of the way through it in one night…so it makes sense that I didn’t start until after 11 PM last night, right?

No. You’re right. It doesn’t. I can’t say I’m always making the healthiest decisions for Kathy at the moment. Let’s just say I do the best I can. I could, every night, go to bed at a reasonable hour and get much more sleep, but I would be really intensely unhappy (like more than I am at the moment…although unhappy and depressed are not necessarily synonymous) and no art would get done. So I started…

And that’s kind of what it looked like at about midnight…almost all the flesh fabrics were laid out on the fabric where they belonged…and I looked at the clock and realized (1) I wasn’t going to bed at a reasonable time, like y’all did and (2) I wasn’t getting a blogpost in last night.

I started ironing…this is one of my favorite hand-dyes at the moment, but I’m almost out of the flesh-colored part…the other half is more like dirt than flesh…

It’s OK. I do lots of dirt too. But you can see how crazy some of these pieces get…I try to fit them all efficiently together to get the least amount of wasted fabric. I think that one is number 5 in the progression.

And in the end, it was approaching 1 AM and I had everything ironed except the thousand pieces that needed to be fabric number 3…so I stopped there and put all of the 3’s into that bin on top and everything else in the one below…

And I went to bed. And didn’t sleep. Whoops. But I do have to be human today and do work, and I can’t just be a fulltime artist, although it’s a dream of mine…one that will probably never be fulfilled. I thought I had a chance at that, at that type of future, but I’m not allowed. Some days the dark depressed inside of me tells me to stop hoping and wishing for such things, because the reality of my life is such that I will always have to work uberhard to be the artist…it will always be something that I am arguing in my head about, deciding to spend the time on that rather than with other people doing normal people things…sacrificing sleep for art.

Sleep doesn’t make me happy though…and art, although it is not doing its job at the moment, certainly has a better chance of getting me to happy than another 20 minutes or an hour of zoned-out bliss in a warm bed. Of course, in the bright light of morning, I always wish I had chosen a LITTLE more sleep over art, but oh well. Honestly, I was lucky to get myself in bed when I did…my art brain wanted to iron the whole thing down last night, and it was only the tiny bit of mom brain that was in there monitoring my status that persuaded me that I was actually starting to manifest signs of TIRED that got me to turn off the iron and walk away from the fabric.

I can sleep when I’m dead.

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.