Hitting Me Over the Head…

So when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is holy god how can I just go back to sleep and stay there until everything feels better, not because you’re tired or sick but because you just don’t feel like you can negotiate all the interactions of the day or even the noise level, because it’s quiet now in the classroom and dark, but the gates open in maybe 3 minutes and then you have to deal…when that’s how it feels when you wake up, then there is not a lot of hope for the next 7 hours.

And yet. I dealt. Because I have to. Because when it’s hard, you deal. Or you don’t and people around you have to suffer because you don’t deal.

I’m really NOT in a good place tonight. I tried to be. I crossed off like 6 things off my list (my lime-green post-it note from hell). I resized things and signed things and scanned things and dropboxed things (most of those aren’t really verbs, but I don’t fucking care…language is there for me to manipulate it). I signed the girlchild up for her SAT and the boychild and I assigned her 4 colleges…she is looking at veterinarian/zoology and writing, and now he is looking at law, even federal stuff. Wacky. I don’t even know what to think about their futures, except…hell…they are THEIR futures and I am simply here to sign papers and fill in financial aid forms and Paypal them when they need it.

I just want them to be happy. The one thing their mom failed at so far, I want them to have that. I don’t care what they do. I don’t care what their fucking grades are. I just want them to get to happy.

I’d like to get there too, but I hold out less hope for that. I was able to describe to the counselor what happy looked like; yes, I still remember it. She says I don’t think I can be happy again. It’s definitely hard to imagine, especially after tonight’s meditation, which was a giant pile of cry. I don’t know why. I never know why. He says if you can’t find your overriding emotion, then to look for clues. Seriously? My overriding emotion for the last 6+ months? Sad. Grief. Crying. It’s there every fucking day. Sometimes it’s low level and I’m like barely touched by it, barely touched by anything, numb honestly. Then there are days when I am on the verge of tears all fucking day long (today) and finally I just lose it during meditation and cry for 40 minutes straight. Just crying. That just sucks. It just sucks all your energy out and stuffs your damn nose up and makes your head feel like it’s going to float away on a sea of saltwater shit.

Seriously. I could do without that. He asks, Mr. Meditation, is it heavy or light (the visualization)? It’s fucking sad, you asshole. Is it spacious or restricting? It’s just fucking sad. There’s nothing light or spacious about sad. It’s suffocating. It’s heavy. It drags you down into deep sucky mud and makes it so you can’t breathe or stop crying or see straight. Do I feel stillness or restlessness? I don’t even know. Be clear about how you’re feeling without judging it. I’m clear. This is fucking sad. I don’t judge it. It just fucking is. It may never go away. That’s what it feels like tonight, like suckers attached to your chest and they will never fucking let go.

I’m sure that will be better tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or Monday. In 2021. Whatever. Fuck you.

I was listening to NPR before counseling and they were talking to an author, Jennifer Senior, who wrote a book about parenting and children called All Joy and No Fun. The author talked about how women (in general) have a running ticker tape of concerns going through their heads. Men compartmentalize and can put concerns away at work. I don’t know if that’s true. I haven’t been with the parent of my children for long enough that it seems irrelevant to analyze how we deal with the kids…because we aren’t really a team. When the boychild and I were trying to decide if I was a single mom, like the legal definition, well, no I’m not. I have an ex who has joint custody and pays money, but I do almost everything that is kid-related with virtually no support. I can’t imagine having support, having a team supporting the kids. I wanted that, but fuck all, when do I get what I want? I don’t know. I’ll let you know. I do all the SATs and ACTs and college apps and FAFSA and interviews and all this shit. I get very little help. I would have liked to have help. I would have liked to have had a team to deal with all this. I would have liked support, empathy, help.

I must have done something very very wrong to be in this space right now.

Or I just feel that way.

Yes, it’s a bad place. It’s OK. I’m sure it will be better tomorrow. Or the next day. You really just get to this point where you push yourself into bed and sleep and hope when you wake up that it doesn’t feel the way it did yesterday.

And if it does, you do it again. And pick up a pen or a needle or some fabric, and hope to god that it doesn’t ever feel like that again.

I dehaired and packed yet another quilt for a show that’s opening in two weeks in Ojai…

I’m delivering it Sunday. Busy weekend.

The new Sue Spargo BOM? We’re not allowed to post finished or in-process blocks on blogs, because people were copying them instead of buying her patterns, so I guess for the next year-plus all you will see is supreme details and materials…here’s the materials for Month 1.

I am so not ready to even start Month 1. First I have to get the embellishment done on last-year’s quilt Months 2-12. Minor issue. Packed up a bunch of stuff for tomorrow’s drive. Maybe I will get through Month 2…or even start Month 3. Who the fuck cares. It just occupies the part of my brain that likes to move thread around with needles. It’s not the savior to my sanity.

The sleepover got canceled, by the way…thank god, because I was in no sane frame of mind. I decided to keep cutting out the freezer paper pieces for the Ivy Memorial quilt, started last year and abandoned.

This is an interesting quilt in that it is mostly wool with cotton bits and pieces, with plans for lots of thread embellishment, so sort of a clash (clash?) between the Sue Spargo wool world and Kathy’s art world. I have no idea what will actually come of it…but I just wanted something to acknowledge Ivy’s existence on the planet. It’s never easy when things/organisms/people die too early. It just feels wrong and makes you obsess and drags you down.

So maybe this quilt will help me move on to a new dog. Who knows. I can’t afford a new dog.

I listened to this in the morning…

it helped. Maybe. Briefly. Hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer also might help.

Past the Deadlines…(sort of)

I practiced meditation at school again today. In class. While teaching. Well, supervising independent work today. We do that. I also practiced a feminist rant…OK, I didn’t practice it…I just did it. Sometimes I think the kids need to see that…plus the kid saying that men were better at everything than women were kinda got my goat. It’s OK…I kinda did it as a gospel moment; I think I even hallelujahed. The girls appreciated it and some of the boys did too (although most were probably frightened). I don’t just teach science, people…

I taught. I breathed deep (actually not so deep…it’s either the allergies I technically don’t have or something pretending to be sick). I went to the emergency union meeting and took notes. I went to the girlchild’s soccer game where the asshole coach (oops, did I say that out loud) wouldn’t play her (long story…it’s finals week and she chose academics over soccer). I went to the gym and read an entire book (it was a graphic novel…they are a quick read). I prepped tomorrow night’s dinner, which now has to stretch to feed 7 instead of 3 (one of which is a hungry teenaged boy). I cleaned a bit, because apparently now there is a sleepover at my house tomorrow night (I wonder if they will mind my tracing Wonder Under on the giant-ass light table while they watch bad TV and gossip late into the night…yeah, I know. I will probably have to give up my Friday night plans).

I ate dinner super late. I picked TV that I should not be watching in the mood I’m in. As always, I don’t know what governs the moods. Is it being tired? Is it work frustration? Is it a chemical imbalance in my brain? Who the fuck knows.

At the soccer game, I almost finished this guy…

It was dark, though, and I was trying to do Pekinese stitch on top of the blue things and largely failing (I got one done), so I stopped. Some schools have crappy stadium lights.

I am definitely beyond trying to predict how many games it takes to finish any of these. I will have time in cars on Saturday and Sunday, though. I could potentially finish quite a lot. Maybe. It doesn’t really matter. They just are fun to do…the embroidery stitches are interesting. Sometimes even relaxing (minorly).

The book I finished is the graphic-novel adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children…

(real book on the left, graphic adaptation on the right)

I read the book last year and really liked it. The graphic novel was eh. The art didn’t move me. I felt like the story was chopped up by the pictures. I had a better imagination while just reading the words (there are a few photographs in the original book).

Like I said in my review on GoodReads, I need a graphic adaptation (or a movie, for that point) to ADD to the fiction, and they rarely do. Mostly they just mess with the images I had in my head.

I do have a plan for tomorrow night’s artmaking. Actually, I will need to do some more of the crossing-off the post-it-note crap. I crossed off two things today (woo hoo!). I know. It’s amazing. So maybe I can cross a few more off tomorrow. And I do have another quilt top in here that I could work on. In fact, I think there’s another QUILT in here that has been pinbasted for like 3 years. I obviously care a lot about it. So there’s no shortage of stuff to be done. It just feels better to start something new sometimes…to have that sense of excitement (pretty toned down in the current Kathy state) about new. Different. Moving on.

So I numbered the big quilt…

It’s about 350 pieces. That’s tiny. I mean, the quilt itself is good-sized…it just doesn’t have a lot of pieces.

By the way, I got my evaluation back from Road to California…shockingly, the uterus quilt did NOT win an award (I am so shocked…I’m still minorly amazed that it even got in), but the comments were interesting…they said it could use more quilting (I know KPM did not say that…), which is par for the course when you put an art quilt in a semi-traditional show (Road embraces art quilts…but there are still traditional judges), but they did say the imagery was interesting and the storytelling was effective. Nice to know. I guess. It’s been so long since a quilt of mine has been judged like that…they always say not enough quilting. Whatever.

Anyway. I’ll be up there on Saturday to see the ones that DID win awards and have enough quilting. People, if I wanted to quilt the body parts, I would, but then they wouldn’t pop out so much.

Then I thought I should probably pick one of the smaller ones too, and I had a real hard time with that, because nothing was really reaching out and grabbing me, so I just picked the smallest one, which is also breast-related (I’m on a roll), but is only about 10″ square…

It has 150 pieces or so in it. I don’t know when I’ll get back to working on these…it kind of depends on what I end up doing tomorrow night…what I feel like doing. I kinda feel like going with my mood, with whatever makes me feel better, more at peace, is totally the way to go with my art at the moment. I’ve spent the last 6 months really getting through some have-to’s as far as my art is concerned. I had what I originally thought was four pieces that had to be done by deadlines (actually 6, if I count the two small ones), and so it’s been All Deadlines, All the Time for an awfully long time… maybe I should give myself a break for a while. I’m thinking I can work on whatever I want until Spring Break (which is late this year, mid-April), and by then, I should have a drawing for the next invitational quilt that has to be done in November and another big piece for the summer…not as crazy as the Earth Stories one, but one that is impactful and strong and meaningful and will celebrate me, the artist, next summer. I feel like I’m going to need some of that Me Celebration by then. Maybe. Who knows. It will probably still be painful and emotional and full of sturm und drang, but it will be mine.

Wow. That sounded almost hopeful and maybe even a bit I am woman, hear me roar. So much better than the godawful mood I was in earlier. It’s silly that something as mundane as numbering two drawings can be mood-altering…at least minorly. I really should just quit my job and make art full time. (ha. like that’s an option) I should probably finish crossing things off the post-it note list before I abandon all deadlines, though. Yeah. Gotta be a little bit responsible.

I Want to Be Henry Rollins…

I’m thinking I need to meditate twice a day at the moment…once in the morning in that hour before school starts, when my brain is in overdrive on what needs to get done, but it also mired in sadness at how it feels. The feels, they are much worse during the school day, during the quiet moments, in the prep hours, when there is no chaos around. Loud music chases them away for a bit, but it’s really hard to MAKE yourself grade stuff that you know needs to get done this week during the day so you don’t have to waste time on the weekend coming in when you feel like you want to crawl into a dark deep hole and never come out. But I seem to do best with this guided meditation, where he talks me through it…and I don’t know how to work that with the app I use. And it’s more TIME…time I don’t really have.

I don’t know. I keep thinking the mood should improve, that I should be getting better, but everything is so hard right now. Even simple things like sleeping and eating are hard.

So. Yeah. I did finally commit to being done with both quilts by Sunday at about 1 PM. That might be fucking crazy. I have most of the other one done…I’m just finishing up the binding on it. I have one more side and both sleeves to finish…yes, I’m sewing two sleeves on my quilts these days…they hang better with a bottom sleeve. So if I get really gutsy, I’ll take it to Thursday’s soccer game and work on it there. Yes, it has nudity, but I’m really good at folding them up so no one can see anything on a binding, since I’m sewing on the back anyway. YES. I handsew my bindings. I like how it looks. Plus I sew fast.

The other one, I finished the outline quilting tonight.

I only had a little of that left. I then started quilting the background…

Honestly, there isn’t much background on this quilt…it’s mostly covered with stuff. I did all of the little fussy bits in between the bodies and hair and animals, and then started out into the borders. I don’t expect it to take much longer, but probably won’t be able to get it done until Thursday. I thought about doing something fancy in the background, but the damn thing needs to get done, so that ain’t happening. Maybe on the next one.

I can get binding fabric tomorrow after the boychild’s Academic League (if I don’t go to the gym), or I can wait until Saturday. Tough call. Thursday MIGHT be an option…hard to say. I’m juggling pointy rocks like crazy. When they fall, they will stab me in the eyeball (hence need for meditation).

By the way, when you’re depressed, you probably shouldn’t read books about kids with terminal cancer…even when they’re really good. I just finished (in about 48 hours, maybe less), The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

It’s a compelling book. Yes, it made me cry. Not shocking. I purposely finished it tonight at home, so I wouldn’t be finishing it at the gym and weeping inconsolably there. That’s not good gym etiquette.

So this was in my comments to be approved this morning…

certainly like your web site but you need to test the spelling
on quite a few of your posts. Several of them are rife with
spelling issues and I in finding it very troublesome to inform the
truth however I will definitely come again again.

I am highly amused. My spam filter didn’t catch it. Personally, I think my spam folder should kill any comment with a spelling issue in it, but that’s because I was in a mood this morning. I love that they used the word ‘rife,’ but then had a serious grammar issue in the last half of that sentence. Spammers are interesting creatures.

OK. I’m really trying to do this thing where I go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. Tomorrow is no less busy than today was. Tomorrow is rife with busy. And my daughter informed me (and her dad on the phone) that not getting enough sleep at night will kill you. Nice. We’re dying anyway, sweetie…and not getting enough sleep is the least of my worries at the moment.

Brain depressed. Will read about some person’s sketchbook before I go to sleep…Danny Gregory’s An Illustrated Life…

If I read about other people’s artful existences, it might make me feel better about my own. Which reminds me, this…

Henry Rollins is so serious. I wonder if he ever smiles. I love this story of his…I wish I could have been in my favorite band when I was younger. I’m a visual artist, and that’s definitely where my talent lies, but I’d really like to be either a book author or a rock star. Or Henry. Yup. That’s it. I want to be Henry Rollins…

That’s All You Can Do…

Hey. So I went back to school today. It’s school. It’s the same old. It’s depressing, honestly. Seeing the people I work with, adults and kids, not depressing. The workload, the constant pile of crap, that’s depressing. The feeling you get when you realize you will be carrying this load for another 3 months before Spring Break, and then there will be more after that, and then you will have Summer Break, and then it will start all over again? That’s heavy. It’s not what I want. I want to teach kids and be their science inspiration, but I don’t want all the paperwork and the stress and the constant heavy negative crap that comes with teaching. But there’s no escaping that at the moment. There’s nothing I can do that’s different right now…I have kids going into college and I need reliable income and health insurance, and I need to focus on getting my kids a good start in life so hopefully they can do it way better than I did…hopefully they can have some semblance of happy and stable and not worry all the time about money and the septic tank and how dinner will get on the table…because that was a giant-ass disaster tonight, although it eventually came together.

I was on this hike the other day and another single/divorced mom was talking about her older teens not doing laundry, and I just laughed. I trained my kids on dishes and laundry at about age 6. I was divorced and was teaching by then, and I needed them to help. I’m totally honest with them about what needs to get done and what I can handle, because one’s an adult and the other is approaching that, and they need to see that life isn’t always easy…that you have to bust your butt sometimes to get through…and that it might hurt and be hard, but you can get through. Because I think some kids never see that part and when it gets hard? They run away, they hide, and people get hurt when they can’t deal. Each year, the helping part from my kids gets bigger, and tonight it culminated in one kid on the phone with me analyzing the 1/2″ vents cut in a cooking bag while I was running tutorial at school, then another kid coming home early because she didn’t hear me say I would leave the gym early to deal with step 2 (or 3?) of dinner. Meanwhile, the first kid had read the post-it note instructions I had left for the second kid, but hadn’t panicked enough to text me yet. We are a working unit. They are adults in many ways, trying to help their mom survive work and art and life in general. They know I’m having a hard time and they try to make it easier. On the one hand, I feel incredibly bad that they have to do that…on the other, I know they will be more competent adults because of it.

God damn. I’m going to miss them when they’re gone. I’m not going to miss the fussing about getting Christmas thank-yous and college apps done, or the refusal to take the trash out until I’ve thrown things and yelled at them…I’m going to miss their care for me, their careful consideration of their broken mom and how they can help and still be the pissy teenagers they’re supposed to be. I did good with them. They will be good adults. They will know how to survive adversity and hopefully get past it. They will bitch at me about the text I sent, and then ask for a hug in the next text (yes, I text my kids while I’m in the same house…). I hope they will be happier than I am. I hope someday to be happy too, but more importantly, I hope they are happy.

I am 8 1/2 hours in to the quilting of the Celebrating Silver quilt. Technically the photos are due February 1 (I think), but I’m trying to get it done by Saturday night, so I can get it and the other quilt photographed next week. I emailed the photographer to set up a time, so now I HAVE to finish. Way to put pressure on myself. I’m juggling some other deadlines as well…I have a quilt that has to be delivered to VAM next week and it’s missing a label; my parents are doing that delivery, because I have no way of getting there within their time constraints (it takes a village). That show opens February 15, I think. I found out today that one of my older quilts, Here, will be going to Ojai to the Beatrice Wood Arts Center for an exhibit opening February 9.

It needs to be delivered a week from Sunday, but that’s to a regular meeting I would go to anyway, so that’s not a supreme hardship. I just have to FIND the damn thing. I love this quilt…it’s been in a ton of shows and has traveled all over the place. A friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and I drew this…she is still cancer-free, knock on wood. That’s 13 pieces out on exhibit and 3 in process, about to be sent on exhibit. I should be proud of all that. I should be able to take a deep breath and have that achievement fill me up with joy and success.

Those are Sion’s thorns…

Yeah, well, we know how depression deals with all those feelings. That said, meditation is focusing on this visualization technique and I am rocking that. There’s something about my ability to see quilts fully colored in my head that translates to this ability to visualize myself filling with warm light, the warm light of creative thought. It’s a good place to be…in meditation. I cry still, but it’s tempered by this calm feeling of being filled by some artistic thing…some creative thing. So many people are lacking that…lacking an ability to create, to make, to draw, to paint, to take what’s in their head and make it INTO something. I have that. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I have that and I am so glad that I do, because it pulls me up out of the muck. I’m still depressed, but I’m not crawling into bed and not getting out. I’m not refusing to shower. I’m not crawling into a hole and never coming out. I’m not suicidal. I could be. This experience has been bad enough, has dragged me low enough that I often think I just don’t want to be awake…I don’t want to exist, please don’t make me get up and get dressed and deal with the world. I just can’t. But the art is there, banging on my skull, saying FUCK YOU. GET UP AND MAKE ART. So I do. And I know that’s the way out of this crap…and I will eventually GET out. But I also know what it looks like to want to give up and not deal with anything. That even doing the laundry or grading papers or saying hi to someone in the morning is sometimes the hardest thing in the world for me. Sometimes I wonder how I get up, how I get in the car and drive to work, how I manage to do anything at all. Simple. Art brain. It’s saving my life. It’s making me deal. It’s taking on all the pain and crap and shit and it’s pulling me along, whether I like it or not. And when the days are really bad, really low, it puts the pen in my hand, it makes me sit down at the sewing machine, it pulls fabric out of a drawer, and it makes me be…exist…survive.

I don’t know what made that happen in my brain, but I’m grateful that it did.

One eye stitched…one eye not.

It sounds so lame to write all that out. I read a blog once about how to decide you want to be alive. I want to know how the book I’m reading ends. I want to know what quilt I will make next. I want to know if that kid I’m teaching will graduate from high school. I want to see what my own children will become. I want to see my grandchildren. I want to see the next dog I will have. I want to see the next sunset…sunrise…mountain top. That’s how you get through. That’s how you survive. That’s how you bully through depression and get to the other side. I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not saying it works for everyone. It’s just working for me. I’m still depressed. I’m still really really sad and hurt and not happy. But…that will not be forever, even on the days when I can’t quite convince myself that it feels like forever and I see no light at the end of the tunnel, hey. I’m in these shows and I’m making art and my kids are trying to cook dinner and manage the recycling bins. So there.

Broken? Yup. Totally. Permanent? Nope. Will be cracked forever, but will figure it all out. The crone? She is there, she is in me. I’m not her yet. I’m not there yet.

Sigh. Rough day. Babygirl is quite happy with my folded-up batting pile…

When I decide that the cat hair is too much, I do have piles of smaller batting pieces. I’m thinking she is so ecstatic about the batting that I should just make her some batting piles throughout the house. Because when part of your life is focused on how to make the life of a bitchy, old-lady cat a good thing…how do you make her last years enjoyable and make her feel loved? Well, really, that’s all you can do in this world…

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

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

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

This song kicked my ass today…

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

Fuck, I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I finished All Clear today…

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

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

I’m Not Very Magical at the Moment…

Things I said to my sewing machine today (and yes, you’re allowed to say, “Well at least you’re talking to your sewing machine today.” True that.):

1. Why do you have to be such an asshole? Why can’t you just TELL me when you’re going to run out of thread instead of continuing to sew along like a happy jerkwad?

2. Why do you hate me so much?

3. Why can’t you go faster?

I finished stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt top today…it took 5 hours total, with 4 of them done today.

This is what it looked like before it started…Babygirl was not thrilled about my messing with her sunny spot. I started in the morning after I took my car in for what should have been a simple oil change and turned into a brake job…luckily, my parents could pick me up and bring me back home in between. So I stitched until the first kid got home (minimum day),

then sent him off to get the second kid…then she needed a ride somewhere (she thought she could have the other car, but it was now the ONLY car, so she had to give it up to mom)…so I dropped her somewhere, came back, got the boychild, drove to get my car…

(No, Calli, you are NOT helping)…waited for a while…my car guy is nice but very thorough.

Girlchild texted me for her pickup during my wait at the car place, so I told her to call boychild, who then apparently had to drop off three other teenaged girls (so glad it was not me)…

Which he complained about. Because? Anyway, by the time he got back, I was home and stitching again. I stitched until I had to leave to watch the boychild’s Academic League meet…

He’s on the far left…this picture shows the back of their official shirts. It’s true, too…there were two questions on Mamma Mia! of all things. It was the only musical they knew, besides Cats!. Everything has exclamation marks.

I love how little I know when I go to these things. I did get pseudopod right. They are all carefully listening to the question being read…or they are constipated. Hard to tell. The guy in the white sweatshirt never picked up his buzzer. The guy in the gray sweatshirt knew lots of really weird stuff and would answer before they even finished the question. The guy in orange is a freakin’ math genius. Boychild knows current events and literature, and often argues with Genius Boy about math and science.

I stitched bird feet while I was watching. I have finished 10 bird feet…

I have 50 to go. Seriously. But my goal of finishing 3 every 2 soccer games is so completely not happening. It it were, I would have finished the first 6 at last night’s game, and as you can see, I am nowhere near done. I did not calculate her actual playing time. I get more done when she doesn’t play or when it’s dark, because I can’t photograph in the dark. There’s another game tomorrow night…yes, that’s three in a week. Usually it’s two. This week has been a little crazy. I should finish some of the birds tomorrow night, but not enough of them to meet my crazy schedule. Oh well. Technically, they should have been completely done and sewn together, with the borders done, like a week ago. Uh huh. So there we are. Now I have two male parents at soccer games who are bugging me about the birds and quilting or knitting or whatever it is I’m doing. Freaks.

I came home and cooked and then sewed some more.

At some point, my back was really killing me. I stretched a little. I danced a little (this is really good for relaxing back muscles that have been held in the same tense position for too long). I sewed some more. At some point (OK, many points), I wanted to quit. This is like a marathon. You have to psych yourself into finishing.

And I did.

At some point, it’s just easier to finish than to think about doing more tomorrow.

The back is pretty exciting. It’s kind of ironic, because tomorrow I have to pinbaste it (kneeling on tile floor for at least an hour) and then start quilting (more back pain). And quilting will probably be at least 10-15 hours. Actually, the plus with this piece is that there is very little background to quilt…it’s mostly outlining the image, which will take a while but is not as labor intensive as the background stuff is. Or it’s not as boring. Not sure which. Anyway, my plan is to have it done Saturday. HA! No really. Don’t think about the other stuff that needs to get done in that time period. And yes, I still have a binding to finish on the other one, but I am going to call the photographer. I have faith. In something.

So you’d think I’d feel all good and stuff about getting one step closer to finishing. Mr. Meditation calls it fulfillment…yeah, I remember that feeling, sort of. Far away. I just really get a sense of panic, though, that then there will be unfilled time, time that is not focused on getting a project done that has to get done. I don’t like that. Work doesn’t give me a huge sense of fulfillment. Art sort of does at the moment…not really, though. It feels empty, meaningless on most days. My brain is more at peace when I do art stuff than on the days I don’t. I think it’s a better path towards a decent life than the work path. That’s why I’ve been prepping other quilts for the next stages. I need to have stuff in the pipeline so there’s no down time, time where my brain is all wandering and trying to find a purpose and trying to solve problems and be happy. I don’t know how to be happy at the moment. I would have to be better at acceptance, and I’m not. I mean, I do accept what my life is at the moment, but I don’t like it. And the depression just makes it harder to get through the days. It drags me down. Into a hole. I keep looking for art or books or comics or anything that will pull me out, push the depression back down, carry me out. I feel like I’m missing an instruction manual for the next step, like it’s something magical that no one can explain to me. First you do this and then that and then magic happens! And you get to be happy! That’s what it feels like. And I still cry every day. When does that go away? Is that magic too?

I’m not very magical at the moment.

And that was my chair and my sweatshirt. Now she’s actually sitting on my lap. She scratched the crap out of my face last night, blood everywhere (sounds worse than it looks today…puncture wounds…lovely kitty), but today she is my best friend apparently. Old ladies unite. Sigh.

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.

Ironed My Way Out of a Hole…

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

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

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

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

I’m getting closer to done…

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

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

I finally started on the crone…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Resolving Anything…

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

Worth it for that tree alone…

And these…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She went together fairly quickly…

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

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

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

Keep Driving…

First of all, welcome to the 300 spammers who are visiting my website. It’s nice to have you here. Please make yourselves at home, but stop sending all those stupid misspelled messages that make no sense. Wow. First I typed massages. I wish they were sending massages. That would be helpful. But no…they’re sending messages. Stupid ones. It’s OK. I know how to delete.

Secondly, hello crazy time of year. I’m done with you. Now move on. I’m ready to skip to the 26th. Actually, I can handle the 25th. Everything has to be done BY then, so the day itself isn’t so bad. It’s just the cooking, and girlchild doesn’t let me do much of that. I think I’m in charge of breakfast and deviled eggs…and even that’s questionable. And I’m OK with that. I am so secure in my femininity (cough cough) that I can skip the cooking portion of my life and just be in charge of something like trash detail and kitchen cleanup. I have no issues with letting my 16-year-old daughter rule the kitchen…like forever.

With that in mind, there is this video on holiday meal etiquette:

But I like Brussels sprouts…and you watch too much porn. Yes, you.

And this has made me cry every single fucking time I’ve seen it…

which may just be about me.

Today was the finals for the soccer tournament the girlchild’s team has been in for the last few days. It was tied 0-0 at the end, went to two 5-minute overtimes, still 0-0, then penalty kicks, where her team lost…it always sucks to get that far and then lose, but it is what it is. The coach made some really shitty decisions throughout the game, and I think the girls paid for that. My girl didn’t play much…

which didn’t make sense, considering the laziness of those he did play. The day I understand this coach will probably be the day I die. We’ve dealt with a lot of coaches over the years, and his decisions confuzzle me every time. And I’m not just saying that because I think my kid is better than everyone…she has good games and bad games…but if your forwards aren’t scoring and aren’t even running, then kick their asses to the bench and toss some new blood in there and see what they can do. Or not. And lose. Unfortunately, unless you change high schools, you’re pretty much stuck with the coach you get. So the plus is that in the past, when he pulls this shit, she gets sad and cries a lot…today, she was angry, angry because his decisions hurt the team in the final, and that was just stupid. Anyway. We move on. I’m sure it’s a teachable moment for all of us.

Speaking of teachable moments, Jake doesn’t appear to be learning…

He’s been bopped by every cat in the house now, and yet he still tries to eat them. He would also like to go out and run free for a while, but we’ve told him he has to stay in the backyard, where he barks a lot. Boychild took him over to their dad’s house on Saturday so he could run around there…although he CAN escape, strangely he doesn’t if someone is home.

We’ve played games with him, he gets fed and petted…he gets to sleep on the couch…

When there’s room…he seems happy enough. He’d like it if we’d feed him more people food and take him on long walks, but there hasn’t been time for that…time has been eaten up by doctor’s appointments and soccer games and Christmas-related errands and all that stuff. It’s better than the kennel though, and that’s where he was supposed to be. He’s quite well-behaved with me in my own house…he’s only jumped up on me once, and that was when we were playing this goofy game where I lunge at him and he barrels around a bit and then throws himself on the ground again for me to lunge at him again. At his dad’s house, he uses the couches as his sanctuary in this game, but he doesn’t seem to be able to figure that out here, so it’s mostly just goofy running around. He’s a large beast…which reminds me…one of the errands for tomorrow is dog-present-shopping. I’m also going computer-accessory-shopping, since the boychild thinks he might have some solutions to everything but the graphics driver/card issue, which may be a bigger problem than I can deal with at the moment. He was floored by how many photos I have (49,000+) and how much music I have. Music rules. I take lots of photos. What can I say?

I’m holding emotions at bay at the moment, most of the time. It’s all there, lurking, let out when I see things on TV that make me sad or read things that remind me of why I’m sad or drive past something that makes me sad. OK, lots of the time I’m sad. Mostly I’m too busy to think about anything but wrapping 20 presents and paying bills and making lists and going to the store for the third time in three days. I read this book, though…The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison…

It’s about a 40-some-year-old guy working as a caregiver to a teenager who has muscular dystrophy. They both have issues to work out, and there is a road trip involved, and there is a sad sad story that is woven into the current tale, and there is some sarcasm and jokiness and some supreme horrible sadness, but it was a beautifully written book. If you read it, be sure to read the Author’s Note at the end…it will bring you to your knees and make the whole book mean something entirely different than you thought it meant. “This novel is about the imperative of getting in that van, because you have no choice but to push yourself and drive on, and keep driving in the face of life’s terrible surprises. It’s about the people and the things you gather along that rough road back to humanity.” It was a good thing to read as I’ve been trying to avoid the holiday platitudes on Facebook and on people’s blogs, making the season all the harder for those of us who feel like we’re missing something or that some things in life are just plain difficult for us and easier for others…knowing that nothing is fair and there is no fate and even karma doesn’t really play out, at least I haven’t seen that yet, though maybe I did such a heinous thing in a previous life that this is my payback. I don’t really believe in all that. So I just take deep breaths and keep driving and try to stop asking WHY…because there is no why that makes any sense…except maybe for girlchild’s explanation that the world is full of assholes.

Artmaking at this time of year is difficult until Christmas is behind me…but I managed lots of wool stitching at soccer today…these guys just need their cotton bits sewn on…

And these guys just have two cotton pieces to go on and they’re done…

minus all the embellishment of course. I have about 30 soccer games ahead of me where I can be doing that. Girlchild’s back is OK at the moment; her CT scan is scheduled for early January. Then we’ll decide about surgery. Scary stuff.

Meditation said yesterday that when feelings are uncomfortable, we have a tendency to run away from them. I’ve never (or at least as long as I can remember) been one to run from scary uncomfortable feelings. If anything, I hang out with them too much, let them have too much play with me. Meditation has given me some distance from them, but I still had issues yesterday at the gym, in the weightlifting portion of my workout, when there is no book to distract me. Audiobooks might help…I don’t know. I usually listen to music AND read…I need an audiobook with a soundtrack to occupy all parts of my brain. Or maybe not…maybe that’s me sitting with the uncomfortable, listening to it and watching it and responding to it. Maybe that’s why I’m better at the emotional bits than some, because I listen to them. I hear them talk and whine and fuss…I talk them out of some of their bitchiness. I live with some of it. I don’t know. I draw some of it. Need to do that. Draw. All these pictures in my head…they need to come out.

So I am still cutting things out…

FOREVER. OK, not really. I’m almost 10 hours into the cutting and I’m in the 600s (going backwards). That’s a little scary. I think it’s going to take more than 12 hours to cut them out…which isn’t surprising, because a lot of the pieces are really fussy and complicated.

Big pieces often take less time to cut out than small pieces. More tomorrow, hopefully. I have lots of errands and cleaning to do tomorrow. Doesn’t look like much, does it? It never does until they’re all ironed together.

Anyway. Hope your holiday preparations are going smoothly and that your family is gathering around and the weather is what you want it to be (I was barefoot in the sun at the soccer game today) and all the food is ready or will be ready and someone has wrapped all the presents and everyone is healthy and happy. Or at least as much of that as you can handle. I’ll personally be OK with my kids around me and the shopping done and wrapped and the floors clean. Anything else is gravy.