Blue Sky

No, I’m all still tied up in knots inside my head, still lost in some depressoid space that doesn’t seem to want to release me from its clutches. I just get tired of announcing, Oh Hey! I’m still depressed! I still cry! Everything still sucks! It gets old. I want to shed that skin…it’s Spring, I want to run free among the wildflowers like a child. Or something. I don’t know how to shed years of sad though. They just cling to you like a small snot-nosed child.

I went over to the ex’s to find my scrapbook pages (don’t even ask…just know that it involved the girlchild)…and I sat there listening to all the stuff I needed to deal with while the three of them ate dinner, directed by girlchild, cooked by my ex. Then I came home and cooked my pitiful dinner by myself.

Oh shit. So this is my life? That wasn’t good. I went to the gym, though, and I’m reading a really good book (although it’s one that brings me to the brink of tears almost every time I open it)…so I try to think of the good, to think of the positive, and I still drive away from his house with the damn scrapbook pages that I needed for some quilt thing, and I’m crying. Not a little, but a lot. This is a life? It’s an incredibly painful one.

Boychild got his financial award statement from University of California. I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended. They gave him a good chunk of money (assuming he goes there, which he probably won’t), but they gave it to him because I am “significantly low income.” Their words. I’m a teacher. A public-school teacher. With a Master’s degree…who’s been teaching for over 12 years. And I’m “significantly low income.” Should I be offended? Or relieved? I wonder how many years post-divorce before I stop living paycheck to paycheck. Not this year, for sure. I guess I am relieved. Saddened, but relieved. Now let the private schools feel the same way.

I’ve been reading what people in my past have been saying. What does it mean when people who were significant in your life make no sense to you? Is that a good thing? And yet people LIKE it on Facebook. I can’t parse the words.

I still don’t know who I am.

Art rejections. Sigh. Discouraged by them. Numerous. Doesn’t help the mood. Seriously, there’s no point in entering shows right now. I can just expect a rejection. It’s been a few months of that. And I keep making stuff, hoping that it’s not a permanent thing, that the stuff I’m making will get in somewhere. REJECT. We don’t want your art. It sucks.

The girlchild and I joke that every time I leave school, this song is on the radio…

And every time, it makes me cry. I wish I were young again and everything felt possible. OR…I am moving to Iceland soon (it could happen).

Bear trap on ankle. I remember writing this. I feel like depression is a bear trap on my ankle. It grabs it as I’m running away, trying to get away, strips the flesh down to the bone, breaks the bone, hurts like a bitch, doesn’t let go, no way to get it off.

In meditation, there is the concept of blue sky. Blue sky is always there, if you put your head up above the clouds, the blue sky is always there, even when you can’t see it. Mr. Meditation says that contentness is like that…it is always there, like the blue sky. What stops us from experiencing it? He tells me to notice the resistance and let go of it. Then there’s nothing but blue sky. Mr. Meditation has been smoking the wacky weed again. Seriously. He also wants me to put this happy pinpoint of light and warmth that spreads from the center of the chest outwards. It doesn’t work on me at all. The black vultures chomp at the pinpoint and snuff it out. I can put it on OTHER people though. I’m supposed to pick a person I respect…I have plenty of those. A person I care about. Right now? There are two. I gave birth to both of them. I can’t think beyond them. Then this week, I am supposed to pick someone outside those two realms, someone I know but don’t really care about. That’s harder. What’s interesting is that I can inflict the happiness, the warmth, the exploding pinpoint of light on ALL of them…all of them except myself.

So yeah. Meditation = crying at the moment. Hate that place.

Realized that the disruption in my life that was the surgery was messing with mood. Girlchild went back to school today and is doing much better. She was very tired when she got home, napped for like 2 hours, but she was AT school. This is a plus.

But I have been neglecting my art mind, and that is what might be causing all this emotional dippage. Or something. Fuck knows.

So I am up late again tonight. I’ve been good about going to sleep earlier, but the casualty is making art. And then I think, what’s the fucking point of making the art if you aren’t going to get into the shows with the new stuff? Fuck. I can’t think that way. I just HAVE to make the art. There’s no choice about that.

I’m reading this right now…

along with other things. It’s appropriate. I feel unlovable.

Underneath it is a birthday card from my ex, quoting Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)…

And the happy book from my mom. Not getting to the happy.

So tonight. I cut out fabric pieces. Because I needed to.

And it won’t make me happy. But. I don’t know what will.

Did I show you the scissors that were found in my driveway?

We don’t know where they came from. Is it a donation? Or some sort of religious icon left there? No one knows. People are now driving past my driveway and throwing scissors at it. Seriously. These aren’t mine.

Plus there’s Midnight. She sits behind me as I cut out fabric.

Someone should sit there.

It’s Not Pretty

My head’s in a weird place tonight. Girlchild’s surgery is tomorrow. I’m off work for at least three days. Work is absolute chaos with Chromebooks arriving and testing starting, but the plan is still up in the air and nothing is working right…and I’m not even there to mess around and try to figure it out. I don’t know if I’m testing or when if I am or how or what. I play my entire life by ear. I know I will be staying in the hospital overnight tomorrow. I have grading, stitching, a few books…I will preload some photos for the blogpost on the hike I did Sunday. I need to deal with food too. It was an incredibly stressful day. The kids were not focusing. They channel the nervous chaos that the teachers are projecting, because we are up in the air, no plan. So that didn’t help. I drove off, thought I had left all my plans and everything set up right. Went to the post office to pick something up and realized I had left my computer and hadn’t hooked up the guest teacher computer (mine won’t work for her). Dammit. Drove back to school. Had the wrong dongle (huhuhuh…dongle…). Another teacher had one I could borrow. Set THAT up. Went and copied the two sections I fucked up on Saturday night…they worked this time…

The whole thing is about 34″ wide x 73′ high. Not a small beast. What to do next? I have two quilts to cut out (hey, I could take one to the hospital…). So I started numbering the big drawing…there’s three weeks until Spring Break. That’s enough time to trace this sucker…maybe. Have a plan, Kathryn. When you have a plan, you function better. Not normal. There’s nothing normal about my staying up until 2 AM some mornings on a work night tracing Wonder Under or ironing fabrics. It’s not a BAD thing…it’s just not normal.

Meditation right now is all about putting happiness on other people, on trying to see what other people look like when they’re happy. You’re supposed to pick someone you respect and then someone you deeply care about. I had a hard time with these at first. I would try people out in each position and see if they fit. I’ve jumped around on the people I respect. I picked women who are strong but who need support, who have talked to me about needing support. I don’t know if I really provide it, but I imagined them filling with happy warmth, like Mr. Meditation told me to. It’s finally getting easier (like 18 days into it). The other? I picked the girlchild. She needs it most at the moment. She needs to feel the happy. The boychild seems more stable, more OK with his existence. Although he’s hiding what he really thinks and feels, because that’s what he does. Hopefully he won’t do that when it’s important. I hope I’ve gotten him to think that through…to avoid what happened to his mom. God knows I’ve talked to him about it. Who knows what sinks in.

My right eyelid is twitching like a bitch. Oh yeah. There’s some stress. Damn surgery + school. I take deep meditative breaths all freakin’ day long. The only time it stopped today was when I was putting the damn drawing together and numbering it…so I started numbering.

Mar 17 14 003 small

It’s not rocket science. There’s some thought of the order of pieces…because I lay them out in the 100s…trying to think about how I will iron pieces is kind of important…not REALLY important though.

I made it through the 500s somewhere about a 1/3 of the way up the drawing. You can see the thicker black lines where I had to transfer something I had drawn on an overlapping piece between two pages.

I’m not sure what I will do about the octopus tentacles. Those sucker pieces are freakishly tiny. They may need to be embroidery instead.

I added some stuff on the sand after I taped everything together…

Mar 17 14 002 small

It was looking too empty down there. I’m guessing there will be about 1600 pieces. It’s not a small beast.

It’s not going to fix anything, making this quilt. It doesn’t stop me from hurting. It doesn’t bring world peace to warring nations. It won’t provide anyone with clean water. It seems kind of pointless when I look at it that way…like what is everyone else doing with their Monday evening? Did they finish all the dishes in the sink (I didn’t)? Did they straighten up the living room (I didn’t…you can see some of the messy floor in one of the pictures above)? Did they write part of the Great American Novel (is this my novel? This blog?)? Do you know that on these hikes I rarely meet people who talk about books they’ve read (I will start asking this, I think) or people who show any interest in art or people who seem to do anything but hike. And go to work. Don’t get me wrong…I love to stomp around in nature on hikes, but it’s not the biggest part of who I am. It’s not all there is. It’s a tiny piece.

I don’t know where my people are. Well, some of them are on the Interwebs. I hear from them occasionally. Pretty often.

Girlchild has spondylolysis, by the way. Hardest word in the world to spell. Genetic abnormality in the vertebrae. She has two fractures that kinda look like this…

Tomorrow, they will put two small pins in across the fractures, then put bone grafts in from her ileum, plus some growth factor to promote healing. She wears a brace for 3 months and then should be able to go back to everything she was doing before…no fusion. It’s kinda scary. But she’s been in pain for almost 3 years now and they won’t heal, so it’s time to fix them. Here’s hoping she has a pain-free senior year. Here’s hoping I don’t have a panic attack in the waiting room.

Boychild is watching for college admissions. Some of the UC schools have notified, but not the two he applied to, so we wait. These are his backup schools, so he needs to get in to at least one of them.

There is a lot of wine in my house right now. I’m sure you can see why. I wonder if the hospital has a workout room? That made me laugh. Of course they don’t have one.

Sigh. Big deep fucking sigh. I’m surviving. It’s not pretty.

That One Thing

I didn’t do too well with my goals in the last week. Too many things in my head, kinda like vines taking over newly planted flowers…choking out what I wanted to do with whatever their goal was when they took over my brain. It’s OK. It’s not like I failed or anything. I overplan so there’s no down time. There’s never a moment when I’m wondering what I could possibly do with my spare time. There are many things on the list, things of all types of creative expenditure…from drawing to ironing to sewing to simply cutting things out, which honestly doesn’t require a lot of brain power or motivation. Plus there’s always grading and cleaning and dehoarding and yardwork. I do all that on purpose. If there were nothing to keep my brain fully occupied, I might rip it out of my head and toss it in the garbage disposal. Shred that puppy.

So I did some of what was on the list. Saturday. Sigh. Well, Saturday was different…and yet the same. I’ve been there before, not to that particular place, which was quite beautiful…

Made me wish I had lots of money and no fear about fire danger…gorgeous views. Quiet. Neighbors forever far enough away. But that’s not my life. SOOO not my life.

That was followed by this…

OK. Well. I’ll be dead. Although this did foster a funny drawing in my head that never made it onto paper. Oh well. There is no shortage of drawings in there. I’m not sure drawings of Kathy’s version of God should be a part of this world.

I hiked this morning…another post on that later. It was good. The rain held off…just a few sprinkles. Which reminds me, I only had 6 eucalyptus branches down and they all missed the house, but the pool pump died in the storm (after I went out to try to clean it out)…so the continuing hits to my financial stability are in fact, well, continuing. They are all out of my control, so I will have to deal. I’ve told the boychild we can be a mother-son pizza-delivery team. He’s not amused.

Speaking of not amused, during Friday’s soccer game, girlchild headed the ball by slamming her forehead into another girl’s head and got this cute little bruise…

It’s actually even more purple and darker (but less swollen) today. Should be green by the banquet (and photos) on Wednesday. Looks like eyeshadow gone horribly wrong.

Girlchild and I often text back and forth…especially when we’re not in the same place.

Yeah. I don’t know. At least we both have a sense of humor.

Wolves rock by the way.

I am amazed by this stuff…trying to figure out how to smash more natural selection into the year so I can use this as part of it.

Plus NOT audio books…I tried to listen to an audiobook the other day because many people were recommending it, and I failed miserably. I could not keep all the words in my head. I couldn’t concentrate. I will try again, maybe while quilting? Usually I listen to music when I quilt because I zone out. I tried listening to a podcast once and completely lost focus on the quilting if I listened hard and lost focus on the podcast if I focused on the quilting. Some connection in there is fried maybe. Or I am that deeply in focus when I quilt? I don’t know.

One of my goals this weekend was to start ironing fabrics on the Mammogram quilt (which by the way is a really lame name for a quilt). I really wanted to start last night, but was way too exhausted and knew I was hiking early this morning…so I went to bed early (for me) instead of getting the first steps done. I needed to straighten up a little and move Babygirl off the ironing board…

She wasn’t happy about that, but I managed it…at least for now.

This quilt doesn’t have many pieces, but it does have BIG pieces…I hang the drawing up so I can see it while I iron. I also marked the flesh pieces (which are the biggest part of this quilt) with numbers for the range of colors…I originally had 1-7, but added a subcolor to 1, because I honestly didn’t have a yard of any light-enough flesh color that would work for all the pieces that needed to be the lightest color. I usually only buy 1/2 yards. I found two that harmonized well on the light end, so split it into 1 and 1a.

Yes, my brain is somewhat convoluted sometimes. Originally I was going to go buy some fabric, but I don’t have any money to spare right now. Oh, and I haven’t really picked a background fabric yet. I just realized that. Maybe the purple is going to be it. Who knows. I’m a little unfocused at the moment. OK. A lot unfocused. Ask Mr. Meditation. I’m in the next series, the Heart series. It’s really throwing me. It’s all about feeling happiness in yourself and seeing it in others, and I can’t get there at all. What’s amazing about this app is that whatever discomfort or problem I’m having with the meditation, usually within a day of my having issues, he’s addressing that exact issue. Wow. So either I’m semi-normal or he’s psychic. Either way, I do just stick with it and at some point it will start to make more sense to me. It’s not surprising that I can’t remember being happy or doing something for someone to make them happy…the only things I can remember are so painful at the moment that my brain just literally shuts down, slams the door, and screams that she’s not coming out until I stop all that recollecting and shit.

All righty then. Moving on.

Hence the fabric-picking. It’s really another type of meditative state.

And though it doesn’t make me happy to do it, it does give me some sense of peace, some relief from the shitty mindstate in which I otherwise exist. Crappy beat-up license plate on a junker car. Yes. THAT mindstate. That above was my original run of 7 fabrics, but I added another similar light one to go with the first one…because here’s how much fabric HALF of the pieces that needed to be the lightest color took up.

Yup. So I have two now. There’s not much left of that fabric. Sometimes certain fabrics are so precious-feeling that you don’t want to do this to them, but then I think, when it’s in the drawer, I never see it…if it’s in a quilt, I might see it. But then it doesn’t really matter once the quilt is made.

Sometimes being an artist makes me feel like an alien. My brain does all this stuff and is obsessed for hours, days, weeks, months, with all this act of creation stuff and when you talk to other people about it, they don’t really know what to say. Huh. OK. Well. Yes, I’m a freak. It’s strange, I get so much fulfillment and peace from the artmaking, but it really does push me away from lots of people, just because the doing of it seems such a foreign concept to them, unless they have a friend or family member who makes art, creates something. Or there are a few people who just get it. Not many. Most give me that look and that nervous laugh. Especially when they figure out how much time and energy I spend doing this. I actually wonder what they heck they do all those hours when I’m doing this. Oh. They’re probably sleeping. Or cleaning.

Sigh.

Some of you reading here will understand this, though…the arrival of the Dharma catalog…

Be still my beating heart. You have no money. Plus you have dye stuff. You don’t need more (“need?” What is this word “need?”). I still like to read through the whole thing. Maybe there’s some tool or coloring device that will just make my day and I haven’t heard of it yet and it’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for to change my life.

Yeah. Not? Are you sure? Because I’m definitely on the lookout for that one thing I’ve been waiting for. I just don’t actually believe it exists.

Take a Sad Song…

So much for my plan to go to sleep earlier…my brain got in the way tonight and forced me to draw to make it better.

It was late and my brain just didn’t fucking care…it was disinterested in the whole “normal amount of sleep” theory and how sleep is supposed to protect me from all this health shit. Vicious damn cycle. Can’t sleep. Health is an issue. Can’t sleep. Depression. Depression affects health, affects sleep. Fuck it.

I’m still working on this drawing. It has so much detail in it that I will be hating myself when I go to make it…because I don’t think I can enlarge it more than 200%. So those suckers on the octopus? Holy crap. They will be tiny (they are two concentric circles). Whatever. It demands to be the way it is. I didn’t draw for long, about 30 minutes. I just felt so shitty after meditation…which is probably not the way it should work, but it did. I can’t remember exactly what the issue was…something about my calm confidence (which doesn’t exist, by the way) or dealing with problems calmly (fuck no)…I just cried. It’s a good thing no one watches me meditate. It’s probably somewhat disturbing. I guess the crying was calm.

I figured out what was on the other side…

DNA. DNA is part of this, you know? DNA gives you tendencies, precursors to certain problems. Then your environment fucks with that, the people around you…they fuck with your DNA tendencies and cause nasty shit to happen. Or not. I wish I were one of the ‘or nots,’ but apparently I angered the gods before I was born and my nasty-ass karma is now fucking with my entire existence. If you believe in that shit. The combination of the two, DNA and environment, makes you who you are. Although I have to believe that my brain, my own personal will, free will? Nah. Not free. Paid for. That my will can affect some of that. When I’m feeling sane. When I’m feeling strong. I am feeling neither at the moment, sane nor strong. Mine is a particularly toxic combination, apparently. It’s one I’m really unhappy with, one I don’t want to be. I know I can mess with the environment part…the nurture part. The DNA, well, I’m stuck with that. You can’t escape your DNA. Is my brother’s DNA so different from mine? He makes better choices. I suck at it. I wonder if he is happy. I hope he is. I’m not.

I did finish the Wonder Under on the Mammo quilt…

There it is, all sorted out. Isn’t it cute? It only took up 4 bins, instead of the 13 I needed for the last one. Goals? Get this ironed onto fabric, cut out, ironed down, maybe even stitched down by Spring Break. Break is really late this year, starts April 5…so I have 6 weeks. Then I need to start drawing the next invitational quilt…can’t talk about that one yet. I guess I will start drawing it when I finish this crazy one. Then I’ll need to decide what big one will occupy me for the next few months. The mammo one won’t take long. No down time. Down time is DOOWWWNNN time. Yeah. Moody. Stupid fucking hormones. Stupid woman existence. Sigh. I don’t really hate being female…but it’s not a whole lot of fun at the moment.

Calli doesn’t seem to mind her existence…

Wish I could sleep with such sweet abandon. Maybe I should have been spayed. Or a dog.

I used my meditation skills today during one class and during tutorial. Really, my brain wanted to strangle a couple of the tutorial/detention kids who were doing their best to annoy the crap out of me. Seriously. They were doing it on purpose. They’ve learned that if they irritate their teacher enough, they will get sent out and they won’t have to work. I didn’t bite. I tortured them and made them do their work. I didn’t really torture them. I just made them stay with my evil eye. Ticket out the door is a completed piece of work. They bought it. Deep breathing though. Then came home and got drama from the girlchild. Cried in the car. Cried at home. Cry cry cry. Solves nothing. Just makes my eyes hurt. Bought nice eye drops for sore eyes. Sad. There should be a formula for Sad Eyes. Crying Eyes. Mostly no…they have allergy eyes and dry eyes and contact eyes, but not Depressoid Eyes and Fucked-Up-Life Eyes. I looked. I really did.

It isn’t really surprising that I cry as much as I do.

I wish I didn’t have to.

Two teachers today were commenting on how skinny I am at the moment, and how I growled about their saying it before. I just looked at them. They said, just say thank you. So I did. Begrudgingly. And in my head, there was the litany of the unhealthy status of my weight loss, about how it’s sickness that caused it, not healthy behaviors. Healthy behaviors are maintaining it (well, as healthy as I can be at the moment, because some of my obsessive exercising and avoiding food are not particularly healthy).

I finally ordered some external hard drives to deal with my storage issues…and then the camera wasn’t working right with the computer. Thought it was the camera, because it’s actually starting to pull apart…the two sides are not fully connected (sigh. yes, I drop it a lot, and now it’s taped together…yes, seriously)…but it turns out I think it’s the fucking hub. Dammit. Could I have more go wrong? Seriously? I just don’t have the patience for all this. I’m hoping the boychild will help me with the hard drives, move the photos maybe and set up the backup on the new ones…then maybe I will have to get a new hub as well…plus I think my computer has a memory issue. I know the boychild’s does, but I would have to buy him a new computer to fix that issue, and that’s not happening…because he’ll need a laptop for college and I can’t afford both.

MONEY. God damn. It’s tight. Deep breaths. Stop panicking. I didn’t want to be this old and still living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted my life to be different, more stable. I don’t think this level of stress is healthy for me. I don’t want to be this stressed, this worried about my future and the kids’ futures. I didn’t want to be constantly worried. But I am. I don’t see an end to that…there’s no magic that fixes the stressed-out part of my life. I just push it over THERE. Meditation helps me numb my response…is that meditation? Or depression? Hard to tell. If I’m numb, it doesn’t matter. Numb isn’t a healthy state, though. It’s supposed to be short-term, enough to get me to the hospital and into triage…enough to get me through hospice and a funeral…and then I’m supposed to feel properly again. Sheesh. Don’t want THAT. Feelings bad. Feelings make me feel bad.

I’ve been listening to the Beatles a lot lately…they are a big portion of my iPod library. This one…

I’m trying to listen to the voices in my head (yes, I sound crazy…the counselor asked me if I have conversations with myself…well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone?). But the part I keep hearing is “take a sad song and make it better.” Trying, Paul. Really. I am. I’m the sad song. I can be better.

The hardest thing to admit is that I’m not better. I want to be. I really do. But I’m not. And maybe I never will be.

Dissolving Problems

Apparently Mr. Meditation is stalking me and listening in on my conversations. We are supposed to be visualizing being filled with light and then dropping a problem or question into that light and watching it dissolve. Last week, getting the light to fill me up was difficult; I seem to have managed it for this week, and then I drop this problem of depression into the light…it’s like an oil slick, black and globular, dense, spreading, trying to take over the light. Sometimes it succeeds and I have to start over, sweeping the black away and trying to refill the body with light and trying again to dissolve its greasy self into the golden light. Sometimes I manage to break it up into smaller and smaller black blobs, but they never go away; they just float around like errant black tadpoles. I guess that’s all a very realistic interpretation of how I am dealing with the depression…I try to break it up, destroy it, and it either grows and grows and takes over everything else, or it breaks up into smaller bits that still color my daily existence. There’s no escaping it.

So Mr. Meditation tonight is talking about how we deal with difficult things in life, and he says that people generally try to move quickly past challenges in life, to get through them as easily as possible, that we like security in our lives, we like things to be definite. He suggests instead that we sit with difficulties. Allow them to dissolve. Watch them dissolve, even if it’s slow and tedious and sometimes unsuccessful. He says we need difficult situations in life to practice, little challenges to be embraced instead of running away, so that we will be able to deal with whatever life throws at us. Ironic that. I’ve had enough of those. I need those around me to deal with their difficulties so they don’t make MY life more difficult. Dude. I think I’ve had enough difficult. Cut me a break for a while, eh? Bring on the security, maybe some peace, some joy, and don’t tell me I just have to make my own joy. If it were as simple as buying the ingredients and mixing them together correctly, don’t you think I would have done that already? Yes. I drew again tonight. I didn’t have much time in the end…

Grading sucked up some time and there was another soccer game, plus exercise (in the end, I did not make it to the gym). I worked on one piece of it, the drawing. Not much. Girlchild got to play some soccer tonight…

It’s been a rough season for her. She’s freaking out about the back surgery, understandably, getting cold feet. It’s hard to be the mom right now, to be the always-responsible one. There’s a lot of grabbing and pushing going on here, with no ball in sight.

They won. This picture looks like the Hokey Pokey (put your left foot in, put your left foot out…)

What can I say. It’s late. I’m not sleeping well. I was cranky today. One kid asked me if I’d taken my pill today. WTF? Sometimes teaching middle school is really difficult, challenging, in your face. I did do a color chromatography lab today, and the coolest part is when the ink (which I have them make in class) starts to move and spread the colors up the filter paper…they actually OOOH and AAAAH. It’s very cool. That’s when I know I’ve got them. Now if only I could persuade them to do their homework. I have been stitching anywhere that I sit down for any period of time…last night at the quilt meeting I got all of this done except for about an inch of the wing before they turned the lights out for the presentation…

Damn! But I finished it at the girlchild’s game, so that’s all of Month 3 from 2013 completed…

And I started Month 4. Yes. I’m behind. Welcome to my world.

And Sunday night, I started cutting out Wonder Under for the Mammogram quilt. I didn’t get very far…

This is going to be a troublesome piece. There aren’t very many pieces, but many of them are bigger than I usually do, so they will need big honking pieces of fabric…and since I usually only buy 1/2 yards, that might be a problem. I do have lots of flesh fabrics though, so maybe I’ll just go all out crazy on this one and pick really wild fabrics for the body, like 30 of them. Maybe. Or not. I have a while to decide…I have quilt class on Thursday, hopefully, and will be cutting these out and the wool pieces for Ivy’s memorial quilt. But if I keep drawing every night, then that will slow me down. The drawing really does help me process some of the ugly tarry crap in my head…anger and stress and sadness and those repulsive black thoughts that try to take over your brain in the middle of the night (during which I am always apparently awake, even though I told myself I needed to go to sleep early tonight…early wakeup tomorrow for girlchild)…if I can just draw them out, literally, on paper with black ink…then maybe they will haunt me less. Maybe I will be able to keep some of them from slipping back in to the unconscious and continuing to fuck with my barely stable equilibrium. It’s hard to say.

I’ve been reading The Dresden Files by by Jim Butcher…I have a 3-book volume of Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril, and I’ve made it through the first two…

They’re pretty good…formulaic, but interesting light reads in the urban fantasy realm. Apparently I have 12 books to go. The proof that they’re light fiction is that the publisher pushed a bunch of them into omnibuses instead of letting each book stand tall on its own. I don’t know if I’ll get through all of them. What’s interesting is that I ordered the 3-book omnibus from the library back in June or July, and it only showed up in the last few weeks. Now that I know that the word omnibus does not mean a really big bus, I’m going to use it all the time. So I guess this is either the only of these omnibuses in the system, or it’s really popular. It’s similar to the Iron Druid series, in that the male protagonist is sort of obsessed with breasts and how women dress, and there’s lots of weird magic and creatures and potions and getting your shit together and ending up naked on the side of a road with big purple bruises a lot. Seriously. But like I said, a light read. I’m sure I’ll move on to serious fiction soon.

Actually, I need to read the book club selection by next Wednesday, and it’s still not here from the library. I might have to suck it up and buy it…which would mean finding the money for that. Sad but true, a single book purchase is an issue.

My SIL, whom I love very much, sent me a V-day card with the F word in it (actually, it was just the letter F as a stand-in for the F word, which I type here all the time) and gift cards to go buy a little black dress. Hmn. Where does she think I will wear such a thing? On the hiking path? It’s sweet. I might actually buy something useful with it. It could happen.

The girlchild was doing a project today on Magnum Opus, and she was thinking of art and painters, and suggested a shirt like a Jackson Pollack painting. Mom to the rescue. I actually OWN a dress that I painted about 10 years ago to resemble a Pollack painting…I went to Halloween post-divorce as a JP painting. Yup. I did. There is no other household IN THE WORLD where that same conversation happened. She said, “what about a shirt like Pollack?” and I said, “come here, my pretty…it’s been done.” And what did she do? Did she take it with her to wear to school, as her mother would have? No. She did not. She said it was shapeless. Sigh. I was impressed. So were my son and ex. Girlchild? Not impressed. Oh well. I tried.

That Distant Feeling…

There are many questions and issues running through my head, and yet it is completely empty. It’s like a river running over there and I’m standing over here on the rocks, where it is dry and dead to the touch. I’ve pushed it all off over there, the water rushing past and tumbling over stones and making loud noises…but it’s all over there. I think that’s the meditation…watching from over here. Not judging it, not trying to fix it, just watching it. It’s one of the benefits of meditation, but I’m not sure it ever solves anything. Mr. Meditation talks about not judging how you feel, not wanting to change how the mind or the body feels, but just accepting it, being with that feeling.

Yeah, but that sucks, Mr. Meditation. I mean, I feel like I’ve been with this feeling for an awfully long time now, and I watch it, and it’s still the annoying asshole who doesn’t put the dishes in the dishwasher, who leaves trash out on the counter (hey, I’m describing my teenagers…my depressed mind is just like a teenager). When will it move out? When will it wander off and harass some other poor soul?

You don’t have an answer for me, do you?

Anyway. So I read and I meditate and I exercise, and today I can get the point of light to expand to my whole body by tricking my mind into not thinking about it, not forcing it. Somehow it works…for about 5 seconds and then the dark sucks back in.

When I left for school this morning, Midnight was sitting on the light table, right on top of the drawing I’m tracing, staring at me.

I’ll guard this for you. OK? When you come back, it will still be here (with my black hair all over it).

You can’t disappoint a cat like that. So I started tracing Wonder Under around 10:30 PM…

For a little over an hour. I’m up to piece 135 or so. There are only 300 and something pieces in this quilt. It’s not small, but the pieces are big and fairly simplistic. It’s not a bad piece to work on after all the monster hours of the Celebrating Silver quilt…none of the steps will take super long because there are fewer pieces. That’s probably a good thing. I will eventually have to plan my summer quilt…I’m still debating on that…internally. I have one that needs to be done by November, but it’s not super big. I like to do a big quilt over the summer. I might be able to do both…I haven’t figured that out yet.

I’m still sick, but not bad. It’s really far, over there…hey, like the issues and crap of the river. Maybe meditation pushes EVERYTHING over there. Bet that missing sock is over there too.

The problem with this state of mind is that I don’t like that distant feeling…it feels like I’m not in touch with anything, it’s all shaky and unreal. There’s nothing to ground me, to hold me to the earth. There’s nothing to hold onto. I’m a helium balloon floating away. The sky is endless. Not even the clouds will stop me. It’s like I don’t even exist.

So I keep making art. Maybe it will hold me to the ground long enough for my brain to come back. Maybe it will prove that I exist.

A Small Baby Bird

My mind literally skittered away from meditation tonight; I couldn’t force the light to fill my body. I am supposed to start from a pinpoint of light in my chest and visualize it filling my body with warmth and light. I can’t. I just can’t. There is black tarry sludge in the edges, and it’s pushing back at the light, forcing it to shrink back into the center and sometimes just disappear. It sizzles when it touches the light, lets off a rancid smell, chemical, burns the nostrils.

Wow. That’s not like a good visual of my mood at all, is it? In fact, a drawing pretty much popped into my head fully drawn when I was meditating, which really turned into trying to fight the sludge away and continue to breathe like I’m supposed to. Sometimes it just seems so pointless to even try, but I know I feel worse when I don’t. So I just do. Again and again.

I need to try to go to sleep at a semi-reasonable hour tonight. I can feel the mood worsening this week and I know some of it is hormones, some is stress, but some is sleep. If I’m lucky, I might get an extra 30 minutes tonight. Maybe. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll have all the financial aid stuff done and packed up for mailing some time this weekend, so I won’t have to think about it any more. I’m hoping that will help. Then again, maybe it’s distracting me from the other shit.

I’m thinking about this quilt again…

One Paycheck…because my life is back to that again…looking at the available money and taking deep breaths, trying to figure out survival again. I am so tired of it…so tired of worrying about money and expenses and how to pay for stuff. I had it rephotographed because it’s going to be in a book on quilts and human rights that will be published later this year. I know that once the kids get through school and hopefully get jobs that I will be OK, because I will only have to take care of myself, and I think I can do that. I think I can keep one head above water. Three heads? When two are in college? I’m having a lot harder time visualizing that. Maybe that’s the black tarry sludge…it’s worry and depression and panic and anxiety and grief, all rolled into a burrito of shit. A creeping burrito of coming-to-get-you-in-the-middle-of-the-night. Stephen King hasn’t written the single-mom-paying-for-college book yet…now there’s a scary-ass horror story for you.

Deep breaths. I meditate at school all the time now. I kick one class out into the hallway, close the door, pick up all the science journals, adjust the planner on the screen, stare at the wall and breathe…one two three four…you can make it to the door…five six seven eight…you can do this. You can’t rhyme all of it, but you can do it. You can open the door and let them in and breathe out the crazy and the sad and the dreary depth of grief that overwhelms you sometimes as you walk around the room, trying to persuade kids to work. Feeling this one’s forehead and wondering why he got sent to school with this fever and headache, talking quietly to that one about how to change what’s happening with her stuff right now, praising this other one for doing work you’ve never seen him do, chastising that other one for a giant brain fart day. You understand those days. You have them too, and somehow you get through. You grade. You teach. You email. You do all the right things. You walk through the black tarry sludge, which sucks at your feet and threatens to stop oxygen flow to your cells, but you push through, slog through, put your shoulder to it and move on through it.

But it never ends. Never fucking ends.

I needed to draw tonight, but it got too late. I had to make a test review powerpoint. I thought I had one for this test, but apparently not. And I graded because the girlchild commandeered my computer, so I watched part of Downton Abbey while doing that, and it made me cry. Dammit. I didn’t even get through the first fucking episode of this season without losing it. I’m such an emotional disaster area. Just stay away from me. It’s like nuclear waste. I feel like it just radiates off of me.

It must. You must be able to just look at me and know.

I heard this the other morning and went…NO. Why? What the hell?

Chvrches: Bela Lugosi’s Dead

And then I thought I might actually like it. And now I’ve heard it like 7 times, and I still don’t know. It’s definitely not Bauhaus. But I think I might like it.

You know, there really isn’t a conclusion to today’s post. I keep thinking someday I will get on here and yell, hooray! The depression is gone! The witch is dead! Hallelujah! Thank you all for joining me on this journey out of the hole! Whoop! Now let’s get on with what equates to normal with Kathy. Seriously, when I read old posts, I wonder who that person is? Even when she’s stressed, I don’t fucking recognize her. I don’t even know who she is. And that makes me so incredibly sad. Really sad.

Yeah. Well. I guess that’s what hope looks like, a small baby bird in my hand who is barely raising its head for water. At least it’s still alive.

No One Else Can…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Ivy…and Me

My SIL really saved me from myself yesterday and last night. I think she called me about 5 times, not for long, but just to tell me one more ironic or stupid thing about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I know I was trying NOT to sound mopey and shit, but I was, and I don’t even know if she knew that…but just having her sarcastic loving self checking in with me kept me from sinking deep into the low. By the time she stopped calling (No, Really, she said, This is the last call), I was significantly tired so I managed to do a few more things and then went to bed early for me. And got a decent night’s sleep for probably the first time in a month. I know she doesn’t read my blog (she has three kids under the age of 12…I’m not sure she reads anything but text messages), so she’ll never see this. I’ll tell her thanks at some point.

There’s something about the vast expanse of weekend hours that I spend by myself that get me down. One part of me looks forward to quiet and getting to do something I want to do, and the other part of me wants to interact with people, but not total strangers and not in a difficult way. I don’t want to have to work hard at it, because I already do that every day during the work week. I want relaxing and social. Sort of. In small quantities. Maybe. Plus I’m significantly poor, so no cost. Yeah, I know. It’s not very realistic. Even an occasional movie would be nice…maybe when I get past the next Visa bill from hell.

Really, what I did yesterday was fill out financial aid forms. And I did a little fabric stuff. And I meditated.

I have completed 145 meditation sessions. Ironically, I’m having a hard time with the current series, the Creativity series…there’s something about the format of visualizing energy moving through that I can’t hold on to properly. I have no problems with creativity in itself, except for finding time for it and forcing myself to do OTHER stuff that is NOT creative. I am having a hard time relaxing at the moment in meditation…I can’t get my brain to release. It’s been too tied up in financial aid applications to relax…I’m still doing those, by the way. I finished the worst of it Saturday, the CSS Profile, which was way worse than the FAFSA by like 100 degrees. But some of the colleges have their own forms, so I did one of those tonight…and all of them need copies of my tax return, my paystubs, my W-2s, all need to be signed on each page and probably I need to provide a vial of my blood as well. Boychild interrupted my meditation because he had forgotten to turn in an essay online…and then I was talking to him about getting a job. He wanted to know why. Sigh. Ah. Money, dude. Plus hell…you just need to get a job and start being part of society. Feel free to find a job you’d like: politics, bookstore, I don’t know. Something. I will be doing these damn financial aid forms for another two weeks probably…so it seems fair that he should have to work this summer? I don’t know. I might have to work this summer too…who knows. I don’t know how anything is going to work out. Like him, I don’t know what job I could get just for the summer. Delivering pizza?

I also have completed 33 health coach sessions in the last year and a half. They’re stopping my coaching, which has been free so far…apparently losing all the weight means I no longer qualify for the free stuff. I’m OK with that. I think I got the best out of the sessions a while ago. I think there are one or two more. That’s it. I lost 45.5 pounds in that time period. I dropped one med. I upped two other meds and added new ones. Sigh. I’m healthier now despite the extra meds. I can’t help being anemic.

So I went to my local quilt store that carries wool fabrics and got a few more bright fabrics…well, bright-ish. That’s all that was available…

That crazy fabric underneath them is the backing fabric I got for super-cheap a million years ago, and I used every inch of it up on the back of the Sightlines quilts, which have finally returned home.

And then I started going through my wool stash, trying to find all the leftover pieces from other projects I’ve done…because I don’t need huge pieces for the flowers in the background…these are from a Primitive Gatherings’ block-of-the-month that I finished…well, I finished all the blocks. I haven’t put them together…that’s usually my sticking point.

Then I found the pieces from the two Sue Spargo block-of-the-month leftovers…there were some good bright colors in there, including some orange I used for the fish in the water…

I don’t need big pieces. This is not hoarding. Seriously. This is using up my scraps. I don’t have a good wool stash. It’s OK. I don’t NEED a good wool stash. I’m not planning on this being a regular thing. I just really wanted something to show how much I cared about Ivy and how bad I felt about her dying so early. I realize that current readers may not have a clue who Ivy is.

Ivy came home with us in June 2006 as a puppy (yes, that is the boychild at age 10).

She was a Boxer mix…later we figured out that the mix must have been a whippet, because she was long and skinny and ran like the wind.

She was a good dog, like they all are, although she had issues with my parents’ dog at some point, so Missy couldn’t stay with us after Calli (my daughter’s dog) moved in. But she was sweet, and every time the phone rang at night, she would leap off the couch and go running down the hallway, sometimes barking like the world was ending.

She wasn’t very big, but sounded large. She was a good protector and was very loving. She had skin allergies that started up in 2011 and we tried some food and allergy tests…turns out she was allergic to everything under the sun, so we had her on allergy shots for a while, but she even developed an allergy to those. And then her vet died of a sudden heart attack…at age 44 or something. It was crazy. So it took us a while to get another vet in the practice up to speed on the whole allergy issue, and then she got really really sick really really fast. And then well again. And then sick again. And by the time we found out that she had liver cancer, she had stopped eating and drinking, and I had made the horrible decision to stop her pain and suffering. She was 6. It was May 2012. Yes, that long ago.

I don’t know why her death has been so hard on me…I’ve had multiple animals die, but always of old age…or they were old and the diseases finally got too much for them. Ivy was young, in the prime of her life, perfectly fine and hyper and running around excited one day, and vomiting everything up and barely able to stand the next day. It was about a month from the first serious illness to putting her down, and it was just hard for me. My daughter still talks about it; she’s still carrying around resentment over how she didn’t get to hold Ivy when she died. Long story…she was there when it happened, but…I know if she had said something, she could have held her, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue. One that can’t be changed now.

So I spent most of the summer sad about her death. When my first dog, Russia, died of old age, the kids were young, and it took me a couple of years to get another dog, mostly because of finances, and that was Ivy. We have Calli here half the time; she travels back and forth between me and my ex with the kids…so it’s not like I never have a dog here. And I don’t know that I’m home enough to justify a dog just for me…and there’s the cost.

But the real deal was that I felt I needed to memorialize her life. I did some drawings and one became a sort-of banner to Ivy. That’s what this is. And it’s wool mostly, with cotton accents, and I’m planning to embellish it a la Sue Spargo, because I enjoy doing that kind of work, sort of as a hobby, rather than like an art endeavor…and I want what I make for Ivy to have been enjoyable. Because it still makes me feel like crying to think about that month when she was so sick, to remember that day I couldn’t even get her to eat out of my hand, so I decided that was it. That she was suffering more than it was worth, and she wasn’t coming back. We didn’t get the biopsy results for another three or four days, but I was right. It was liver cancer all over the place.

So I’m making this for her. And for me.

I would be ironing on the ironing board, but Babygirl thinks it’s hers now. I had all the wool sort of spread out on the other side of the board.

When I got to the fleshy bits, I had a run of fabrics that I worked really hard to get back in 2012/2013.

And I currently have about half the quilt ironed down to mostly wool, ready to be cut out.

It’s a much different process than I use for most of my quilts…but I’m glad to have it started. Maybe tomorrow night I can get started on the flowers…I have Ivy, me, and the main landscape (hill, river, fish) all cut out. I just need to do about a million flowers and two banners and then there are bunnies and squirrels, because Ivy liked to chase animals. So expect to see more of this in the coming days. For Ivy. Yeah. And me.

The Getting Up and Pretending

I’m not sure where my head is still…I forgot even more stuff today, left one ingredient out of dinner (the kids noticed, but survived), couldn’t find photos that I had already removed from the relevant email and resized, left my brain in a dusty corner somewhere. I feel so freakin’ inefficient and lame because I can’t seem to focus properly…only half my brain is engaged in life. The other half is somewhere else. Hopefully it’s in Tahiti or the Caribbean, having a grand old time, instead of what I imagine from all the TV shows, where we hope it’s on vacation but it’s really locked up in a damp cell with duct tape (students, that’s d-u-c-t, not quack like a duck) over its mouth, bloody nose from getting hit too hard, double vision.

Yes, the imagination runs in overdrive on a regular basis. I tried to remember stuff. I shipped my journal and bought boxes for the quilt, which needs to get there next week some time. I should have packed it up tonight, but I didn’t have the mental energy…which is too bad, because I think the other four nights this week will be much worse than tonight. Oh well. I need to iron it and dehair it as well. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow night (cough cough, after tutorial, soccer game, and gym). Whatever. The show doesn’t open until May. It will get where it needs to go on time. Ish. I focus so hard on deadlines sometimes that I think it makes me a little insane. Juggling like crazy right now.

I graded papers tonight because I am now way behind. I rarely grade at home these days…it’s just not a priority. I try to do it at school, but sitting in the classroom during prep is depressing. So I avoid it. I have enough depressoid going on…I don’t need to make more. On the other hand, I do need to catch up. So I’m trying to balance those things out.

I exercised and meditated like a good girl…exercise is just an excuse to be able to read really, and that is never bad. And meditation…it centers me, makes me be more conscious of my inner state, which is often not good, but I’m much better at controlling it this year. My students I think are benefiting from my conscious understanding of when I am losing it, and taking control of that. Breathe. Think. Don’t react. Wish I’d known about it sooner…I think it would have made my life different and better years ago.

Then I came in to try to figure out the fabrics for the Ivy Memorial quilt, which has nothing to do with any art show or entry or deadline at all. I didn’t think there were that many pieces in it, but that is because I am a space cadet and forgot all the detailed tiny bits I put into it because I am freakin’ insane. It has 312 pieces in it, which is a lot when you consider its size…which is about 19″ high x 38″ wide…wow, that’s a lot bigger than I thought it was…and that’s without a border.

I laid out the first 100 pieces, which are all freezer paper, cut with a border if they’re meant to be wool, so I can cut out the wool on the line, or cut on the line if they’re meant to be cotton, because I will turn the edges under to applique them. Only a tiny bit confusing…

Most of it is supposed to be wool, with a few cotton accents around, and I planned it to be mostly bright colors. Last year or the year before, I was searching for a run of flesh tones for the main figure, but I never really worked out the rest of it. I have a decent stash of greens and a few browns etc., but none of the brights I was envisaging for the flowers. I have red. That’s about it.

I did manage to iron the hills and river behind the main figure…I had enough greens for that…this is what I’ve used so far for the hillside…

And the river is done. But before I decide about the rest of them, I need to find the stash of leftover pieces from the two Sue Spargo quilts…there were brightly colored pieces in there that were big enough for flowers, which is mostly what I need them for. I think they’re hiding out in the living room in one of the boxes from my last cleanup. I never throw those offcuts away, those funny-shaped pieces left over from cutting out birds or flowers. Yes, I think that makes me a hoarder in some ways, but I think if I just keep watching a Hoarders episode every month or so, I will be motivated enough to keep the packrat tendencies down to a minimum. Besides, in this situation, I think it’s exactly what I need…little pieces of bright colors. I may track those down tomorrow night.

After I pack the box. Yeah, I know. I don’t think I’ll be doing either of those things tomorrow night, but who knows.

I could just do another drawing of a sad woman with a weapon…because that’s not disturbing at all. I try to explain that I get all my supremely sad and angry and disturbing thoughts out in my drawings, so I don’t need to follow through with them. Expressions of anger, sadness, grief, depression, even suicide. I don’t need to DO any of that, don’t want to…but do need to acknowledge the thoughts that ramble through the brain. It would be stupid not to address those thoughts, the ones that inhabit your brain in the early hours of morning and want to color your dreams. Naw. Bugger off. I saw you, I said I saw you, now go away.

It’s funny…I have this tiny little wool stash, only about 20 different colors and some small pieces of some others…so it makes it really hard for me to pick what I want. I like having a huge palette from which to choose. This is the biggest section of stash…crazy quilt fabrics on the left side, browns, yellows, whites, purples, blues, and grays on the right side (actually it’s taking over the left side too…I recently consolidated the CQ stash over as far as it would go). And below the shelves you can see is a drawer of green and one of black.

Then to the left of that are the blues (3 drawers) and greens (3 drawers), with a drawer of grays and one of browns…

There’s other stuff stacked on top, pieces large enough for backings and backgrounds, plus a hefty Kaffe Fassett collection and all the William Morris-type fabrics ever printed…there’s a bizarre combination for you.

Behind me is one drawer of brown, one of orange, and one of red (spilling out all over)…I have another black drawer back there somewhere too.

Then under the sewing machine desk are two drawers of brown, two of pink/flesh, and then a ton of flesh colors that won’t fit in there. The top pink drawer is broken…the plastic is so old and one of the fatter cats kept sleeping on it until she broke it. I keep meaning to try to replace it. I’ve been really good over the last two years about not buying backing fabric, about using up what I have.

Since I will never be able to afford to move out of this house, I’m thinking when the kids move that I will just knock down all the walls and make a huge studio. I’m sure that won’t hurt the resale value.

So yeah. I did some art stuff, not a lot. I worked. I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel completely buried by sadness…just heavy with it. Always so heavy. I work so hard at pushing that away, at getting up and out of it. I wish it would just go. But I think I would need to walk out the door and get on a plane to some foreign country and start completely over for that to really work…plus they’d need to wipe my brain (tempting, oh so tempting). But then who would make my art? So I stick with my dorky kids who argue with me like teenagers do, and the goofy dog who lay on my lap while I was grading, and the three cats who vie for my attention. Every day I feel like I’m just going through the motions of a living person, trying to act like a real live human so no one notices that I am actually an alien from another planet, infiltrating their world, trying to fit in. At least there is art and there are animals and snotty teenagers and books and sometimes even decent movies or television (although tonight was not a good night for that). Without those things, I don’t know that it would be worth it…the getting up and pretending. I do miss, horribly, going to the movies regularly. Sigh. Oh well. Life sucks and then you die (I said that in high school with no understanding of what it meant…now that I better understand what it means, I deeply hope it’s not true).

“‘That’s the thing about pain,’ Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. ‘It demands to be felt.'” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars