Resting in Uncertainty…

From last night at an awful hour: “My god, I feel like I’m drowning in tears. I went to bed early because I was so exhausted, and now I am wide awake and crying. WTF? The brain and the body are so disconnected they can’t work together for a common goal: mending me.” So tonight, I’m up late, because my brain won’t wind down. It really isn’t a healthy mix of behaviors. I did go to the gym tonight…left school as early as I could (tutorial) and left a recipe and ingredients for dinner, but said I would deal when I got home. Girlchild has lots of schoolwork this week…but she was starting to cook when I got home. She really is amazingly good at it, and she’s forced me to be a better cook too…using ingredients and trying recipes I wouldn’t have tried before. It’s so strange how creativity that runs in families actually manifests itself. Maybe the next generation will include a clothing designer or a creative architect…you never know.

I forced myself to enter a show this morning; then cried all the way to school and barely got it under control crossing the parking lot. I wanted to make sure I did something art-related after last night. It was a good thing to enter. I don’t remember what made me cry…I often don’t think it’s anything logical. A piece of music, some lyrics, a reminder of something somewhere. Whatever. Logic is not in play at the moment. It’s all about emotion.

Jake keeps going to the door, expecting to be taken back to his house…looking for his daddy. Poor guy. He’s restless. He has been behaving though…no jumping up or biting. Good boy.

My school day was ruled by technology management…iPods with dying batteries, bad cords, learning iMovie on the iPod and phone and how to move files from there to here, setting up my new school computer, trying to set up my new tablet for school…you end up having multiple Google accounts, multiple YouTube accounts, just to manage school and home lives separately. It gets confusing and overwhelming. The new Mac plugs suck, by the way…the part that attaches to the laptop itself is a pain in the ass to use. When is everything going wireless? My life would be so much easier if we could charge everything wirelessly…I spend so much time plugging things in and managing plugs and charging stuff. In other Apple news, one of their commercials made me cry tonight. Then again, I cry at the drop of a hat. No, it didn’t have any jewelry in it. Those ads just annoy me…same with the car ads and the shaver ads. Christmas this year is a little rough. I need to shop for stuff, but have no free time away from kids, due to the ex being gone and multiple events that a parent should attend. No one to help at all. I think it will be a different kind of Christmas this year…I think I will just enlist the kids’ help…I know they realize I am struggling. As the girlchild told me tonight, I’m a downer. I try. They know. They are trying to keep me up. It makes me cry just to type that. Whoops. I read this morning about why some people have repeating depressive episodes and some don’t…something to do with the brain and how it works. Does it take into account the same damn shit happening to a person? Wisdom comes from experience. I will be a very wise old woman…or a just plain old crazy one.

I spent all day at school repeating “seriousness will occur.” Sometimes I wonder what the people in charge are thinking when they say things like that…seriously. We aren’t allowed to show any movies or do any celebrating of anything this week, let alone finishing the damn performance tasks, or in my case, their Project Fred is due tomorrow. No food, no parties, nothing but serious work. We’re all a little loopy, especially the teachers. There is apparently video of me dancing on one of the iPods. Hey. Whatever gets me through at the moment. But dammit, seriousness will occur. (I don’t know when, and if it does, you can’t blame it on me…I will be the goofy one with the Santa hat)

The kids found a new timesuck: Quiz Up. This app will suck up all available time if you let it. That’s the UP in the app name. I’m beating college students, though. I feel really really good about that (no I don’t). I’m really good at walking away from these types of time sucks. The boychild is reasonably good, unless it’s role-playing games (although if he has actual schoolwork, he does prioritize well…just don’t ask about college apps, because I might scream). The girlchild? She sucks at it. Seriously. These things take her down. Brain chemistry. I guess mine is ruled by the artistic bent…hers by procrastination and distraction. I wonder how much of that she will grow out of and how much she will fight for the rest of her life.

So, after yesterday…well, I always learn stuff about me after really bad days (weeks, months)…I learned that I need to make art. Every. Fucking. Day. So I did lots of it tonight to make up for the lame crap of yesterday…I cut stuff out…

mostly flesh and thorns tonight…lots of big fleshy leg pieces…

There’s all the scraps. The pile grows.

Girlchild left this lying around…

Apparently if they send all these postcards to Macy’s, they’ll donate money to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She did one card about her AP Bio grade and another about snow in San Diego for Christmas. Good luck with that, child.

I also quilted tonight…because the girlchild was in one room doing homework and I didn’t want to disturb her by watching TV and cutting stuff out, so I did the other art quilt task that is hanging over my head…

Although I did have a thought about whether it was better to have this piece be finished in January 2014 rather than December 2013…for one thing, I could show it longer…but then I would have fewer quilts finished in 2013…which wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. Who’s looking at that as a matter of my success? Well, except for me, and I can just get over it. I’ve finished 8 quilts in 2013, although two were small and none have been finished since September. It’s OK. I rarely finish anything between September and December.

The cats are all adjusting to Jake’s presence, which means Babygirl is perched up higher than normal…it’s hard to move the mouse when she sits there.

I asked her to deal with the computer backup issue, and she just stared at me.

Girlchild came to school yesterday so we could get to her soccer game. I left her alone in my classroom for 15 minutes and she started writing song lyrics on the board.

I left it up to entertain my students this morning.

I finished this book today…Blackout by Connie Willis…

It’s one of two books that I’m reading for a book club…the second one is on its way via the library system. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first, like for the first two thirds of the book. It was mostly WWII historical stuff, although it’s about time travel, but then it got more interesting when the system stopped working right. I’m not a history fan usually, and even less so of wars, but this is less about the war and more about people’s reactions to what was going on in England during WWII seen through the eyes of people from the future. The second book, All Clear, is really a continuation of the story, so we decided in the book club to read both for the months of December and January.

Meditation…it was about change…about being thrown off course and maintaining one’s position, resting in uncertainty…I think that’s what I’ve been doing for 6 months now. It doesn’t feel good, but that’s not because of the change itself…it’s because of how the change happened, which sort of created a reaction in me…this sadness, grief, depression now I think…I think it has moved into that, because I can’t shake it. I mean, I do shake, like a dog, and bits and pieces fly off, and then I get angry and pull pieces off and throw them far away from me, but there are so many clumps that are clinging to me and just hanging on and I can’t shed them. I was so much better at this post-divorce. My anger at the situation was so much stronger and I was so much stronger, and I just jumped back up and into living and forcing myself to be something. Now I just don’t have the energy or the drive for that. I don’t want to do some things over again. This is why the girlchild labeled me a downer. And my counselor says I purposely do some things to push people away, and I say, but those people that are pushed? I don’t want to deal with them anyway. I’m not going to stop being an artist to please the majority of people out there. I’m not going to start wearing makeup or high heels and cute little dresses just because people expect women to do that. I’m not going to start being like the majority of women out there just because that’s what women do. I just don’t care enough to do that. If that’s what your expectation of me is? Then fuck you. I want to make more art. I want to get into more shows. I think I might want to write a book or seven. I want to be at peace. I want to be happy. None of these will be under the Christmas tree this year. This year is all about survival…of the fittest? I’m not sure I am the fittest. I don’t seem to be. I seem to be pretty messed up. That said, I am pretty damn strong. Strong enough to keep getting up, to keep creating, to keep trying to make it better.

Resting in uncertainty…it’s an uncomfortable place.

In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time

Shakespeare? Why not. I’m reading a book about World War II and time travel…Shakespeare was quoted. I don’t know yet if I like the book…but I liked the phrase. It’s a good description of trying to look back and figure out what happened in your life…and of what the brain does in depression. Of where you are. Of how hard it is to get out.

I worked on the drawing again tonight…

It’s not done and now it needs another page below it. I don’t know what it means. It’s about getting old…the body aging. It’s about depression. It’s about being in the dark backward. That would be a good name for a quilt: The Dark Backward. Missy’s in it. Lots of my animals show up in my quilts. They have wings when they die. I guess that symbolism is obvious. This one needs Christmas lights too, but first I have to figure out the sides. You can’t see in this picture, but the paper is sideways and there’s a lot of space on each side. I think I was originally going to have her sitting with her elbows on her knees, but now she’s not. I don’t know what’s going on now. I just know I need to draw down more. Then maybe I can figure out the sides. Dream about it. It’ll come.

I also spent some time going through two of the smaller sketchbooks, marking drawings for smaller quilts. I may go copy some of those this week, although…deep breaths about this week. Not worrying about what hasn’t happened, but planning would help, and I’m not doing a good job of holding my head together well enough to do that. The big extended family Christmas party was today…not fun. It’s OK. I only cried twice…so I managed control best I could…until I meditated, and then it all fell out. I cried through the whole thing. He wants me to reflect on my pattern of breath, which is freakin’ impossible when you’re sobbing, because your breathing is so completely fucked. Yeah. So.

I’ve completed 100 days of meditation. I think it’s helping. I don’t know if it’s that which gives me some distance, or if it’s the depression dampening all emotions except sad. I’m less reactive. But I’m going to say (and hope) it’s the meditation.

I have lots of good family photos from today. Somehow I managed that. I didn’t socialize much. I’ve never been good at that, even with my own relatives, but today I was fragile and couldn’t handle much of anything. Oh well. Moving on. Family photos will follow when I have time to go through them all.

Girlchild drove up and back, so I sewed some more…

Damn crazy birds will never be done. I think they’re almost all sewn down. I have 5 soccer games to go to in the next week; that’s a lot of potential sewing time. I also heard for the first time my daughter’s mom voice, as her cousin was kicking the back of her seat and she chastised him. That was amusing.

I know what my counselor will ask me about the party: “Did you have fun?” Not really. I enjoyed some moments, like the boychild analyzing pie cutting and giving me the physics equation for whether his cousin could be thrown down the cliff by a gust of wind. But I rarely have fun there. In 46 years, I think I’ve missed 3 of them: one year I was in the UK, one year I was pregnant with the boychild and really sick (he was born a week after Christmas, two weeks early…I spent most of the day asleep on the couch), and the one year two months after my husband and I separated…I just couldn’t handle it. I sent the kids with their grandparents. I was actually sick too, so I had a good excuse…really sick. But I also didn’t want to go. It’s the sense of failure, I fucked up, I couldn’t do it right. I have that now too. But then the smart part of the brain kicks in and reminds me of my kids and how amazing they are and my art and even sometimes my students, and I think I haven’t fucked up totally. I think that’s the hardest part of this time of year, being around all these couples and families and thinking you did it wrong, that you didn’t mean to do it wrong, but that’s how it turned out, and you really don’t know how to do it right and you’re not sure you ever will.

So I will just get through the holidays, the dark backward. I will just get through.

The sky’s been amazing lately…way more amazing than this photo…I seem to be pretty good at appreciating the sky. It’s hard not to look up at a beautiful sky and feel some sense of relief.

It Is Still So

The great weepy trifecta: dead dog, depression, and PMS…oh wait, it’s a quadfecta (is that even a word? yes, apparently it is, but…I do not think it means what you think it means)…I forgot the stupid holiday season. Just shoot me now. I wanted to get a lot done tonight, but was stymied by pumpkin pie, whipped cream, a bad parking situation, and the girlchild locking her keys in her car…across town…by the time I got home around 7, I was completely braindead and so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I managed to rally (two cups of tea later) and exercise and meditate and more importantly? I found, designed, and printed my Owl Lover 2014 calendar…if you go here, you can design your own. It’s a nice size for hanging by the computer if you’re a super visual person like me who needs to see the days laid out while I’m lesson planning or art planning or life planning. Plus owls. Arty owls. And you get to pick the 12 you like best. I’m currently looking at December for 2013, chosen in December of 2012, and wondering what the fuck I was thinking, but maybe that’s a learning experience. Anyway. Go make your own. Make one for everyone in the family. Laminate it. Hang it from your rearview mirror. Leave one in a public bathroom. Why not?

I am trying very hard to keep my head on straight. The counselor and I made a plan. Actually, she asked me how I keep my head together and I told her, and she sagely nodded her head and said I was doing all the right things.

OK then. I would like to spend more time hiking and exercising in the next week. I would like to read some more. I would like to be better organized (although holy god, my phone keeps me in check and tells me exactly what I’ve forgotten, usually 5 minutes after I should have remembered it, which is why my computer is still at school even though I need it at home tomorrow…whoops). But seriously, without the calendar, I’d be completely disorganized, instead of just minorly so…which is what I am now. I’d like the house to be cleaner (nice use of passive voice, Kathryn, like someone is gonna clean it for you). Girlchild did help tonight with tree ornaments, but I think we are still only half done. Maybe that’s all it needs to be. I would like more sleep. That’s harder. I don’t seem to be able to rock that well.

I want to finish some drawings and some quilts and get into some shows. I want to mow the lawn. I want to sweep up the leaves. I want to take the cat to the vet to deal with her respiratory goo (I don’t really want to do that…but I need to). I want to clean the hallway carpet so it smells less like Babygirl’s experiments in traveling litterboxing and more like a hallway carpet. Or even a forest floor covered with leaves and fungi. That would be preferable. I want all my questions answered. I want a better camera. I want a road trip to somewhere I’ve never been. I want someone to help me figure out my computer backup system because the disk is full and I don’t know what to do now.

Meditation talks about looking at how we label other people as angry, happy, sad, mean, and how that is squeezing them into the box of our mental projection, instead of experiencing them as they are in the moment. I feel squeezed. Unsqueeze me. Let me the fuck out. Give me some space to…be. The counselor asked me if I remembered how I felt last holiday season…I told her I often reread blog posts from months in the past to figure out what issues I was having and to see if they repeat and to motivate myself to do better, do more (art mostly)…and that I had recently read December 2012 and realized I was happy. Content even. I was enjoying things…not everything…and certainly some things were irritating and stressful, but I didn’t even recognize the person writing. Because I’m not that person anymore and I never can be her again. I can just be like her, similar to her, maybe happy like her, but never her. I will always be her plus this cracked damage glued together and rebuilt to be happy in a different way. Hopefully a trusting way, but that seems hard to see at the moment. Right now it is sad and buried and cracked and damage. It is less so than a month ago, but it is still so.

No pictures tonight. I did no art. I was not productive. I just got through it. Still mourning a dog. Still hoping for better. Sleep calls. I listen and hope it lasts through the night this time.

Apparently Balanced

My brain is kind of drained at the moment. All the activities of the day have sucked out any relevant thoughts for now. I had plenty of them before. I’m not sure where they went. Maybe they got bored and wandered off.

It was a really busy day. I have duty before and after school for two weeks, which tends to suck up a lot of time and energy (morning duty at the tables? Makes me want to shoot myself. It’s early, I’m not really awake, it was bloody freezing this morning, and it’s all about picking up trash and their high energy vs my incredibly low energy at that hour and temperature…they win). We had a meeting about students, then I had tutorial after school, which is like herding peeing puppies who are constantly yapping and snapping at each other. I did manage to get work out of them today, though. Miraculous. It restores my faith every time they do that…I guess that’s why I can teach, because I constantly believe they can do it if I just work hard enough to persuade them to do it…and many of them DO. Freaky. We have meetings galore in the next two weeks to deal with kids and grades etc…which sucks up a lot of time too.

After school, I booked it to the girlchild’s soccer game. I’m actually glad I was only there for the last 27 minutes, because I almost froze in that short period of time, even though I remembered boots, two sweatshirts, and gloves (two sweatshirts were not enough). Plus I was trying to sew and had to take the gloves off. Mistake.

Home to make dinner…oh no, no you don’t…back to the ex’s house to retrieve Biology book and practice shorts while girlchild tries to get her head (and nauseous stomach) ready for tons of homework. She literally has tons of homework. Realized today that with ex gone for two weeks, I will have to provide dinner EVERY NIGHT. What the fuck? Shit. Not ready for that. Can barely manage what I’m doing now. Would let the girlchild cook, but she is buried in schoolwork. Need Meals on Wheels for busy working mom.

Made dinner, had argument (discussion? is it ever a discussion with two teenagers or is it always an argument?) about sexist portrayals in fiction. Read some examples. Confirmed sexism. Don’t know if I care…the books are good so far. Did grades for a while, then onto the bike for nightly exercise, followed by meditation aka crying and breathing. At the same time. A feat unknown to man? Well sure, but woman is pretty damn good at it. Then finally…49 minutes of cutting out pieces…

I’m only 3 1/2 hours in. I’m not getting much time at night at the moment. Sucks. Not home enough. Anyway, I’m doing it. The green? Lungs. Yup. Aren’t your lungs green with pink flowers? I’m sure mine are. There are some bitchy pieces to cut out in that bin. If I’m tired, I just cut out the easy pieces and leave the hard ones for when I’m more awake. I think I’m hoping cutting fairies will come by and do those. I guess that’s unlikely.

Busy. Tired. Telling the brain to fuck off. Half of my brain says one thing, thinking logically, making plans and decisions, seeing the Big Picture. The other half is a fucked-up mess and is just flailing around in emotional crap so deep it can’t get out. It wants to draw. I almost let it tonight, but then I saw how late it was. Need to sleep. Maybe I will have time to draw tomorrow night…I’ll be minus the tutorial, the soccer game, and the grading…or will I? Huh. But I will add the gym. Another time sucker, but definitely a good cause. Trying to just sit in the emotional half of the brain and let it do what it needs to do. Either I’ll understand it more or the emotions will be less of an issue. Or something. Meditation helps. Even when I sit there thinking about 1-2 1/2 hours spent every night meditating and exercising, I wonder if that’s sustainable…it has to be. If it keeps me sane, keeps me moving, keeps me calmer, it’s worth it. So just do it. My priorities have changed. More art, less school. Less work at home. More exercise. Meditate. Fewer people (that might not be a good thing). Apparently cry…that’s a daily thing. I could do without that one. Wonder if I ever will.

This morning, as I was updating some of the website, I was feeling all cranky about only getting into 7 exhibits in 2013, but then I realized that it was 8 exhibits, and I already have pieces in 4 shows in 2014 and 2014 hasn’t even started yet. So shut up, stupid brain. You’re doing fine. Stop being such a mope about stuff. Make the work. The shows will come. And if they don’t? You will still make the work. That’s the logical half talking to the emotional half. They don’t really get along at the moment. The logic is frustrated with the emotion, and the emotion thinks the logic doesn’t listen…because hey, most of the time it doesn’t.

Here’s a video Luana Rubin of eQuilter did of the SAQA exhibits at IQF Houston, including People and Portraits…

You can decide if that quilt is truly whimsical, or just plain old disturbing. Funny that it’s about being Fully Medicated, but I keep trying to get away from meds, and I keep having to take more. I should do one called Over Medicated, except I’m not. I have this Tshirt that says USDA Organic…which is ironic, because I’m not organic…I’m full of meds that keep my systems apparently balanced because my body doesn’t know how to, even though for half the ailments I have, I was told if I lost the weight, they would all go back to normal. Fucking liars. Well, the meds are supposed to keep everything balanced, but I don’t think I’m there yet…I’m freezing again. Under Medicated also might be fun to draw.

Apparently balanced: despite all the mindfucks that are going on at the moment, I seem to have found a balance between art and work that is somewhat functional: basically do very little grading at home. Do art every night. If there’s a question about how to use my time? Art wins. That’s sustainable. I hope.

That Road Is Burnt Out…

Remember those mornings, few and far between since becoming a parent, the ones you used to covet…dozing in the morning? Not awake yet, but you don’t have to be awake either, half dreaming. Those are my enemy now…that’s when my brain dreams stuff I don’t want to dream, stuff I can normally push to the back of my brain and ignore, because honestly why waste time on stories like that, trying to answer the whys…there’s no fucking point now in knowing the whys. Even my counselor said it would be helpful for me, though, since it makes it even more difficult to traverse my own healing with none of the questions answered. But if you realize, again, that there is only one person you have to deal with for the rest of your life, maybe what other people think doesn’t matter…of course, that’s not true. Which sucks. So the morning. It kicked my ass. But I got up anyway. The cable guy was coming to fix something. I had to be up and showered. Probably a damn good thing, because I’m not sure what I would’ve done if he hadn’t been coming.

I slept badly. Which also sucks. Damn cats. Damn brain, mopey piece of shit. Damn life…damn job. OK, but my students decided Friday was National Hug Day (it wasn’t) and about 30 of them hugged me. I think it was a conspiracy. My counselor was trying to talk me out of a label someone else gave me, of being negative, and she finished by telling me those kids wouldn’t be hugging me if I were at core a negative thinker…kids don’t like that. She’s right…it wasn’t me. I may be cynical, but I’m not inherently negative. Depressed? Damn straight. That’s fixable. I hope.

We’re still working on my stress reaction. I do all the right things (exercise, meditation, get outside, see people, write about it, try and manage whatever the fuck is causing it)…I’m missing the stress relief that comes from being in a good relationship, but the goal is to be self-sufficient, to cope with high stress without being reliant on someone else for how you feel. I don’t trust anyone else right now anyway and probably won’t for a while, so I should probably become even more independent than I already am? Except I was told I was too independent. I don’t know where to draw the line…independent as fuck on certain things, vulnerable and willing to get help on others? Confusing. Wish I could just go back to sleep…quiet sleep, no stupid dreams that wake me up sad and confused.

Meditation talks about the intellectual vs the emotional…the intellectual tries to fix what’s causing the emotion, ties it down and tries to get a confession out of it. In meditation, I am just supposed to rest in the emotion. I do. I do that all the time with the sad. I sit right there in the sticky marshmallow sad fluff and let it try to suffocate me. I just cry until the crying stops and the sad is still there, it comes in waves, sometimes so big they almost drown you, but always like a puddle of sad that you’re standing in, every fucking day, rarely do I get out of the puddle. Sticky mud grabbing my feet and keeping me cold. That’s sad. That’s depression. I can hold it off, stand in a mostly dry spot, for a few hours if I’m drawing or sewing…actually, that can be problematic. I sewed today and for the first hour, cried. Then I got the alpha waves. I get there faster at the gym with a good book. The physical drain helps more than the art drain. I need a treadmill with a sewing machine…

I did Quilting Impossible today: dark navy blue thread on dark navy blue background, right eyelid still twitching off and on, bad blinding light coming and going from cloudy day to sun, crying intermittently, blocking all necessary vision. Really stupid. But eventually it got me out of the stupid place. Remember how I said Sunday was going to be mean to me, fight me about getting art done? That’s why I quilted this morning…

for an hour and a half…

probably got a third of the way through the background quilting.

That bit has a lot of hair on it, fluff maybe too, which is why one of these is always on my machine…

A roll of packing tape for picking up hairs before I quilt over them, best I can. I remember going to the mountains once and forgetting that. Big mistake. Had to pick out all those hairs by hand. Pain in the ass. So the number-one use for packing tape in my house is not taping up packages…just so you know. And mostly at the moment, it’s because of this beast…

Who believes tea was put on the Earth for her consumption…

And gets mad at me if I do not allow her to sit where she likes (on the quilt that I’m currently quilting, in case you were wondering). Yup.

I kicked her off three times. She’s a stubborn beast. I bet you can imagine what she’s saying to me right now. Yes, she knows all those swear words.

So I thought I had beat Sunday, that the rest of it would be a piece of cake, because I had planned my day and managed to get myself up and out of bed and deal and actually do art-related stuff. Yeah. Stupid.

First of all, the toaster just died. I’m sure this was God telling me how he disapproves of me. If you actually believe that, please don’t tell me about it. I’m sure it was just its time to go. Deep breaths, though, because that’s more money going out in a month when it seems like I am bleeding cash. No, we cannot survive December without a toaster. Lame, eh? The electric teapot or the fridge will be next. I hope not. So I had to go out on another errand and find a new toaster. Girlchild was doing research at one of the local universities, SDSU, which if you live out here and know where I live, is west of me on the freeway. She had permission to drive, her dad had given her a map, and she was meeting people there. She was supposed to be home at 5. At 5:30, now dark, I called her dad because her phone wasn’t picking up…she’s notoriously bad about charging it. We started trying to call friends, but didn’t have the numbers for the people who were supposed to be with her (yes, we actually had to call one of her soccer coaches to get one number). Time kept going on and we were trying to decide what to do, since no one knew where she was, and she finally called, an hour late…freaking out…crying…from a Barnes and Noble in Mira Mesa (25 minutes north of here…not west…not even on the right freeway) because she had recognized it from my monthly stitching meeting. She borrowed a stranger’s phone and I told her how to get home (yes, I offered to drive up there and she said no). She walked in the door and into my arms sobbing 25 minutes later. Hard to be mad…but easy to be scared, both her and me (and her dad). So we’re revising some rules…but definitely making sure the phone charger is in the damn car is one thing. Scariest part is knowing that we will send her off to college in a year and a half and she will have to negotiate this stuff on her own. Make good friends, kid…meanwhile, we’re also having her memorize the freeway maps of San Diego County…she said the sign for Riverside is what scared her. Yup. So I grew at least 400 more white hairs tonight and my stomach is still a mess and now I’m grinding my teeth (yo, counselor…where do I put this into the stress scale?), but she’s here and safe and hopefully appropriately freaked herself out so she will pay better attention next time to phone and directions. Some things we all need to learn the hard way.

I keep telling myself that. Some things you have to learn the hard way, and apparently over and over again.

So it was a good thing that I had held true to my promise to get the damn tree…

It’s a little frazzled at the bottom, but it won’t be for long…

I started putting lights on it and it smells up the whole house in a good way.

I sat and cut out crazy-ass pieces for the Silver quilt…yes, that is the bottom of a bird wing…owl, I think. Call me crazy. You won’t be the first. Sad, scared, frustrated. It was a day. It tired me out. I’m taking it to bed. Hopefully the early wakeup call for work will scare off all the stupid dreams that betray my heart. Give it up, babe. That ain’t the way to happiness. That road is burnt out and a wasteland. There’s nothing there that will make you happy. Walk on. Once you get through all the sharp pointy rocks and the charcoal, there will be new growth. Next year when you’re putting the lights up, you’ll feel differently. You’ll be looking forward to the boychild coming home from college. It will be different. You will be different. All you have to do this year is get through it the best you can.

Damn, I Wish That Were True…

I managed to go to bed at an almost reasonable hour last night, after a few nights of 1:30-2 AM bedtimes (which really doesn’t work when you have to be up at 6:30)…but then spent the next hour NOT sleeping, but crying instead. I tried meditative breathing…it must have eventually worked (or pure exhaustion did…who knows), but I don’t even really know what set me off…some sense of futility. All’s not right with the world. No real sense of purpose to the days. That plodding feeling. Get through this day? Then there’s another. And another. And another. And they are all largely the same. Getting through. Getting by. Making stuff, but none of it feels that good to make…I can’t iron fabrics for 18 hours a day. And the ironing never made me feel GOOD…it was at the end of the ironing, when you would see what you achieved and THAT would feel good. That only happens once a quilt. It’s not enough.

I don’t know how to BE…be happy with what I have and not want more. I want more but I don’t see it ever happening. I don’t even know what I want more of. I don’t hold out much hope for more. This might be it. It seems a very empty life. There are too many Have-To’s and not enough Want-To’s…mostly because I don’t have many wants any more. And then my brain kicks in and tells me I really should be cleaning house. Fuck you, Brain. If I wanted to clean house, I would. When I am already unhappy, why make me do something that makes me more unhappy?

I say that, but there were two floors today that needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. That’s how my cleaning works. It’s not obsessive. It happens in small spurts…out of necessity.

Today. Back to school. I’m thinking I need to make a voodoo doll. I got to a point with this one school issue where if I didn’t meditate, I would have to kill small furry things (not really, but that’s how it feels). The anger, the work stress, the unhappy…I just needed to focus and get it out of my system, so I used the meditation for that, and again, it asked the one question that upset me so much yesterday, and today I tried to change the answer…my brain tossed in another answer, a perfectly reasonable answer…honestly a BETTER answer, because yesterday’s answer was just plain stupid. And yeah. Crying again, because my brain and I don’t agree.

Who am I if I am not my brain?

Healing is such a fucking slow process. I can’t hurry it. I just have to go with it, move what I can, change what I can, do the things that make the day more bearable.

So I ironed…

I did not make the voodoo doll (or five)…yet. Give me time. Those are heart pieces and arteries. I managed to do those and some fire and a spider and web and a uterus and two tattoos and three thunderbolts…I stopped right before the lungs because I realized that even though I was not in the least bit tired (strange that), it was getting late. That was the problem last night…I went to bed and I wasn’t tired yet. I mean, I was sort of tired, but not tired enough to just fall asleep and not have to work at it. So my brain got itself tied in knots and took me underwater into the murk of melancholia. Fucking stupid brain.

I need more exercise I think. Traveling messed with my exercise plan.

So the stuff in color is what I got done…it’s not much, actually…

An eyeball.

It’s kind of pitiful. Oh well. I’m at 12 hours now…at least one more to go, maybe more.

Part of the evening got tied up with work prep and cooking and picking the girlchild up from soccer…

Pretty skies, every year. I stopped to appreciate the sky. Tomorrow, hopefully I will appreciate the sky from home, because girlchild is supposed to finally get her license (I will believe it when I see it). She’s been in a mood lately…stress from soccer and life and everything…so she snaps at me for just about anything, and I try not to react…because when I react now, it’s usually with tears, and that upsets her. Then again, she needs to learn not to always snap. She needs to see that her mood causes other people pain. Or maybe I am just super sensitive. I am.

One part of the meditation question that makes me cry is the reminder that her brother will be gone in less than a year to college, and she follows the year after. And then there is just me. And this little psycho…

Yup. There she is, on the ironing board. Pulled her off another 4 times tonight.

Then she landed on my lap (three times tonight, once during meditation, claws kneading my thighs the entire time, try concentrating with that going on…I have a mind of steel, really).

And finally she tried the back end approach to the ironing board while I was working…she eventually ended up on the back of the chair with front legs on the purple fabric until I jiggled the board a few too many times and she gave up.

Mr. Meditation wants me to appreciate things, be grateful. I’m grateful to my ex for putting up my Xmas lights, even though we have been divorced for a million years now. He knows it scares the crap out of me, so he just does it. Thanks to my coworker who sent me a tiny, live Christmas tree for my classroom…it even has sparkles. Thanks to the kids who remembered their homework from before break and brought it today…and to those who didn’t and still showed up to detention to serve their time. I appreciated the sky this evening. Thanks to climate change and pollution for that. Oops. I didn’t mean that to be negative…but sometimes the ugly is indeed beautiful. Thanks to the kids for continuing to watch stupid TV series with their mom every night they’re here, connecting with me on some lame level that centers me at night and makes it easier to get through the rest of the day. Thanks to meditation for helping me be calmer about the stupid shit that swirls around me both externally and internally. Thanks to the two girls I had as students a million years ago who still remember my name, even though I’ve forgotten theirs (sigh).

And thanks to the part of my brain that pushes past all the sad and yuck and depression and makes up drawings and colors them in and finds the fabrics. I know it was some sort of genetic mutation that caused that part of my brain to exist…most don’t have that talent…and it was sheer stubbornness and willpower that made it as strong as it is today…and that, people, was all me. That’s mine. May tonight be full of sleep and empty of tears…for enough tears have fallen for today…hell, for this year. I don’t have any left to give.

Damn, I wish that were true.

Ironing the Crone

I originally named this post “I Just Want to Sit on Your Ironing Board, Bitch: Stories of a Petulant Cat,” but it seemed like a really long title and I didn’t have a photo that went with it. Just know that a certain cranky old-lady kitty had to be forcefully (claws in the cover) removed from the ironing board about 7 times today. She’s a stubborn bitch. I don’t like cat hair on my ironing board…plus she tends to knock fabrics down onto the floor…

She doesn’t like my telling her what to do.

When I’m not actually ironing, I move the board out of the center of the room…but she still jumps from the back of the office chair to the board (which often ends in the board hitting the floor, because it’s not very stable). You can see all the fabrics I’ve used so far piled up on the right side, some more in the middle. I leave the drawing up where I can see it, so I know what I’m ironing. I’ve had to draw about 10 pieces that I apparently missed before. Whoops…some were double numbers, but some I just plain old missed completely. They weren’t even numbered.

So I have 11 hours into the ironing at this point. I managed three hours today…mostly I got the flesh part of the Crone done…

I used almost all of the lightest flesh color…there is very little left of it…

just little tiny bits in between the other pieces. I still have about 40 or 50 pieces in the Crone that I haven’t done…the heart, lungs, bits and pieces that aren’t flesh or hair, because I finished all of those. So I’m through piece 1122, but I haven’t done all of them. You can see some of them below…

And now I have a bunch more to cut out…which is what I’ll probably be doing a lot of this month.

I managed to finally get my head out of the emotional mud today, at least once I picked the kids up. The morning was a mess, but when I started ironing, I was able to distract the mopey part of my brain with X-Files and a complicated part of the drawing…it really does require a bunch of concentration to try to figure out what color each piece is supposed to be. Sometimes I write notes on the pattern, like what number in the color range a piece is (1-6 on this one), in case I forget. I like to iron an entire body in one go, so I don’t forget where I was…so I have to figure good places to stop and start. So it took three hours today JUST to pick out and iron all the Crone flesh pieces…she’s about 400 pieces, so that’s reasonable. I’ll get the lungs, heart, etc. done tomorrow hopefully…it’s almost done. I have to do an owl and a cat (like you do) and some thorny bits…maybe another 2 hours? Hard to say.

Unfortunately, I also have to go back to school tomorrow. I’m mostly caught up on grading, but the next three weeks will be challenging. I’m going to try to be really efficient so I don’t have a ton of stuff to deal with over break…knock on wood. We’ll see how that goes. I always make plans and get screwed up by real life.

Meditation has moved into a new series, focusing on the mind (like they don’t ALL focus on the mind?)…

Mr. Meditation changed his clothes for this series…there isn’t a video every day…it’s usually every 5th day before the actual meditation. But he wore the same gray sweater for the last 40 days, which was the Discovery Series, and now we have a blue shirt for the Mind Series (another 40 days). I thought maybe you’d like to have a picture to go with my descriptions of what he tells me. No, his name isn’t really Mr. Meditation…I don’t remember what it is. It doesn’t really matter. Mostly I just listen to myself breathe and sometimes he tries to talk me through some process of reflection or being in the moment with my feelings or letting my brain go do what it wants (usually a mistake at this stage of my life).

I was feeling actually fairly settled when I started meditation tonight. I had spent those three hours ironing, although I made dinner and hung out with the kids in the middle of it…I even drew a little. So I’d done everything I could to help my brain settle a bit, but then he starts talking about training the mind to appreciate and reflect (I do OK with that…the reflection at least. I’m working on the appreciation)…and he asked one simple question and I started crying. Not just a little trickle of tiny tears, but a full-on waterfall. Damn brain. I know why. And it’s interesting, because we’re back to the thinking vs the feeling, and I am very good at allowing my brain to have the feelings and work through them. Sometimes my thinking brain gets angry about WHY I’m feeling, why I haven’t been able to get OVER it, and why I can’t just ignore stupid anniversaries that aren’t anniversaries any more, but I think I just have to accept that part right now. And it sounds like Mr. Meditation will be making me work on that for the next 40 days.

Two of my pieces will be at the SOKA University Art Gallery in Aliso Viejo (Southern Orange County, California) from January 13-May 8, 2014, as part of a California Fibers exhibit. I will unfortunately miss the opening; it’s on Thursday, January 23, I think (that’s a school night…not driving that far), but I will probably go up at some point to see the exhibit. It will be a good variety of fiber work from this group. It was juried by Kevin Wallace, director of the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, California. That’s good news, getting work into shows. I will keep working on that.

Distractions

Have you noticed that I haven’t been posting about emotions and grief and all that crap? I preloaded two benign posts (I put all the pictures in before we left Tuesday) so I could write two posts up in the mountains without having to think too hard. I figured I would have issues up there, and I did. The emotional stuff…it’s heavier now with the holidays. I was so relieved, even happy last year at this time about an issue that I thought was finally solved, that I could finally feel comfortable about the holidays and how we dealt with them, and I guess this year is proof that I knew nothing. That nothing is permanent or works out…and yes, I know that’s negative thinking, but the holidays sort of bring that out, you know? You have expectations, and this year, I had none…and I got that. Nothing. I got nothing that I really wanted, because who the hell knows what I want? I’m just moving through the days, doing the stuff people expect me to do, but not happy about any of it. Living in the moment? Really just trying not to think at all. That’s one issue I have with this concept of living in the moment…if you don’t look forward at all, you can’t change what’s happening. If you don’t look back, you can’t change where you are. In the actual moment, I don’t do anything but live THAT moment. And that doesn’t change anything for me. I need change. I need reflection.

We go to Lake Arrowhead every year for Thanksgiving. This year was no different.

We left Tuesday. The plus is that the girlchild wanted to drive and she’s fairly competent, so I sewed birds until we hit the mountain…

Calli slept in the back seat with the boychild…

She’s a very good car dog…

As long as you don’t mind her sleeping on you. She did have an extended back seat…we put the ice chest behind the seat and covered it with towels so she COULD sleep that way, but it’s more fun to be ON someone.

Traffic wasn’t bad. The weather was nice.

And I cried on and off. Music set me off. Plus the holiday itself. And stupid memories. Hard to shut those off. Just stitching, my brain has too much time to wander off into sentimental crap that won’t help it. It does it anyway.

I don’t feel good enough. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t the right thing. I know that’s not about me, but it doesn’t make it hurt less or feel better. It really just feels like shit. I wasn’t worth working for…and that’s happened twice now. Please don’t say “you’re better off…” because that just ignores the pain I’m in right now. It may be true…I certainly got there in my head post-divorce and still believe it, but it doesn’t make any of it feel any better while you’re living it. All those things we say and write…they are so meaningless, and sometimes downright cruel. Just say “I’m sorry.” That’s all you have to say. You can’t fix it, so don’t even try. There really isn’t anything you can say that will make it better. You can show me some lame comic off of Reddit or a stupid Vine video of BatDad…that might help…once.

On Tuesday night, the kids and I went to see Catching Fire…

It was good, although I almost ended up in the boychild’s lap during the baboon scene. He is very tolerant. I wrote this down during the movie, a quote from President Snow’s daughter: “Some day I want to love someone that much.” Snow answers, “And so you shall.” Even the movies conspire against me. I had a conversation with the boychild…something along the lines of, “you’ve watched your mom cry for 5+ months now…keep that in mind as you are dealing with women or anyone else in the future…don’t run away…make sure you communicate and be responsible for your actions…don’t you dare do something like this to someone else. It’s not OK.” He says he knows. In the moment? Who knows what he will do or think or feel. He is very kind to me, though. Then again, I’m mom.

This was Tuesday night’s sky. It helped, briefly. Nature helps. Beauty helps. Briefly.

I felt bad about writing about depression and grief on Thanksgiving, so I just didn’t write. I mean, I wrote here, but I didn’t post any of it. I was there with my family and friends and I should have been thankful for food and time off and people who love me, but I’m not. I’m in that mind space where I’m just surviving…I’m trying to tell that whiny voice in my head to shut up. I’m not reading blogs, because I can’t handle other peoples’ happy or thankful at the moment. I’m staying off Facebook…same deal. I have nothing good to say…all I can say is wow…this still sucks. Thus is depression, and it has its claws in me. I will get away, but not today. Today I will do what I need to do to get through, and I will try not to think about last year, because how can you now be thankful when you have less and what you have hurts all the time? And that is depression. It’s not something where I can just get up and make a decision to be OK. I have to work through it.

My dad gave me an article about the difference between being lonely and alone: I still feel lonely in a room surrounded by others. I’m not ready to go out and party. I’m still hurting and sad. It’s a sign of how deeply I was committed to what I had, how deeply I was hurt. Respect it. Let me find my own way, in my own time. I’m alone because that’s all I can handle. I’m lonely because I haven’t figured out how to fix that yet.

We came home today; I drove down the mountain. We had Pandora playing most of the trip off the girlchild’s phone, and tried a variety of ways to rig the speakers…this was NOT the best choice…

Boychild finally typed up his essays for the University of California college app (due tomorrow)…in the back seat of the car…

Calli had her head on the keyboard for part of it. He has now officially applied to two colleges…only eight to go (seriously). I’m feeling a little less stressed, or a little more stressed, depending on what part of his going to college I think about…paying for it or sending him off or having finally started the process or I don’t know. His actually getting in? Scary stuff. Paying for all of it while trying to budget for Christmas is a whole ‘nother issue.

We switched drivers at the bottom of the mountain (I get carsick easily, plus didn’t want to white-knuckle the trip down in the rain)…

Calli was awake for that (briefly).

Then I went back to sewing, in the rain this time…this is where the speakers ended up…

More crying on the way home. Girlchild notices…doesn’t say a word. I cried on the way up because she had been yelling at me, typical teenaged stuff, but I just couldn’t handle it. On the way back, I don’t even know what set me off…songs…the trip…my brain. She said sorry on the way up. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

I didn’t manage meditation up there at all…too tired by the end of the day. I think we saw three Avengers movies in the last 5 days, plus lots of people and food (more about that later). I really should have meditated, but would have just fallen asleep in the middle of it. I kept having dreams and nightmares…mostly dreams that turned into nightmares…makes sleep a bad place to be. The house was on fire, I kept going back for stuff, someone was helping me. Kids were little; I grabbed electronics and chargers. I couldn’t get to my sketchbooks, clothing, or meds. Calli was the last thing I grabbed. The house gets sprayed by something, but it’s not helicopters, it’s people flying through the air with their arms outstretched, spitting water from their mouths. It’s not enough. I woke up terrified. That was the nightmare. I couldn’t remember the dream by the time I had typed that out.

I meditated tonight, a relief really (remember that), but with a cat on my lap, squawking at me and kneading my thighs with her claws, while the dog cried at me with her ball, wanting me to throw it, headbutting me until I petted her. While breathing. While counting my breaths. While noting my emotions. While crying. Meditation with interruptions is still better than no meditation at all.

Mr. Meditation says I need to allow my emotions the space they need to exist. I think I do that. I don’t run away from them. They are part of human existence. We can’t control when they come and go. We can’t get away from them or control them. There needs to be a willingness to listen within. Listen to my own emotions and watch them and exist with them. If more people did that, I think there would be a lot less pain in the world. Fear of one’s own emotions seems to cause an awful lot of stupid behavior.

Despite all the bad mental stuff over the last three or four days, I found myself today being grateful for the art. I’ll write tomorrow about what I’ve gotten done, but better than that…I currently have 9 pieces out for shows, either in shows right now or traveling to a show that will open soon. I have 4 pieces guaranteed for shows in the next few months, another one that I will finish in the next few months that has a guaranteed traveling exhibition starting next winter, and another one I haven’t even started that will be in a show next January. There is no shortage of work in my head that wants to be made…one was crying out to be drawn during meditation today and I ignored it…at least for now. The art brain is there, it’s active, it’s holding my head out of the water. The art brain doesn’t mind being alone…it’s the non-art brain that gets lonely. The two don’t exist apart from each other, unfortunately though, so I have to help one to help the other…at the moment, the art brain is ruling the roost…it hears the other part, but it knows that the art will get me through…so it keeps making and dragging that part of the brain along with it. They don’t often get along, the two pieces of my brain, but they do know to take care of each other…give art brain ample time to create, but let the rest of my brain have a life outside of art, and they will both be happy. Right now I will settle for one part being hard at work and somewhat distracted by that. For now.

Out of the Dirt

I managed the gym, finished a good book (in one day…no idea how many pages it had, because the Kindle app says things like Location 405 of 3606, and I don’t know what that means), graded one period’s worth of journals (I only had one period left, so that was OK), bought thread so I can quilt up in the mountains, hung out with a friend for an hour or so, and ironed fabrics. Not a bad day. I managed it. There were some bad moments, true, but that seems to always be the case. I weathered them. I cried, but it wasn’t as bad as some Saturdays have been. I do miss going out to dinner and the movies. I wish I could go out dancing, but that seems to be out of my cost range, plus requires more people skills than I have at the moment. Doing things with other people is not my strong point. I even meditated, but my brain was like a 5-year-old with ADHD, so I just let it wander and reeled it back in over and over again. I’m not sure it was particularly helpful tonight. Oh well. It can’t always work ideally. That’s the wonder of the damn brain. It’s fucking unpredictable. Or maybe it’s predictably random.

I have about 2 1/2 hours in on the fabric choosing for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I’m about halfway into the 200s as well. I’m up and out of the dirt as of tonight. When I start up again (maybe tomorrow?), I will be in the flesh of one of the daughters…I think of the Maiden and the Mother as daughters of the Crone…not sure why. Because they’re smaller and younger? Who knows. I didn’t want to start dealing with flesh yet…too tired tonight for that. Flesh has to be a run that flows, and with a quilt like this, it might need 7 fabrics in the run. Or I might decide to do two different runs, two shades…with the daughters in a lighter, pinker shade, and the crone in a more muted, greyed shade. Who knows? I won’t know until I pick them, and I kind of feel like I need to have a fresh brain for that, and I don’t have that right now. I have late night tired brain.

All the 200s are laid out…

There’s a bird in there too. And a heart, I think. Maybe a fetus. All that before I even get to the daughter, whichever one it is. Can’t tell…maybe the Maiden. There’s only 1237 or so pieces in this thing. I’m going to be ironing for a while. It would be nice to get it done before we leave, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

My plan is to start cutting these out at my rescheduled quilt class Monday night and continue up in the mountains.

I’d like to have half of it ironed by Tuesday…more if possible. It sounds like a lot of time, but I have a hike and dinner tomorrow, then doctor, soccer, groceries for Tday, some other errands, and quilt class on Monday…and Tuesday morning is a mess. So I don’t know how far I will get. When I type all that out, the thought of getting 615 pieces ironed seems unrealistic…that’s another 400 pieces, probably another 4 hours. When I’m not tired. Ha! OK, I have a goal. I’ll do my best to meet it.

I did go through the older sketchbook and marked some of the drawings with post-its. I don’t know if I’ll get more serious about making some smaller quilts this week, but I’m trying to at least keep it in mind, since two of my smaller non-nude pieces will be in Poway starting next week, so there is a market for these. I think I’m afraid to NOT have multiple pieces in progress at the moment…I don’t want any down time. Down time leads to depressoid time, and I’m good at that without any encouragement from a nonbusy brain. Trying to keep the brain occupied is an important task.

After finishing the cross stitch I’ve been working on for my SIL for the last 3+ years, I was trying to decide what to do next and decided that the girlchild’s Xmas stocking should be next on the list…I mean, I started it before she was born and she is now 16. Seemed to make sense. So I pulled it out and stared at it for 20 minutes, trying to figure out what in hell I had stitched…

I really did think I had stitched more, but more importantly, this line of stitches didn’t appear to match anything on the pattern…until I realized I had stitched it in the wrong color. Wow. I was about 9 months pregnant with the girlchild and the boychild was about 18 months old when I started it. It’s surprising my brain didn’t just fall right out of my head. I ripped out all the stitching from over 16 years ago and will start again at my next stitching meeting. Fresh start. Funny stuff. I did tell her not to expect it until she was 21, based on how long the one for her aunt took me…it’s not that I’m a slow stitcher…I’m not. I just only work on it for about an hour and a half a month at the one meeting.

I’ve been staring at this card all day…it was sent by two good friends sending me encouragement a few months back…but I love the dog and birds. Bright colors and funky.

Much appreciated. They’re the ones who posted the article that talked about the meditation app I use, Headspace…so it’s their fault I’m calmer now. Damn them. No, not really. I did actually use it the other day with a student who was in a mood…and it worked. Welcome to the calmer Kathy…or something.

I started and finished this book today, Every Day by David Levithan.

I liked it. I thought it was well-written. I can’t remember why I read it, although it could have been as simple as seeing someone else’s review. A person (hard to tell if A is male or female) inhabits a different body every day, and one of those days, falls in love. It was nicely done. I would read another book by Levithan. Because I don’t have enough books to read? I remember the boychild worried once about what would happen when he ran out of books to read. I don’t think it’s happened yet. I have two more books on the library ebook system and another two on the Kindle app at the moment. I guess vacation is time to read.

I’m hiking tomorrow; far as I know, the hike is on…looking forward to this one…will be dispelling some head demons up there, I think. Hope. Trying to figure out if taking the sketchbook makes sense. I can’t draw and hike, but maybe I can draw in the car (mountain roads? Might be a mistake…don’t know).

Out of the dirt…into the snow.

Fabric Soothes My Soul

I don’t know where to start. I have been all over the map today. It wasn’t good. So I saved myself in the end with fabric. It’s a temporary fix, though…it only works as long as I am tracing, cutting, ironing. It stops as soon as I stop, unless I do it for hours, and then sometimes I can hold on to the feeling of almost-peace. Tonight I earned 41 minutes of almost-peace. I wish I could bank it for later.

I’m apparently anemic. Don’t know why yet. I can interpret blood tests to a certain point and then it just gets confusing…there’s too much data. I’m hoping it’s simple, a lack of iron in my diet…there certainly probably is a lack of iron in my diet. I don’t eat red meat at all any more…well, maybe once a month…and girlchild bogarted the spinach in the freezer for her back. It’s been defrosted and refrozen too many times to eat. I keep meaning to buy more, but it’s not like food is fun for me anyway. I just eat to fuel the body. I don’t eat for pleasure. I don’t know that I do anything for pleasure…hike…read…OK, and draw. Some things. Not pleasure, but peace.

Girlchild made varsity soccer. This is a good thing. Well, except for the back thing. We’ll deal with that. She’s happy. I’m happy she’s happy…it’s a big deal to her to play in her junior and senior years. I realize I have 700 soccer games on cold metal bleachers ahead of me, but I will survive (well, I will be cold…see anemia above). I don’t have a life…I have to be pleased with the lives of my children. Don’t worry…I’m not living through them. I do have a life, I guess. It’s just limited at the moment…probably more by me than by anything else. I don’t want to interact with most of the world, so I don’t. It’s a source of pain. I try to limit my pain.

There were cookie issues this week. I brought home leftovers from a school reward and boychild apparently bogarted all of them in some bizarre logical maneuver. Basically, it comes down to his being a hungry teenaged male who does not necessarily always think about other people before scarfing food. To his credit, he did give her about 13 hours of opportunity before he ate her share, but it would be nice if he would learn to ask. So when the book club was canceled last night, I stopped by the store and bought more cookies on the way home…and then this happened…

I don’t really know how the cookie divisions played out. I don’t like chocolate chip (I’m allergic), so I think she divided them in half and then subtracted the ones he ate the other day, and then I don’t know what happened. I gave up one of my sugar cookies to my ex-husband, who I believe shared it with a very happy Golden Retriever.

Here’s the boychild’s share…

Yeah. She’s a bit vindictive at times. (It says, “who cares?” about how many of what type of cookie he gets…I’m not really sure why each bag has a count on it.)

I was joking last night about the core difference between me and my brother. My mom wants to do a family portrait. I hate them, but it’s her deal…whatever. My brother and sister-in-law do them all the time and they’re nicely done…it’s just not my thing. So we all have to dress in blue jeans and white shirts (you missed my brother’s and my emails to mom about SHADES of blue and SHADES of white and should they be skinny jeans or acid-washed or what?). This means, in my house, that two of us need white shirts (me and boychild own no such thing) and one of us needs jeans (girlchild doesn’t wear jeans…mutant child…although I only got the boychild to wear jeans as of 2 years ago, so…). Girlchild is swearing that she is wearing a dress and putting a jeans skirt on underneath and then flashing the photographer, boychild is going to use spray paint to paint an anarchy sign on his shirt, and I’m thinking that mom didn’t tell me the shirt had to be PLAIN, so what obnoxious thing can I have on the front of it (Tardis? swear words?). Meanwhile, my SIL says that she will just TELL her kids what to wear and they WILL. Hmn. That is the core difference between my brother and I right there. I’m trying to figure out how to fuck with the system and he’s doing what he was asked to do. Not really…he’s a devious beast…he just flies under the radar.

Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all work out fine. I don’t know how anyone will force all of us to be smiling though, because I don’t do that any more. It’s against my religion. Not really.

Meditation tonight was difficult. I battle myself sometimes. Well, actually, I don’t. I succumb to sadness. I don’t really fight it. I watch it. I feel it. I let it wash over me. I try to figure out where it comes from, but I don’t resist it…or do I? I don’t. Yes, it’s unpleasant, but I don’t really know HOW to resist it, which is good, because resisting it is not helpful. To be at ease with my existence, I have to note it, but not run away from it. I don’t usually run away from uncomfortable things. They suck, but they don’t go away if you run. They’re still there. I live with uncomfortable things. I hold them inside me and pet them, like they are porcupines or hedgehogs…only petting in one direction or you will get stuck. And sometimes you just get stuck and you suck it up and deal with it because you don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice. I don’t understand people who run away from their own feelings. You live with one person your whole life…there is one person you have to deal with…you can’t run from that person. So be with that person. Be as strong as you can as that person. Be as honest as you can with that person.

Mr. Meditation asks what I am getting swept away by…and does that cause discomfort? Well, sadness, duh. And yes, it does. But I don’t run from that. I watch it, I let the tears roll down my cheeks, I write about it, I draw it. I don’t criticize myself (usually) for being sad. I have good reason. And even if I didn’t, it’s still my sadness and as long as I’m not purposefully wallowing in it in a stupid way, and I don’t think I am, then this is what it is. Sad. Sad is what it is. Someday hopefully that is not what it will be. Someday it will be something else and so will I. Except I think I will always carry this sadness inside me, like I do the destruction of my marriage, like other things that are such a core part of me that I will never be free of them. I live with them, I pull them into my arms and embrace them…spikes and all. What else can you do?

He says if we’re not aware, then we’re not able to do anything about how we react to situations. I think I am doing better with that, although tonight a work thing raised its ugly head. I reached out and I think it’s under control, at least temporarily. I got support. I think I am just being paranoid (although I have good reason). I think I know how to protect myself better now.

So I went to the gym and freaked out for about 2 hours (seriously…17 texts later)…and then I came home and made beer sausage mac and cheese for tomorrow night’s potluck and real live mashed potatoes for the work potluck (no, I never do those, but two friends are in charge and I want to support their endeavors to take over the shitty climate at work, so I did my deed). And I made dinner at the same time and watched that show about the people who live out in the boonies in Alaska, and thought about how I totally couldn’t do that, but some part of my brain really does just want to run away to a homestead in Alaska and get off the fucking grid, but I couldn’t eat fish or kill bears or live out there for a long time, so that’s just silly escapist crap that doesn’t get me anywhere. Wanting to escape doesn’t mean you can or you should. Wanting to leave the town where there are so many memories…that doesn’t mean you can.

And after all that work and meditation and some shitty moments of crappiness (god, people can really be shitheads, can’t they?), I decided that even though I am tired and run down and sad and depressed and really done with the world, that the only way I would get any clarity or peace tonight was if I played with fabric. I got everything cleaned up and folded and put away that was covering the ironing board and the table (sometimes I do not know where I get the emotional strength to do such crazy things at 10:30 at night), I figured out what threads I needed to buy for quilting, and I took a deep breath and started on choosing fabrics for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

(drawing hung up on the left, Wonder Under laid out on the right; yes, my office/studio is a total disaster)

I didn’t get very far…

(the first 100 pieces laid out in 10s)

Honestly, I didn’t have a whole lot of brain power left and it was fairly strained during the dirt fabric choosing.

A good mix of batik, hand-dyed, and commercial prints.

Yes, that’s all I did. Dirt. So fuck you. What did you do tonight, eh? I mean, look at that hand-dyed fabric…and rejoice in the fact that it will be fucking awesome at the bottom of this quilt.

You’ll be able to see this quilt in Houston next year, assuming my anemia is not caused by some horrible cancer that will slay me before I finish. Not a joke. I know that happens. That’s why I’m so focused on my health. That shit terrifies me. I really really wanted some of my meds to go away (one might, maybe two). I really, I guess I really did want my diabetes numbers to come down and they didn’t, proving again that it’s not weight-related.

But fuck that shit. I got started on the fabric choosing. Hopefully I can get it all done over Thanksgiving Break and move on to the next stage…and then I can make another quilt…and another…and maybe by the time I get 10 or 12 more of them done I will not be this sad crying person any more. See, that’s my discomfort. I am not comfortable being the person who cries all the time, who is always sad. I rarely cried before. This is painful…the crying itself just wears on you. But maybe this is the new me. Who knows? I don’t. I’m just keeping my eyes on the fabric…it soothes my soul.