Stop and Let Me Be

Having a full-time job and being a single mom and being an artist means I never feel like I’m caught up with anything. My ex made some snotty comment about the state of my house yesterday…he doesn’t bring his job home with him, that’s for sure, and I deal with most of the kid stuff. Plus he actually cleans house on the weekends or at night, and I obviously don’t. I’m doing art instead. I keep meaning to schedule 30 minutes every other day or so to pick up, or even 10 minutes each day to focus on one small area of the house, but then reality kicks in and I don’t get to it. Time gets sucked up by stuff like making tonight’s dinner last night or dealing with some stupid tax thing or yet another college thing or an expired prescription.

This is why I can’t pick a new camera, even though I have birthday money to pay for it. This is why I can’t figure out the car situation. This is why the house is not clean. Because I have a brain that would rather be picking fabric or drawing or even reading a book than straightening up the house. I solve so many problems during the day that at some point, I run out of problem-solving ability. Literally, my brain just stops working on that stuff…it’s like a puppy who doesn’t want to walk any further. It pushes its feet into the ground and no amount of pushing, prodding, cajoling will budge it.

The only thing it wants to do is wander off into that calm arena of artmaking.

So I let it. Maybe that’s not the best thing to do; certainly it doesn’t get the house clean. I have a plan for the damn car. I don’t have a plan for the damn camera. And I think some of this looming depressive cloud that is settling over me this week is summer coming. I’ve never been depressed about summer coming. But it’s just another unstructured break that reminds me of badness. Yesterday was sad day. I thought maybe part of it was lack of sleep, so I made an attempt to go to bed earlier last night…which is why this post is happening NOW rather than last night.

I did make a decision about the main figure in quilt…she’s flesh, not gray. She’s still alive. Barely. So I stayed in sorta grayed-out flesh tones…nothing bright.

The other two figures are more on the pink side of flesh, and I’ll use those fabrics for the two hands grabbing her thighs. Need contrast.

The biggest problem with picking fabrics for this section is that there is no way I can pick the whole body out in one night, and I don’t want to iron a bunch of flesh fabrics and then have to re-iron those fabrics with the next batch of flesh fabrics every night. I need to see the WHOLE thing. Usually I lay out the whole body and then iron for hours. Like I would budget a weekend day (in reality, I would have done this during break). Not happening this time. So I started laying them out…

And I realized that I could do all the bone pieces and some other things on the leg, like a stitched scar. I have to cover everything during the day, because I have cats who like to sit on fabric and get things all messed up, so I didn’t want to lay out too much flesh last night. I think I did about an hours’ worth, and I know I’m in the 900s now, but I still have a bunch of random 800 pieces to do, like the eyeball on the leg (you know, because legs have eyeballs) and the grabby hands…oh yeah, and pubic hair, which means I have to decide what color hair she’s going to have.

More pieces…the big ones are all leg bones and pelvis…

It’s really hard sometimes to explain to people what I do in the middle of the night, when they ask how much I sleep or how I stay up so late, while they are obviously thinking how fucking crazy I am. When I’m ironing, I’m not tired any more. I’m not stuck in a bad place in my head where some 6-second Vine of derision and uselessness runs over and over again, berating me for my mistakes. I’m in a place of peace. So it makes sense that I would want to stay there for as long as possible, to make that feeling the largest part of my brain, especially as I get ready for sleep; having that be the prevailing thought as I fall asleep helps me stay asleep, helps me have good dreams instead of bad. Helps me wake up in an OK mood instead of the other kind.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get the good sleep last night, despite the early bedtime (“early”…make that 1 AM instead of 2 AM). I have been reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak…

It’s a beautiful book. The words, how Zusak writes a phrase, the visuals of the sky and souls, are absolutely wonderful to read. Yes, it’s a WWII book about Germany and Nazis…but it’s really not. But it is. Death is the narrator, and it’s surprising how human death seems…more human than some people I know. I was reading it at the gym and came to the last 50 pages and started to get very emotional…now have I cried at the gym? Heck yeah. Regularly. Sad, really, but it happens. Too much brain time. Proof that this is a significant depression, because the serotonin levels from exercise should be helping with mood, and they don’t. Not really.

Anyway. I chose to stop reading, because I figured the last 50 pages would be pretty sad. And I was already in sad mode. So I came home and cooked tonight’s dinner AND last night’s dinner (god I hate all that cooking) and ironed for a while and thought I would put off reading the end until another day. Except I couldn’t. So I sat in bed at 1 AM and I finished the book (I read fast). And I cried during the whole last 50 pages. So I guess it’s a good thing I waited until I got home. It’s a good book. Don’t care about the movie.

Anyway. So I’m not really starting off today in the right mood, and it’s kind of a crazy day. I wish I could regulate my mood better, but despite taking all my meds and trying to eat and sleep right, best I can, and exercising every day, my moods have a mind of their own. I’m standing off over here watching them fight and piss and moan, wondering when they will just stop and let me be. Deep sigh.

Quagmire

I really do need to go to sleep. I shouldn’t be up this late. I’m debating leaving this and writing the post in the morning. I could do that. I finished grades; I finished that silly essay for the damn application for a summer job (short…a little bit of money to supplement, but still leaves me time to get the quilts done that I need to get done…talk about the ultimate balance…I need money, but I also need to make art. So I don’t sleep enough and I work too much. It’s all wrong.).

I’ll type for a bit. I’m not quite tired enough yet. I like to be so tired when I go to bed that I can barely find the energy to set the alarm. That’s the best, because then I fall asleep right away and sleep straight through (well, almost). I hate waking up and evaluating my level of tiredness with the level of darkness.

I got started late today. Girlchild and I did a short stint at the gym. She’s allowed to bike and go on the treadmill now, and she’s chomping at the bit to get exercising again. Me? I just want an excuse to get serotonin going and to read a book. I love to read. I really love to read. I had a conversation on the hike this weekend wherein I tried to explain how much I like to read, and when I told them how many books I had read last year, they were a bit shocked. And then I said I read at the gym…so they said, what do you do at the library? Work out? Yeah. Well. I read a lot. I guess that makes me some sort of freak. Here’s me being a freak.

Then girlchild was nice enough to make dinner (this was after we had a screeching argument about how many years of foreign language she needed AND the data plan on her phone AND something else that I don’t remember. I’m kind of done with the part where I know nothing even though I don’t know nothing, although there are apparently lots of people who think I know nothing and most of them are under the age of 18, except for a few who are my age or so and have decided that I know nothing, that my knowledge is always wrong.).

ANYWAY. She cooked and I input grades. It was ugly. I’m not being nice this time of year. Turn the work in. Remind me over the summer to analyze the numbers of kids turning homework in this year vs last year. If it hasn’t changed by a significant amount, I’m not doing these damn detentions next year. I don’t think it’s working.

Boychild and I spent some time looking at cars online…still trying to deal with that issue. Running out of time. Then the Franchise Tax Board is still messing with me over my Head-of-Household status for one year out of the 10 or 11 I’ve claimed. Assholes. Such a waste of taxpayer dollars.

So I thought about not ironing tonight, about taking a break, but my head was swirling into the abyss…and I just don’t want to be in that place. I want some peace, dammit. Some happy. Some content. Some quiet. A portion of time when my brain isn’t berating me for bad decisions and bad people and just plain bad. A moment when I feel like I’m doing something right. That’s it. That’s what I need.

So I ironed.

Electrical thunder bolts…I finished monitor head.

Then I started on the arm I showed yesterday…with Dr. Scully looking on…

These are all the same flesh colors used in the two other smaller figures in the quilt. I’m still debating the large figure…do I make it a different set of flesh fabrics (the original plan), or do I make them all shades of gray? I kinda did that in the Earth Stories quilt, but I don’t know if I want to do that for this one. I’m still debating it. Flashing an image behind my closed eyes of the large figure in gray and then in flesh tones. Two very different images. Two very different commentaries. Flashing back and forth between the two.

I ironed pieces 626-720…

Not EVEN 100 pieces tonight. Oh well. I did the whole arm on the right of the quilt. I still need to do the DNA and then the headphones, and then I’ll be able to start ironing the larger figure…

Which should take me about a million years.

There’s the left leg. With a hand grabbing it. That hand is attached to no one in the quilt. It creeped me out when I drew it. It creeps me out now. This whole quilt creeps me out sometimes. I know where it came from, the depths of the bad shit in my head. The pieces of menopause that are scratching at me. The sense of loss and grief. The splintered mind. Trying to reconcile the brain that is sad and depressed and disconnected and hopeless with the part that makes the art, that doesn’t give up, that doesn’t stop, that is always re-evaluating and trying to find The Way Out.

Deep breaths. Making art shouldn’t make you cry. Life shouldn’t make you cry (nonstop). I showed a video in class today of a family affected by Huntington’s Disease as part of our genetics unit. The mom with HD talks about how she can’t be a good mom because of the disease, and she’s so sad and fragile. I almost lost it about 5 times today.

Am I doing it right? Are my kids going to be OK? Did I hamstring them by putting them through divorce and another bad relationship? Will they be able to do it right with absolutely no role models? Neither parent is competent in relationships, whether it’s the actual BEING in one or PICKING the right person. Either way, we both failed. Me, multiple times.

I hope not. As a parent, all you want is for your children to be happy. The boychild is so observant and aware of human interactions…I’m impressed, because I know it is a learned behavior, not built into his wiring. I did that. Girlchild? Sigh. Emotional hurricane still. She will figure it out. She’s better than she was. I pick my battles, and unfortunately, today there was more than one battle. I fought them all bravely and with minimal emotional investment. I feel it NOW, but in the moment, I was OK.

Here’s the current pile of fabrics…growing…steadily.

Sigh. I wish I could say this process is making me happy, but it’s not. I am in a quagmire. Hey, when boychild and I were in New York, we saw a real quagmire. One with a name. It’s such a lovely word, quagmire: a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. That’s kinda like my brain. Boggy and giving way.

Next step? Big body. Need a decision about color. Then it will take me a few nights…because the body is pieces 744-1347, a little more than 600 pieces. That WOULD be 6 nights, but all the fabrics will be the same for the whole figure. Let’s hope I have a better chunk of time Wednesday or Thursday.

Yeah. Sleep. She’s right there, tugging at my arm. Begging me to head down the hallway. Claiming a warm bed and trouble-free thoughts. Wish it could really do that.

Tied Up in Knots

You know how when you wash quilt fabric, the edges, the loose threads, they get all tied up in knots? When I iron pieces onto the fabric, I try to cut off as many of those knots as possible, mostly because they take up room in my fabric containers (space is at a premium), but also because they alternately annoy and fascinate me. I’m fascinated by the colors of the threads and the shape of the knots they make. I’m annoyed by how they get in the way, ruin the line of the fabric, waste space.

I’ve got some knots in me that need trimming. They need to go. They’re wasted space.

I spend hours when picking fabrics just unfolding, cutting knotted threads, and refolding the fabrics. It’s a meditative process. There’s a right way to fold them. The folds only go one way. If I cut really big pieces out of the fabric, then I might need to rethink the fold so everything stays in a nice square-ish packet, but usually they just get refolded over and over into the same shape.

I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours on this piece at this point and I’m up to piece 630. My original ironing estimate was at least 20 hours…I think it will be more than that. Part of that is because I’m only doing an hour or two a day, so it takes me longer to get my brain back into it. The transition times are more frequent. One of the reasons I try to cut out all of a section of the quilt at a time is because there’s less of that down time…but I can’t always stay up really late and blow everything off (much as I’d like to) to make it work.

Tonight, I was working on this little thing…really, it IS little…

It’s about 8″ square…there’s not even that many colors in it. I managed to get all of it done except for the monitor head and the broken chains. I got tired. I only ironed about 110 pieces tonight. That’s been my average for these school nights. And they were all small pieces…

So it doesn’t look like much. Yes, that’s 110 pieces right there. All the other pieces are in another box. I had an art group meeting today, so I took the pieces with me to cut…I got a bunch done…

about two hours’ worth. Not bad. I actually made art for 3 1/2 hours today…more than most weekends, but that’s because I never just sit through a meeting…I’m always doing something.

This is probably what I’ll be ironing tomorrow night, assuming I get grades done and I finish the monitor head…

Not even halfway through at this point. Haven’t even started the main figure yet. Will have to revise my flesh-colored fabrics for that. The ones I’ve used so far for the two smaller figures won’t work. I don’t have big-enough pieces. Besides, I like the main figure to stand out by being different shades of flesh. Hence the need for 500 different flesh colors? Yeah, I don’t know. And yes, there probably are that many here. I have more flesh colors (including the pink range) and green fabrics than any other colors. The least? Yellow. Then orange and red. Weird, huh? I keep trying to get more reds, because I do so many hearts and arteries and veins, but it’s hard to find good reds. I don’t need a lot of orange apparently. Yellow? I use it often enough, but…I really don’t know why I have so few. I know I use the same ones over and over again from quilt to quilt. I don’t have much gray either (by “not much” I mean you know, maybe 100 fabrics…yes, I know how crazy that sounds).

I now have 4 returned quilts in my entryway, and two more coming home in two weeks. I started making a list of new shows to enter in the next few months. I have new work that’s never been in a show. There was a lot of talk of working to a theme at the meeting today…of putting together exhibit proposals with themes in mind. That’s harder for me to do, unless the theme is wildly vague. We’ll have to see how that goes. I also don’t really want to make a quilt for an exhibit with a theme when I don’t know if I’ll get in or not. I have enough pieces that I want to make that fit no theme, and still have one where I chose how I would fit into the theme (and I know they will show the quilt). It seems like I am far enough into the mature artist realm that I don’t need to go backwards.

That said, the work needs to get out of the house and on to a gallery wall. So you have to figure out how to make that happen. Magic!

My whole life would be different with magic, eh? Magic would make it so I could stay up for the next three hours ironing and maybe not have to go to work tomorrow? Magic would erase all the foggy depression that clouds my mind. Magic would clean the house and do all the errands. Magic would fold my laundry and find me happiness…deliver it in a small plastic Easter egg. Open it up and a cloud of happiness spills out.

I might be delirious at the moment. Speaking of delirious, girlchild stopped taking her Benadryl yesterday because it made her tired, and sure enough, those damn hives came back with a vengeance. She texted me from Lancaster…wish she would listen to the doc and her mom occasionally. She did better tonight. Asked me to wake her up at 10:30 (she was tired) to give her the next dose. The screeching I did this morning on the phone must have had an effect…she put the epi-pen in her school bag as well…not sure she can take it there without a note, but I’ll write one just in case. Yeah, I know…teenagers know everything. Moms know nothing. Sigh.

Maybe magic should put me to sleep as well.

It’s Not the End of the World…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupid Fucking Titles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I ironed down a bunch of pieces.

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

This is the chick I was ironing down…

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

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

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

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

Insert crying there too. Fuck me.

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

So yeah, not so healthy.

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

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

Fish and Seaweed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabric Meditation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tomorrow.

Collected Threads

Sometimes I feel like I need to gather up all the bits of my brain at night so that I can try to function again (more) normally the next day. This post was originally called Collected Vomit, but I changed to Threads, because I think I’ve got a better hold on everything now than I did when I started writing this hours ago. I may feel differently in another few hours, but for now, let’s assume I have hold of all the threads, even though it may be a tenuous hold.

I’m obviously dealing with some form of exhaustion or jet lag still. My body doesn’t know when to be tired or when to be hungry. I’m trying to get it on a normal Pacific-Coast schedule. That said, my counselor says I sound exhausted and maybe I am. It’s hard to tell some days. I’m tired of trying to manage people and decisions. Being tired also makes it harder to deal with emotional crap, and there’s plenty of that around at the moment. End of Spring Break, college decisions, money issues, car dying, teenagers (that’s emotional crap all over the place right there).

The reason I was going to call it Vomit over Threads really came down to the fact that since finally getting home (only 12 hours late), I had cleaned up at least 4 instances of vomit (lovely things, cats). I killed one spider. Kitten killed another one, for sport, apparently, based on my watching her. I took one nap. I finished one book. I made it to the gym and to my last-ever quilt class at The Country Loft, where I’ve been taking quilt classes (or just showing up, because I don’t really need a class any more) for around 24 years. Their focus is changing, so we are not stopping our meetings…just changing the location to someone’s house…it’s change. Things change. It does feel like the end of something, though. A couple of these women, I’ve had them in my class for all 24 of those years. Yes, I was a baby when I started quilting.

I had hoped to have all the pieces of Wonder Under on the big quilt cut out before I left on the trip, but it didn’t happen. I did manage to get them all cut out at my meeting last night, though.

Then I came home and retraced all the ones where the web and fusible had wandered apart. Actually, that’s not all of them. I know that now. There are about 20 more of them. Oh well.

Then I cut those out as well…it took just over 12 hours to cut out all those pieces, some of them twice.

Then I had to find enough bins to sort the pieces out into 100s. That was more difficult; I’m not sure why. I think I’ve filled up more bins or something. Not sure. Technically, you need 18 bins to sort over 1700 pieces, but in the end, I only needed 17, because all the pieces with numbers in the 1700s were the same color as pieces in the 1600s (that damn octopus), so they were all cut out as one piece, to be cut apart when I iron them down because they are that damn tiny.

I lay the bins out on my light box (although I had to add another one here because I had forgotten the zero bin, for pieces 0-99. I always forget that bin.

Then I had to sort them. I have to admit that this picture was taken last night when I decided I was too damn tired to keep standing (always a good indicator of bedtime), and since I had been awake 24 hours straight (minus a 20-minute nap) at that point, it seemed reasonable to go to bed.

I finished the sorting tonight. It took about an hour and a half total to sort all the pieces into their respective bins. In the picture above, the bin on top at the back is the added 0-99 bin, and the big white one in front is all the pieces that still needed sorting when I gave up last night.

As I was thinking this morning about (1) what I wanted to get done and (2) what I needed to get done today (two conflicting lists, as always), I realized I did not have background fabric for this quilt. I also felt (1) too busy and (2) too tired to make a rational decision about that today. But if I waited until tomorrow, there would be a hike, and I’m not going to be LESS tired after that, and I have two other events I’m supposed to go to in the evening (knock on wood that I’ll be awake for those). So Saturday shopping is out. Then Sunday? I don’t want to wait that long, because if the events tomorrow night aren’t engaging enough (for me, not for normal people…they’re social events, and you know how badly I function at those…it’s nobody else’s fault that I won’t be engaged there), I would like to come home and start ironing fabrics. So not Sunday.

So, at that point it was late enough on Friday that I was scheduling things before and after counseling (scar cream for girlchild, Costco because when else will I get there)…I basically realized I had to leave in about 20 minutes to go buy fabric, which I did…choosing these two…

No, I couldn’t decide. It’s OK…the other one will get used elsewhere or on the back. And they really don’t look like that. My camera doesn’t like the deep rich dark blues at all. They’re not even that different in real light. It’s a good thing I decided to go today, because the shop is closed Sunday (duh, Easter, says the pagan) and closes early tomorrow, and I wouldn’t have been able to get there at all after the hike. So fate, thank you for forcing me to be efficient today.

And because I like fabric, I also got these.

Really, I try to stay out of the fabric stores for this reason. It’s been a while since I was there…like January. That’s not so bad, right? Has it been since January? I don’t remember. No, I got the background for the Mammogram quilt; I just don’t remember when. The staff was very impressed by the speediness of my shopping (hey, I had a timer on myself, and I still needed gas for the car, because it had been on empty for about 25 miles). And yes, that bottom fabric on the right? It does look like sperm. That’s why I got it.

Anyway, those are all washed and ready to go, and the pieces are all sorted and ready to go, and one of the to-do tasks for break, which was to clean up my office? Yeah. Not so much. Haven’t had the time or inclination.

Many times, when I sit down to work at the computer, there is a black cat behind me on the chair, but sometimes, if she’s in a mood, this is where she is.

Notoriously annoying cat. Or she stands off to the right, but leaves her tail in a horizontal line right through the middle of the monitor. I bop her tail out of the way, she bops my hand and meows, moving her tail back in my view. Really, it’s easier to share the chair with her.

I already have over 39 hours in this quilt and I haven’t done anything with fabric except pick out the background. Anyway. Moving on to the next step, while trying to get ready for school starting again, while trying to figure out what to do about a car that basically isn’t worth fixing, and dealing with a bunch of college stuff. Everything’s gonna be fine.

Which reminds me, the quilt I sent up to San Francisco area had to be washed to try to get rid of cat dander. I’m hoping I was successful, but there will be only one way to know for sure. I washed it at my parents’ house, because they’ve never had a cat there…I was fairly sure it wouldn’t run, just based on the fabrics in it, but you never know for sure, so I was a little freaked out…but I know how to deal with running fabrics. So I put a little Ivory soap in water that was a little bit lukewarm, but not much. I agitated it a little by hand, and what was interesting is that the quilt was actually dirty. It has hung in about 8 or 9 exhibits, so that’s not surprising I guess. I don’t usually wash my quilts, though.

Then I found all the light-colored towels I could and rolled the quilt up in them one at a time and squeezed the water out (remember doing that with your sweaters that needed hand-washing? Same deal).

Once I’d done that about three or four times, I laid it out to dry on my mom’s studio floor with plastic trash bags and towels underneath. It took about two days to dry there, and then I rolled it up there for pickup, so it never went back in my car or my house. I’m hoping that did the trick.

Anyway, it’s gone now.

I’ll write about the trip later, when I have time to deal with the photos. We do have a final decision though…he is going to Cornell in Ithaca, New York. It’s a long way, but I think he’ll enjoy it.

I’ve got two books I read too, but I’m too tired to deal with them right now. I have to get up early for a hike, so I’m going to succumb to my East-Coast-timed exhaustion now and go to bed. Hopefully I’ll wake up with a better mood than today’s, though…today has been full of tears (again, the counselor blames the tired…and the stress, which we talked about extensively and hopefully have plans for each bit of it, much as I can do that). I could do without that tomorrow.

In the end, I’m not sure how many threads I collected in this post. Not as many as I’d hoped. Oh well. If they’re collected, hopefully I can’t lose them, and they’ll show up later in a different post…or they really weren’t important enough to collect.

Holy Imbalance, Batman

Batman seems to be featured in my blog entirely too much, considering I’ve never met the man…bat. I don’t think I’m channeling Robin, but who knows. I always thought he was kind of an immature twit. I’m on a teeter-totter of imbalance at the moment. Run from one side and it flips up to try to bounce you off the other side; run back to stabilize it, and it rushes up to the other side. Can’t seem to straddle the middle and keep it all at bay, keep the sides even. It’s one or the other and all about unseating…well…me.

The doctor was happy with my numbers. She has pulled me permanently off one of my diabetes meds, after many years of being on it. This is good. This is success. She was definitely more excited than I was, because she also said I might see more of the low blood sugars, precisely because I am more in control. Hmn. This is not control. It seems like luck. She also talked about hormone imbalances, which honestly may have been the majority of my mood issue over the last two or more years…but it’s not so much the estrogen, that wacky hormone of womanhood, but my psycho thyroid. We adjusted meds for that not 4 months ago, and they are low again. Sigh. So we’re upping those. Low thyroid can cause problems with sleep, irritation, periods, depression, blood sugar…sounding familiar anyone? Yeah. So maybe everything can be blamed on my thyroid. Well, except for the idiocy that happened apparently because of my thyroid, but that wasn’t me. I know. Long story.

I guess my hardships are all mine own. No one else wants to own them. Or be a part of them.

At one point, I typed hormone as hotmone…makes total sense.

Ironic that I feel so out of balance emotionally…it goes with the physical imbalance. Probably the most logical part of my life. LOOK! This one number explains everything.

I’m a week into Spring Break, and my brain is still all over the map. Thursday was nice…life drawing in the morning, first time at this class. I’ll go back. I may even do this all summer. I could. Then I had lunch with Linda and Dean Moran of Marble-T Design. I first got in touch with them a million years ago for flesh-toned and gray marbled fabrics. I wanted a run of grays from dark to light, and then I wanted a selection of flesh colors. I am still using bits and pieces from what they did for me…I think they show up in almost every quilt I make. It’s not their fault I don’t use much fabric at a time. Anyway, we had never met in person, so this was the first time…and they brought me fabric!

Beautiful gorgeous dirt fabric, or even brown flesh…could go either way with this. I’m very happy, AND they are nice, smart, amusing people. It was good. Plus they were nice and bought me lunch.

Then I went to Susan’s for a stitching meeting and started cutting out the Wonder Under for the next big quilt, which I’m going to just call Menopause for now, because it’s easier, but it does have a real name…and I’ve written it down (typed it) somewhere; I just can’t remember where. And it may not matter.

Oh wait. It does matter. It’s from this…

The title. Anyway. At least for now. I keep hearing some songs over and over and can’t get them out of my head (not the Kylie Minogue song). Oh yeah, the title is from the lyrics…it’s not called Afraid. I’d like to say I’m beyond Afraid, but I know that’s not true.

So I started cutting it out Thursday and I didn’t get much done…

I was way too tired. I went to the gym too and I meditated and probably fell asleep doing that. Really, truly, at the moment, there’s two things that happen when I meditate: I either fall asleep or I cry. Neither is particularly satisfying, but each seems to fulfill a need…a niche even. OK, sleep is probably supposed to be a necessity and not a niche.

Friday…Friday was the doctor and a bunch of crazy running around. I guess I can finally admit, now that I’ve sent it off with its new owner, that this is sold…

May they enjoy it and all its political issues. I still love the brick fabric. OH! And the gray in the sidewalk? Yup. That’s Marble-T Designs again…so THAT’S cool. Anyway, so I didn’t get much done Friday night because I was still tired, and I knew I had a long hike this morning, so I went to bed at a semi-reasonable hour (unlike tonight, when I seem to be making up for gained sleep by frittering it away on god-knows-what purpose).

I hiked this morning; more on that later. Suffice it to say that there is Julian Pie Company pie in my fridge and I was very good and did not eat any of it, because it is for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Then I decided to put on my pajamas and sit down and cut out Wonder Under for a million hours.

Because there was a million hours’ worth of Wonder Under that needed cutting. I started with 7 pieces, I had cut out the smallest one. I think I did a little last night, but mostly it was this evening, almost 4 hours straight. I’m up to 7 hours and I only have 2 1/2 of the larger pieces to cut out. So that’s good. It won’t take 20 hours. It will probably take at least 11, though. There’s some minor chance I can get done before we leave for New York. Maybe. Or Nah. (sigh. I now know where that’s from. Hopefully my students will have forgotten about it over Spring Break so I never have to hear it again…because yes, it is TOO HARD TO SAY THE T SOUND.)

So spending 4 hours Saturday evening watching TV and thinking depressing thoughts and cutting out Wonder Under does indeed include me in the Old Lady Loser Rock N Roll Saturday Night Hall of Fame. Feel free to join me.

Some fun stuff going on with the Wonder Under…some pieces are releasing the paper from the fusible web. This was a problem with the old old web, but then they went overboard and it got Way TOO Sticky, and now we’re back to EDGES…edges releasing. So the pile below needs to be redrawn on Wonder Under that is not falling apart, because I don’t want to match all those pieces up while I’m ironing.

Does that make me lazy? Hells no. I am retracing pieces that I’ve already traced once. I don’t know what it makes me, except more or less insane.

More insane…in the middle, those 4 pieces? They are traced into the middle of some really long complicated piece, so they also had to be retraced onto their own piece.

Did that. More work. Then I thought I was missing a cat…hadn’t seen her in a while. Went and looked, texted the girlchild for possible hiding places, came back, sat down, and felt the little pyscho jump up behind me to her regular nightly seating spot.

Nice to see you, Midnight.

I feel like I just camped out here for hours…

Because I freakin’ did. Top box is trash, in case I accidentally throw away something useful. Below are the real pieces…I took a few breaks. Made lots of tea, ate dinner, read a little. Not a lot. Wanted to have the focus on. For some reason. Not sure why.

Kitten’s been venturing into the living room regularly lately. She settled down into a corner and hid…

I guess she’s lonely too.

There’s where I was at when I decided it was getting awfully late and I might want to sleep tonight.

Getting there. Closer than I was 4 hours ago. Trying to tell my head to get on straight. Oh yeah, I meditated in the middle of it too. It was crying instead of sleeping tonight. Interesting. Now Babygirl is trying to harass me into sharing the chair. Or maybe all she wants is to be petted. She’s lonely too.

So here’s a series (that is just starting) by Peter Drew…and his hair, which disturbs me, about art-related things and reality, which I find amusing because art has so little to do with reality. That said, it’s an interesting take on why (and how) art galleries exist.

This is apparently the same Peter Drew as is in this Hyperallergic article…where he was threatened with expulsion for creating the art he had been accepted to the school in order to create. Really convoluted sentence. Don’t care enough to fix it. Don’t judge.

Naked yarnbombing. Enough said.

Here is my post on the California Fibers exhibit at Soka University (there is no way I’m posting that whole thing here as well, so you’ll just have to go look. It’s OK. I’ll still be here when you’re done. Take your time.).

Every ebook I had on hold at the library has come in during the last two days. Luckily, it is Spring Break and I’m spending a million hours flying in the next few days, so at least I know what I’ll be doing on those flights…competitive speed-reading. Or something. I won’t have to talk to anyone.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I’m taking my moody cranky imbalanced self to bed. I love that something I have no control over has so completely messed up my life. Sigh. Moving on.

That Never Happens in My Real Life…

Yesterday, I went on a road trip to Aliso Viejo in Orange County (California) to finally see the California Fibers exhibit at Soka University, where I have had two pieces since January.

It’s a beautiful campus, at least what little I saw of it.

It was obviously Spring Break, because otherwise, I’m fairly sure these pools must be filled with students, right?

There’s no way they’d stay out of there.

Julie was my companion (and driver, which was awfully nice of her)…

It was a gorgeous Spring day in California, although a little on the warm side…

I’ll be posting about the exhibit (again) on the California Fibers blog, as soon as I find some free time to do that…today is kinda overbooked. Again. I know.

Julie and I spent quite a bit of time discussing this global map, especially how it wasn’t the way we were used to seeing maps laid out, with Japan at its center (Soka’s founder is Japanese and the sister school is also in Japan).

Relative sizes of countries and locations of islands and the equator were part of the discussion.

Then we headed outside again to check out the fountain…

Especially because it appeared to have dead bugs all over it…

That may be a commentary on university costs right there (a definite discussion point in my household at the moment). I hadn’t been able to come see this exhibit for so long because it’s only open Monday-Friday, which is kind of annoying. I mean, I guess I understand in that it’s on a university campus, and their staff isn’t around on the weekends, but…hell, I would have had to take a day off work to see it otherwise. I’m not sure how many non-retired people who aren’t students at the university have been able to see the exhibit, which is too bad, because the space is really beautiful. It’s up through May 8…if you’re in town, you should check it out.

It was a nice trip, and I got home early enough to get some stuff done…although some of that was following the kids around. Girlchild is cat-sitting (or checking-in-on-cats really), and Maus decided he didn’t so much LIKE being in the garage, but definitely liked being TALL.

There was some worry and some kitty squawking and a ladder was involved, but we found out later that he does this all the time. No worries.

I sat outside while girlchild did all her feeding and cleaning and trash stuff and kitty-petting, because I had an ebook that was due back today and had holds on it (not sure how the renewal policy works on that) and I wanted to finish the book…it was Parasite by Mira Grant…

It’s a story set in the future, 2027, where we have developed intestinal parasites that help keep humans healthy, but as always, in the future, our meddling with science will cause issues. This is the first of a 3-part series called Parasitology, and I’m looking forward to the next one. I really liked this book…it was scientifically intriguing (although the reason I gave it a 4 out of 5 on GoodReads is because some of the science wasn’t explained well enough, and that bugged me). There’s some obvious stuff going on and some political/corporate intrigue and a bunch of crazy people acting in the name of science or money or both. And dogs. Dogs are good in this story. All good stories should have dogs in them.

Interestingly, Mira Grant is the pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, whose Rosemary and Rue I read last year. I thought this was much better of a story, more solid and grab-at-you than the October Daye series (although I would probably read more of those as well). McGuire as Grant has also written the Newsflesh trilogy, which is now on my to-read list.

Then I finally made it home and managed to get to work on the last few hundred pieces on the newest quilt…I finished tracing around 11 PM (I fixed dinner and did other stuff in there, really)…and here it all is, laid out…

It’s probably 7 yards…I try to cut about 1-yard pieces, although I don’t actually measure them, because that would be way more anal than I am (I know, I seem that anal, but I’m not). It took a total of 21 hours and 36 minutes to trace all of them, which is interesting because like I’ve said before, usually I can do 100 in an hour, so this one must have been more complicated. There are 1776 pieces officially (although I know there are probably 10-15 more due to mistakes in numbering). The quilt itself, well, the image anyway, is 34″ wide x 73″ high (so add about 10 inches to each of those measurements for a finished size).

In comparison, the quilt I did for Celebrating Silver is about 40×70″ and has 1227 pieces. So. Yeah. And it took only 95 hours to complete. I’m sure I can cut that time! (Are you kidding me? Tracing Celebrating only took a little over 11 hours. I am fucking nuts.)

Anyway. I’m going to start cutting those out today, knock on wood. I have a busy art day planned, with a new life-drawing class I’m trying out as a plan for the summer, lunch with friends I’ve never met in person (ah, the wonders of the internet), and then a stitching meeting afterwards (that’s where I’ll be cutting stuff…it’s not appropriate to cut out Wonder Under at the other two places, you know?).

I wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep when I finished, but I also wasn’t ready to cut the WU out, so I debated cleaning (I debate that a lot…mostly I do it for about 10-20 minutes and then I figure there must be something better to do). Then I remembered that I only had a little cutting left on the Mammogram fabrics, so I pulled that out…

and managed to finish. It took a total of about 7 hours to cut this one out…interesting, because it only has about 360 pieces in it. But many of them are big and complicated pieces, difficult to cut out. So now it’s ready to iron down as well. I will probably save that for after Spring Break, because it’s not a difficult task…it doesn’t require a huge amount of brain power. I really want to get to the fabric-choosing phase of the big quilt over break, which is looking more and more impossible as the days disappear behind me. Oh well. It will all get done. And I need to draw! I have two I need to draw in the next few weeks. I’m not worried. They’re smaller than this one, but inevitably, I will make sure they have 12 trillion pieces in them.

Yup. I’m a little crazy that way. But you knew that already. But I finished two tasks! In one day! It must be Spring Break. That never happens in my real life.