Hamlet Murdered Me…

I was thinking about artistic influences over the last three or four days…I remember being influenced by the psychedelic rock posters of the 60s and 70s (Mouse and Kelley for starters, some Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, ), but that was probably in college. I also remember being fascinated with Robert Rauschenberg, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Mary Cassatt (not quite the same as the others), and Frida Kahlo…but I think that was all more college, except for Cassatt. I remember searching for female artists…and being given Cassatt and O’Keeffe, and not a whole lot else. I also credit Dr. Suess and Richard Scarry. Seriously. I do.

And years of life-drawing classes…those were definitely a big part of my being able to draw what I draw. But what is it about my brain that makes it obsess over making art and drawing and putting together pieces that can be shown, and the brain of one of my artist friends who is content with decorating her house? We both have art degrees, but I couldn’t give a lesser shit about that stuff; the art holds me together like glue. Everything else leaves, but the art stays with me. It’s always there, sometimes lurking under the surface. It always pays attention, it never acts up, it doesn’t leave me in the lurch, doesn’t hang me out to dry, doesn’t have a midlife crisis and make me wish I lived on another planet, where humans have brains in their heads. It doesn’t make me wish I could go to sleep and wake up somewhere where everything made sense again.

It’s just mine, the art is. All fucking mine. I try to explain where my brain goes when I create. I don’t even feel like myself at the moment unless I am creating. Seriously, ironing fabric makes me feel more like Kathy than any other thing I do all day, every day. And even that is just a shadow of whomever I used to be.

I tried to do grades this evening, but either my computer or the interface between my system and the county’s grading program are just not happy with each other…I had this problem last time…it takes forever to update. I’ll have to finish at school tomorrow. There are only so many hours in the day. But grading and inputting numbers is just plain old depressing, even when you see that one kid, that one you’ve been working on for like 3 months, her grade finally pops up…she’s finally made up like 30% of her grade and she will be passing this trimester. Cry a little, happy tears, and then realize you have another 5 who are completely blowing everything off and up.

Confessions of a middle-school teacher: it’s hard to care about every kid all the time. Sometimes you have to cut your losses on some and focus your attention and energy on the kid you know will actually change their behaviors with your attention. Some kids, they’re never going to change anything…you’ve given them a 12-week window and they’re still not getting there. So I stop caring about that kid? Do I stop harassing him every day for work? Do I stop getting on his case? Of course not…I’m just not expecting much out of him.

Anyway. I graded until I started to cry. That’s sad, really, but at least I stopped there. Then I started ironing fabrics again…

Honestly, I didn’t get far. I’m tired and my head hurts and I’m in that depresso mode that doesn’t work well. It gets frustrated easily. I finished all the fleshy bits…but then I needed to make decisions about hair color, and my brain, well, it just full on creaked to a halt. Fuck. Dammit. Obviously I need to sleep on it (the problem, not my brain). I feel like I’m constantly trying to modify my mood with breathing and rethinking and exercise and reading and drawing…like I can’t just exist here on the planet…I have to work my butt off in order to exist. It’s kind of exhausting. And even more depressing.

On the way to work yesterday, I was thinking about the morning mood, which is often particularly shitty, and I thought, “Goddammit, I forgot my sketchbook. I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I don’t want to deal with grading or students or whining about a test tomorrow. I just want to take a nap and then finish my book.” Good mood to start the week.

I did finish my book, Going Bovine by Libby Bray,

About a teenager who gets mad cow disease and tries to fight it in a variety of amusing ways. It’s a good story. That said, I need to stop reading sad stuff when I’m going to be at the gym. Most of the book wasn’t sad, by the way. I will definitely read some more of her stuff.

Boychild sent me these…

He was doing an Ophelia project that required help from his sister…

It’s amazing how creative they can be. Downed eucalyptus branches from the storm, old dead roses from Christmas that I still haven’t thrown out (they made it outside), and a sign about Hamlet that is now strangely in my bathroom. I don’t think the dog was supposed to be part of it. I think he got rid of the sign for the final…it was too fucking obvious.

Speaking of not being part of it, Babygirl insists on sitting on the back of my neck tonight.

I’m getting a nasty crick, but she’s in a mood.

I understand that…I’m in a mood. I really did want all the fabric ironed tonight and it’s not. Fuck. Oh well. Progress is slow, but at least it’s progress. That’s the closest I get to hope these days. Oh good, you did 39 more minutes on this project. That’s 39 minutes closer to the next project. Maybe that’s the one that will make a difference, that will kick your brain out of quicksand and into happy mode, into satisfaction, into something approximating Kathy-normal, not to say real normal, but where I don’t feel completely WRONG. Because that’s how it feels now, like my skin doesn’t fit, like the eyeballs are in the wrong place, like everything feels wrong, fits wrong, sounds wrong. It’s just fucking wrong.

I go find my sketchbook and put it back in my work bag. Maybe it will save me.

What I Do While You Sleep…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can sleep when I’m dead.

That One Thing

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

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

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

That was followed by this…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wolves rock by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All righty then. Moving on.

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

Maybes.

My brain is disturbingly empty tonight. I’ve been poking around the edges, looking for some insight into the emptiness, but there’s nothing. Ha. Nothing in the emptiness. Sigh. Knock knock. I don’t appear to be at home. Maybe I’m on vacation and forgot to let me know. Dammit. Stupid irresponsible brain. Never can count on it to be mature and follow through.

I went to the girlchild’s soccer game and stitched through the whole thing…

Well, except when I was trying to take about 40 blurry pictures of her because it was dark and I hadn’t quite admitted to myself yet that it was too dark to be trying to photograph anything. Did I mention my camera is currently taped together? Yeah. So I took a lot of blurry photos…

I have no idea what is going on in this photo…

And in between I stitched…

Like the only picture I got of her that wasn’t significantly blurry was because she was almost standing still. I don’t know why I work so hard at this. I got amused later when one of the parents, whom I’ve known for YEARS, told me he thought I was British…like I’d lost my accent years ago. Say what? Dude. I’m born and bred Californian…OK, by some mistake of weird geography (my dad was stationed in Alaska in the Army and I was born on an Army base there), I was not actually BORN in California, but I might as well have been. Both my parents are from California as well. I have been amused by this all night. I’m a secret agent Brit masquerading as a typical Californian artistic freak. OK, not so typical. Whatever. I embrace my British roots (well, I do have some of those…but Scottish).

They won the game. We knew they would. I’m really REALLY looking forward to the next game on Friday, because they’re predicting lots of rain and lightning storms. Yes, I will still stitch. I have that cool setup where I put the plastic-covered blanket over me and the umbrella sits in my bra (seriously, it props quite well in there), and I stitch under the umbrella. Yes, it’s a little crazy. I don’t think we’ll get past Friday’s game…we’ve played this team before and we usually lose…although we tied them a couple of weeks ago. Who knows.

I got home and didn’t have time for the gym, so I just made my dinner and ate and read a little and exercised, and then the ex called because his car broke down and he needed me to pick him up, so I did that, and then made tomorrow night’s dinner for the kids, so I can go to book club, and then I meditated and then it was time for bed. Or writing, then bed. Not very exciting. Then again, most of my nights aren’t very exciting. What’s new?

So no art. No deep thinking. Nothing really. Just empty. Seriously vacant. Wanted to draw. Wanted to pick fabrics for the Mammo quilt. Realized I didn’t have a background fabric picked out. I have a bunch of hand-dyed backgrounds I could use (probably too busy), or I have the dark purple I originally picked out for the Celebrating Silver quilt, but then rejected. I think I decided that was my best choice. And a little-old-lady cat with dandruffy skin just jumped on my lap, even though I told her it wouldn’t last long.

I finished reading this tonight, David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls…

I’m still not sure what the title means, but how could you NOT read a book with that title? It’s a bunch of essays. Some were quite interesting, some funny, some I just didn’t care about. I’m not really an essay reader…maybe because I actually read essays as part of my job…although Sedaris writes better than 99% of my students (I have had a few very funny and articulate students).

Really, the best thing for me is to take the empty brain to bed and do a restart tomorrow. Maybe after book club, I’ll be motivated to pick fabrics. Maybe I’ll feel like installing the absolutely adorable (really, they are…they are so tiny and cute) external hard drives I got to try to ameliorate the computer issues I’m having (running out of space). Maybe I’ll make dessert and eat it. Maybe I’ll make it to the gym (OK, not tomorrow night, for sure). Maybe my brain will check back in from whatever vacation it’s on at the moment and let me know something helpful, something pertinent to my healing.

Or not.

Take a Sad Song…

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

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

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

I figured out what was on the other side…

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

I did finish the Wonder Under on the Mammo quilt…

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

Calli doesn’t seem to mind her existence…

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

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

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

I wish I didn’t have to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching for Better Than This…

When my head gets all tied in knots, I have this stash of partially written or barely started posts in draft form on here, and that’s what I put on the blog. It’s like fill-in-the-blank posts, posting-lite, don’t have to think too hard about posting…like the Road to California post…I had all the pictures resized and stuck in the post. I just had to go through and add all the names and links. I can do that without hardly thinking about it…and yet it takes up mental space and time. So I don’t have to deal too much with the goo in my head that wants me to feel bad. Avoidance. Book reviews? Same thing. I have about 8 other posts that are started in draft form, just sitting there, waiting. The Chihuly glass one? Started with photos, but then words took over.

This weekend? Not so much fun. Just keeping my head above water. Trying not to think too hard about feeling bad, about feeling sad. Trying not to remember how I used to feel, because that Kathy does not live here any more. She has moved out. She is never coming back. She can’t get in past the hoard (imagining when they try to get in the front door and all the crap that’s been hoarded is blocking it, and you can only squeeze in).

I went to a movie last night. I used to go to the movies almost every Saturday night. I loved going to the movies. I don’t love it so much by myself. I did it, though, because I felt like I was being punished for being alone, that I didn’t feel like I could do the things I love because of that. I’m becoming a hermit. OK, I was kind of hermit-like before, but I’m getting worse. It’s because it’s honestly too hard to be with people. I often feel more lonely in groups than I do at home alone with my sketchbook and my fabric and a cat or two. It’s sad. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. Right now. And realistically, the movies cost money and money is really tight at the moment.

So I picked a movie I had wanted to see when I first saw the trailers ages ago (there were others, but they weren’t at convenient times), and I drove out there to the theater and I cried through almost the whole movie and all the way home. I saw Her.

It was good…although it had some slow bits and the ending was…eh. Thing is, when I see people with technology now, out to dinner, hanging out in groups, everyone is doing that…talking to themselves, to their OS instead of a human…so it’s creepy, but not that far off of reality. Shades of that book…crap…Wake, by Robert Sawyer, where the WWW becomes conscious and starts talking to a teenage girl…because I know that’s who I would choose to talk to if I were the web (not). Anyway. Here’s why I’m on Goodreads…so I can look shit like that up, books I read before that I can’t remember the name of because my brain is like mush.

I suspect it’s really that so much of my brain is otherwise occupied that stuff like that just slips through.

So that was really successful, guys! I joined a couple of movie-going groups on MeetUp…maybe it will be a better experience. Of course, I can only go like one night a week, and most of their movies are not on that night. Sigh. But it’s better than this. It’s got to be. Something has to be. I keep searching for Better Than This…it’s an island in the Atlantic and there are no boats that go there. I might have to swim.

All the hikes I wanted to go on this weekend were too many hours for a two-day weekend…I had too much I needed to get done, so I got up this morning and hiked Cowles Mountain instead. It’s a quickie, but still is a good workout. San Diego has two mountains that get the shit hiked out of them by every weekend-walker and lame-ass wannabe hiker in the whole town: Cowles and Iron Mountains. The annoying part is the number of people…and the number of people who don’t know trail rules (yes, I’m a hiking elitist, sorry, get the fuck over if you are hiking that slow please)…and the number of dumb bimbos and assholes who are hiking up the side of the mountain, not following the trails, destroying it for future generations. Yes, I yelled at two girls. I apologize. Wait. No I don’t. They were being stupid. Ladies, if there’s a fence, it’s there for a reason. Where are the vicious rattlesnakes when you need them? Avoiding Cowles, for sure. I should carry one in my pack for times like this, just hurl it at the dumbshits who can’t walk on a trail without damaging sensitive habitat. Yes, they went over a fence right next to a sensitive habitat sign. I don’t feel bad about yelling at them.

That said, I did it fast (the hike) and proved I am much more fit than I was 7 months ago, when I would have to stop to rest. I didn’t rest at all, and I ran the downhill, passing two of my former students. HA! That was funny. And their mom. YOUR MOM. Sorry. Middle-school brain took over. I did pass your mom though. She’s looking good. You should be proud of her.

I didn’t do much in the way of art, because I was doing a lot of work-related shit. Which sucks. Always. I did a whole 16 minutes of cutting out Wonder Under…

The thing is, there isn’t much more to do on this one…then I’ll be on to the next step of picking out fabrics. But to what purpose? Hell. I still don’t know. Still don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t push it. I knew I’d be done and have to go on to the next step and I wasn’t in the mood. It’s depressing to finish a step right now. I hate that. It used to be fun, sometimes even exhilarating. Now it’s just fucked up.

Then I cleaned photos off my phone. My computer is actually getting full. I have too much music and too many photos. I need to do something about that, like soon. I meant to do it over Xmas and freakin’ ignored it. It’s too much for my brain to handle, like the broken sprinkler lines. I just can’t take it on. I have to though.

The girlchild got reading glasses.

Which is funny, because it was the boychild we thought needed glasses and turns out his vision is almost perfect. She describes her vision as “buzzy.” We said, “vibrating? blurry? fuzzy?” She said, “No, buzzy.” The child has her mother’s way with words. Oh well.

There was this…

Now, it’s one thing to put all those words on the back of your car (to remind you? because it’s not reminding others…driving along, OH SHIT…I’ve blown number 8. Dammit.); it’s another to spell one of them wrong. Sigh.

Jake helping the girlchild make her bed…

I am still learning to take panorama photos on my phone…I inevitably do it wrong three times before I do it right.

That’s Penasquitos last weekend. NOT a panorama.

And here it is again…done almost right this time…

Pretty, huh?

And here was the top of Cowles’ Mountain this morning…

San Diego does have the weather, doesn’t it? OK, summer will suck. I’m a little worried about summer. I won’t be able to hike like this. I don’t do heat well. Maybe I will borrow my ex’s kayak a lot. Maybe I will swim more. I don’t like swimming though.

I finished this book…A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore…

which is a good thing because book club is Wednesday. I liked it. I liked his turn of phrase. I like his weirdo stories. It’s the second of his books that I’ve read. It’s a little wacky, a little out there, but amusing and not dreary. Probably that was a good choice for the weekend, because it was a bit dreary…except for the hiking bit.

I watched this, a Tate Gallery video on nudity in art through the ages…

What’s funny is that to actually link to this video, I had to persuade YouTube that I didn’t need Safety Mode on my videos. They thought it was unsafe…I guess you shouldn’t watch it at work (I thought it was pretty benign myself). I like their shorts…educate the public about art. God knows we aren’t doing it in school any more.

This week? This week is the girlchild’s team finally making it to the CIF playoffs…two games this week guaranteed unless a volcano swallows us up (could happen), a book club meeting, and I think I signed up for two hikes next weekend, just because I think one will get canceled due to rain (she’s a real water wimp, the leader is). I set some goals on the art stuff for this week…I have two drawings I’d like to get done…one is in the sketchbook and one has been copied full size, but needs more. I want to finish the Wonder Under on the Mammogram quilt and start ironing it to fabric. I’d like to get all the wool cut out for Ivy’s quilt too, but I suspect I just shoved more into a busy week than can actually realistically get done. All that is better than thinking about the muck my brain wants to wallow in, though, so hopefully it will keep me distracted. If not, I may be back here again, clearing out photos and writing filler posts that don’t let my brain think too hard about reality. My other goal is to try to go to bed earlier…those super late nights aren’t helping. Maybe just 10 minutes earlier each night until I get back to something in the realm of sanity? Or not. It’s got to be better than this.

Road to California 2014

I know. It’s taken me a while. It’s been a rough month. Too much stuff going on. When I found out my piece was going to be in Road to California, I set up a road trip with Julie and my mom…Julie was really nice and drove us…first stop? The bathroom. The mens’ bathroom, which is kind of underutilized at a big quilt show, so they had made this one into a womens’ bathroom…complete with flowers in the urinals…you know, like you do.

Julie and I set out to try to understand the various categories of the show…I had entered Art, People, since, as it lists, “quilts in this category must illustrate some recognizable aspect of human form.” I think most of my quilts do that, but you have to watch Art, Pictorial, because it might be Naturescape AND People. In the beginning, we weren’t completely jaded about the categories…this is Sandra L. Nehlsen-Cannarella’s My Palette, which actually has a 3-D arm coming off of it to paint the still life.

And is Art, Naturescape. OK. I accept that. I liked the arm too. Even though it’s cut off. It’s one of the winners…this link takes you to information on all the winners.

Then I had to photograph this Sue Spargo piece all in wool…this is the block-of the-month Imperial Blooms, now available in book form, this version sewn by Diana Tatro.

This is when I remembered that I was at a regular quilt show…because this is a pattern and it won an award…and it was even the BOM fabrics, so the maker didn’t even pick those? It was beautifully made, don’t get me wrong. It was under Innovative, Applique. Yes, Sue’s stuff is not traditional applique, but who exactly is being innovative here?

I photographed just one piece of this one, Magic Carpet Ride by Janet Wilson, because I liked the edge treatment…it was different.

By the way, I would love to link for websites on all these quilters, but if I can’t find them, I can’t link them. If yours is on here and I missed your site, please let me know and I will link up to it.

Always a crazy quilt fan, this one was a little too regular for my tastes, but I did like the edge treatment (there’s a theme here)…this is Gypsy Rose by Patty Johnson.

Here’s my mom’s head examining it up close…

Two quilting friends with their pieces hanging side by side, Linda A. Miller’s Linear Moves and Sherry Davis Kleinman’s Geisha.

This struck me because of the triptych and the movement of color…this is Monument Valley at Sunset by Cathy R. Geier.

And these fish were very cool…this is Aqua Meets Marine by Gail Wax.

Lots of beads and scales on the fish.

These three caught my eye because of the metallic fabrics and the tight, very controlled and detailed quiltings…this is Odin’s Trilogy by Linzi A. Upton.

Really, you should go to her website just so you can see her quilted yurt.

I think that was the point at which Julie and I became jaded…for instance, there were lots of little quilt guild or group challenges, which I have taken part in at times in the past, but this one…it’s hard for me to be intensely critical because it’s not meant to be art, and the maker is certainly messing around with materials in a creative way, but I’m not sure whether Road wants to be a local quilt show (like the San Diego Quilt Show, which pretty much shows anything and anyone, except nudity) or whether they want to be an art quilt show. They’re not IQF…they’re more of a Mancuso show. I hadn’t been to Road for a while, and I used to go way back when it wasn’t juried, so it has improved, but I guess that’s it…it doesn’t want to be a big art quilt show. It wants to attract a lot of art quilt wannabes and traditional quilters…so I’m not sure I belong in it, honestly.

This is Bread #2 by Barbara Ulrey Schafer…a reminder of communion time…please note that the plastic tabs form the shape of a cross.

I’m hoping she collected bread bags from friends, because that’s a lot of carbs.

Sheila Frampton-Cooper’s piece on the left, The Ray, The Roses, and the Portal, actually worked quite well with the more traditional piece on the right, Hexahedron by Cecile Choi.

Two things going on here…first of all, Frampton-Cooper’s piece is Modern Piecing, a category that “should utilize improvisational piecing techniques,” and Choi’s is Modern Negative Space, which “should be set with large amounts of negative space.” I think this is where Road went a little bonkers…I’m not entirely sure where the lines have been drawn between art quilts, modern quilts, and innovative quilts, let alone traditional quilts with a modern look, like Amish quilts or even Gees Bend quilts can be. Maybe it doesn’t matter unless you’re crazy like me and Julie and you’re trying to see what is in which category and WHY.

The second issue was the fold marks…see the folding down the center horizon of both the quilts? Word is that those hanging the show had the pieces folded in half on the floor, so if you spent a lot of time ironing all the wrinkles out, it was to no avail.

This is Valley Snapshots by Timna Tarr, Modern Piecing. Why is it not innovative? Not sure. Don’t know what the difference is.

It’s pretty, but…I don’t know what makes it modern.

This one is more modern to me…I actually really liked this, until I saw the orange…the orange was too much of a gimmick. This is Didn’t Get the Memo by Alissa Haight Carlton. I like that the triangles are more regular in some spots than others. This is Modern Piecing.

This one is Bias II, also by Carlton…this also has a more modern feel to me…this is Modern Negative Space. Sigh.

There’s some awfully arbitrary designating going on here. Because the one below? It’s Resonance by Heather Pregger, Art Abstract.

Don’t get me wrong; I like most of these quilts. I don’t like the categories. I guess if we just look at them as ways to give out more awards and more money, and maybe that gets more entries into the show, then maybe that’s a good thing, but I think it’s unnecessary categories that don’t really make sense. I can see trying to figure out what category to put an abstract piece into based on where you thought there would be fewer entries, so you’d be more likely to win money.

And here, to confuse the issue even more, is 369 Gees Bend Road by Rachel Keller, Innovative Pieced. It could have been Art Abstract. Someone might argue it into Modern Piecing. Who knows?

I put this in here so you could see the BACK of Alsea Highlands Falcon by Karen L. Donobedian.

Here’s the front, but I really liked the back.

I put this one in here for two reasons: cool thread-painted raccoons and funky quilt shape. This is The Birds’ Perspective: Life at the Water’s Edge by Ann Horton.

This one was quite beautiful…at this point, Julie and I would walk up to a quilt and try to guess what category it was in before looking at the signage. This is Basket Weave II: SeeSaw by Ann B. Feitelson. This is Innovative Pieced, based on a traditional quilt pattern.

This…well, you had to put this one in…although the fuss about quilted toilet paper is now years old…this is The Real Quilted Northern, and strangely, it’s in the Miniature category, where it so does NOT belong. This is by Jerry Kay.

This was a beautiful painted bird, with lovely quilting lines for the show and the trees in the background. This is Winter’s Veil by Patt Blair.

This one is strange…I’m not against strange. Y’all know that. But this was strange. This is In the Beginning by Robert Hix. Aah. Makes more sense, hate to say…but here’s some freaky on this. I would totally put this in the Art Abstract section, but it’s in Modern Negative Space (say WHAT?). And then the statement…the statement says, “Sometimes simple designs are encouraged by a lack of decorations. Simple visual effects can be rendered quite tedious by actual techniques.”

Huh? OK. I’ve written some oblique statements in my time, but…I really want to know what this thing is about, and all I know now is that it’s tedious. And it reminds me of my new leach field.

This quilt, you couldn’t get far enough away to photograph the whole thing…it was hanging in an aisle space and 400 people were crowded around it…it was a prize winner though, so you can see the whole thing on that site above, but I really loved the quilting. Amazing. Not sure I care for the rest of it…it’s OK…but the quilting was amazing. This is Time to Catch a Dream (sigh…here’s where I give a big collective sigh to the need for quilt artists to have puns or crafty word use in their quilt titles) by Claudia Pfeil, Innovative Mixed.

Here’s part of it…like I said, you couldn’t get a whole picture of it. But Innovative Mixed? OK. Innovative is supposed to “implement fundamental deviation from traditional patterns and settings and should reflect growth through tradition.” Sigh. OK, if I stretch that definition, I can see innovative parts of traditional blocks and piecing throughout. I would still put it in Art Pictorial though…or something in the Art categories…although she won a big prize, so maybe I’m all wet?

Naw, she was fine…Best Embellished Surface…she could have won that from any category.

So here is my crappy picture of where my weirdo art quilt ended up in all of this…and I never got a better picture of the stuff around it. I think I was so confused and irritated by all the categories by then that I didn’t really care.

II was surrounded by Marvin and Ruffie (the dog) on the left and a dragon on the right. Where else do you put the only uterus in the show?

This octopus was great, but I do not like the background…it’s way too busy and detracts from the creature. This is Mischief Maker by Sue A. Wilson.

This is actually an old redwork quilt of signatures, part of the Lest I Shall Be Forgotten exhibit.

Here was a crazy quilt on a strange hanger in the same section…it would have been nice to be able to see it better…

OK, here’s a modern quilt, surely. Hell yes, this is Pods by Heather Grant, part of the QuiltCon exhibit…a modern quilt special exhibit separate from the modern quilt categories in the show itself. Grant is one of the founding members of the Austin Modern Quilt Guild, so she is sure she’s making modern quilts (and I agree with her).

This quilt was cool…Sushi III by Mary Kay Price…Innovative Mixed, in case you were wondering.

These two little sorta creepy dolls were by Nola Hart. I’m not usually a doll fan, but these were just creepy enough.

My camera had a hard time with this quilt because of the bright colors…but I loved the birds. This is Bad Hair Day by Martha Nordstrand, one of the Road Faculty. The birds are based on molas.

Here is David Taylor’s Maynard…nice use of negative space (but not modern), and you can’t turn away from a dog butt quilt.

So the quilt show wasn’t just in the convention center…some of the vendors were out in the parking lot under these big tents, but the trees of the parking lot were in there too.

And some of them were a little worse for the wear (the sides of the ceiling sloped down near the edges and the trees no longer fit.

So. What did I think? I bought nothing. The vendors were a lot of the same stuff, geared more towards traditional quilters. I didn’t buy much at Houston either, though, so you shouldn’t hold that up as a pro or con. I thought the show itself really crowded the pieces in, I didn’t like the categories at all…I thought they were confusing and fussy and made very little sense. It was more a popular quilt show than an art quilt show. I’m not sure I’d enter again…is it really worth all that shipping and time and effort for only three days of exposure? If it were IQF Houston, I’d say yes (a lot more people and a higher level of art, I think), but I don’t think my stuff really belongs there. Will I travel up there to see the show again? Maybe. I’m not highly compelled though. It was worth the drive because I got to hang with Julie and mom and we saw quilts, but I don’t know that I would be that motivated to do it again any time soon. Your mileage may vary…I’m obviously kind of a fussy art quilter.

My Still Quiet Calm Is a Rabid German Shepherd

A student today was asking me how I dealt with the really annoying obnoxious students. She said to me, “Ms. Nida, I know you always say it’s not worth the energy to hate them, but how do you NOT?” It’s true. I do say that. I think you would have to do something truly heinous for me to hate you, like kill one of my kids maybe. Even then, I’d probably be analyzing your childhood and wondering about the chemical imbalances in your brain that would make you think it was OK to do that. Then the students wanted to know how I stayed so calm, so patient…and I told them I meditated. For some reason, that amused some of them, amazed a few others, and then a couple just nodded their heads, like, Yeah. She meditates. Makes sense.

It was an extremely difficult day. My patience was worn incredibly thin. I need to find my way again. I think I can, maybe even tomorrow. I know I was making parent phone calls from my daughter’s soccer game today. I don’t know if it will help. I do know I don’t hate a kid who is acting out. They have reasons…not excuses, but certainly reasons, whether they know about them or not. It’s better that they get it out of their system and learn how to cope with it in 7th grade, rather than waiting until they’re in their 40s and inflicting that on the world then.

So I meditated tonight and I am still dropping the black oily blob of my depression into what he calls the stillness and clarity of the light within me. The light is supposed to melt or dissolve the question or the problem. I’m visualizing the light like melted butter, trying to melt down this black goo, and sometimes I can make it work, but tonight…tonight it’s not still or calm, there’s no quiet confidence, as he projects…there is nothing but a savage dog (the color and smell of melted butter) grabbing that bitter-tasting black ooze and piercing the outer coating with its sharp canines, throwing its head side to side in a frantic attempt to bleed the depression blob of all its power and lifeforce. It’s growling menacingly the entire time, planting its front paws firmly on my heart and shaking hard again, trying to dislodge the black tar from my parts…it keeps sticking to my organs, trying to grab on, take hold, grow like a parasite.

My still quiet calm is a rabid German Shepherd.

Tonight? Tonight I’m OK with that. Sometimes the visualization does what it needs to do, and apparently tonight it needs to beat the crap out of something.

I was supposed to have quilt class, but the teacher wasn’t feeling well. I was hoping to get a lot of Wonder Under cut out, but in the end, I graded a bunch of stuff just to get it out of my hair, and then I cut stuff out for a short time…

I wanted to draw too, but decided it was more important to try to get to bed at a semi-reasonable hour (which I didn’t do).

I stitched at the girlchild’s soccer game…

These are Month 4 of last year. Her team probably made it into CIF, so there will be at least one more game next week. Honestly, I’m looking forward to a break after that. She will go back to club, but will not play for three months due to the back surgery. I think there’s one possible tournament in there before the surgery. Unfortunately, she says she wants to travel to the other tournaments anyway…someone needs to tell her that driving to Arizona the week after back surgery is not happening. Both her dad and I have tried, but she’s not listening. Reality will kick in eventually.

Besides, I can’t afford the hotel and gas at the moment.

My leach field is done, but I got home in the dark, so I haven’t seen the final product yet…tomorrow morning. So that was the cost of a new car. Bad timing.

Her game today was on a blue turf field…

With their orange uniforms, it was very pretty…

She did get to play a little…it was a fairly tense game, but they won.

Sometimes they do know how to pull it together.

Sometimes I do too. Although it doesn’t feel that way lately. I have to say that the hormonal crap that goes along with perimenopause makes it really difficult to fight sadness and depression. You’ve got these hormonal swings that are too frequent to modulate well…and they are often extreme and unexpected. If you’re already feeling low, it just fucks with you in a major way. I can be real intellectual about it here, now, but knowing what’s happening doesn’t always stop it from happening. You just understand what it is. You can’t stop it. I do everything I’m supposed to do (except get plenty of sleep). Maybe it helps in the long run, but in the short term? Not so much.

I am not looking forward to anything in the next three days except sleep. And that is not a sure thing. I’m going to try to change that mood…art is in the works, as is exercise of some sort…and catching up on grading, which is not very nice or exciting, but has to be done…and since I know I have two hiking weekends coming up right before grades are due, I should try to be focused on it this weekend. I may take the boychild out for a hike. I may sit in a hole with my depression and observe it (aka draw). I may discover a cure for cancer. All these things might happen.

Dissolving Problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Place You Go…

I’m sitting here (Sunday night) waiting for the laundry to finish so I can put the girlchild’s soccer stuff in the dryer for tomorrow morning. I’m actually kind of wide awake…must have been that 26-minute nap I took this afternoon when I realized I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That’s the problem with hike days…they do kick my ass and I get very little else done, which is why I can’t do them every weekend. I can’t lose a day every weekend.

This is a 3-day weekend, though, so I still have tomorrow (Monday, yes I started this on Sunday night) to play catch up. I had a rough day yesterday. I actually cried on the hike…usually I don’t, but strangely, being in a group that large was isolating for someone like me. I’m not an extrovert at all. I need space, both mental and physical. I felt like some alien creature. It was so loud and raucous and overwhelming…I had to strike out on my own and physically super-challenge my body so my mind wouldn’t freak out. I have an event coming up with a lot more people than that…and I’m worried about my ability to deal. It’s strange…I spend all day with tons of people, but I don’t feel so out of place with my students…they are safe. I can handle interactions with them. Interactions with large groups of strangers? Fuck that. I’d rather stay home. I will be that crazy cat lady who never leaves the house if I’m not careful. The hike was redeemed slightly by the last 30 minutes spent talking to one other person. I can handle interactions like that, but you have to have something in common or at least something you can talk about.

It was a relief to come home after the hike and space out for hours, grade some papers, hang with my kids, cut out some Wonder Under. I appreciate the physical exertion and being out in nature, but hanging out in groups isn’t making me happy. Then again, nothing much is making me happy.

So in the middle of this post, the rant came through and became its own post, and then I went to the gym to try to leave some of my irritation and anger there instead of carrying it around. I’m debating calling the doctor (hemorrhage!), I need to find eye doctor paperwork for the kids, I haven’t prepped for tomorrow, I need to go to school to check for lab supplies, but I can’t get out of my driveway, because they are in fact digging holes in my front yard so my toilets might work properly someday. I’m wondering if I will ever stop grinding my teeth, if my eyelid will ever stop twitching, if I will ever sleep properly again.

The part I was having issues with was people making assumptions about other people based on how they behave or look or are labeled. I’m constantly amazed by how different people are than what they project…my leach-field guy looks like a redneck, talks like a redneck, and then starts talking to me about the Lord of the Rings trilogy and how many times he’s read it and whether Smaug is the coolest dragon around or what. The guy is 64 and you’d never think to look at him that he could have slogged through that series (god knows I haven’t been able to after multiple tries). You cannot make assumptions about people. You have to talk to them and listen to them and turn on the part of your brain that pays attention to someone besides your arrogant self, and only then can you make any decisions about people, and you still have to leave open the possibility that you are completely wrong. Maybe I know that from teaching middle school for so many years. Maybe I’m just that kind of tolerant person. I don’t know. I just know that it’s not OK to hurt other people. And sometimes people think your emotions are hurting them, but it is really their response to your emotions that’s the issue. I had the girlchild full on screaming at me this morning and I realized that she was having the same issue…her emotional reaction to what I had said was hers and hers alone. I was not the cause of the screaming. She was. Granted she’s a teenager and doesn’t modulate her responses well…she’s not Asperger’s, but teens often have this idea that they are the only people on the planet (shocking!) and it can manifest in similar ways. “My way is the only way.” Boychild and I often have discussions about her inability to realize there are other people in the world who might not have the same priorities as she does. In this case, I let her stomp off and slam a door, and then she came back and it was eventually all OK. I wonder what it will be like when they are both gone and I no longer have to tiptoe around those kinds of emotional outbursts. I wonder if her roommates will survive! I wonder if having the girlchild as his sister has helped the boychild navigate emotions any better…god knows they are full on in his face on a regular basis. His sister screams. His mom cries.

Wondering about my own sanity. Wondering after reading someone else’s blog if there is actually always a way out of depression, or if it just becomes something you live with for the rest of your life. After this weekend, I don’t see a way out, I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, I don’t feel like it will ever change. It does not help that my hormones are going ballistic. I could really live without that additional mess in my head…hence the thought to call the doctor…more because of the physical symptoms than the mental…the physical symptoms set off all the alarms on the stupid online symptom checkers. But I already know what they will say, what they will want to do. They’ll use the words ‘abnormal’ and ‘dysfunctional’…ironic because those can apply to my physical symptoms and my mental symptoms. OK, not fully dysfunctional, because I do manage to function fairly normally…I’m just patently aware of how nonfunctional my functioning is.

Anyway. I find the solution to all this angst, short-term as it might be, is that silly thing called art. My brain wandered about a bit, trying to figure out what it felt like doing, until that urge to draw came a banging at the brain door…so I pulled this one out from before, in December sometime (was it really that long ago?)…

I had copied it and taped it to another page, so I found that and started drawing downwards…

Shades of the Celebrating Silver quilt…I still need to put yet another page on the bottom…

because she needs more room. She wants the rest of her body. She told me. She demanded it. I listened. And I need to figure out what else is happening here…maybe more of those crazy birds. Who knows. Draw, Kathy. It gives you some peace. Draw the assholes out. Draw the arrogant jerks out. Draw the emotional reactions and put them on paper. Make someone see what’s in your head. Make someone feel what’s in your head. Make.

I made it to my quilt guild tonight, for the first time in 12 months, I think. Mary Pal was speaking and she and I had seen each other Saturday night at the Coast to Coast opening. I think we might be sisters from another mother…we are in the same shows, feeling some of the same artistic angst. I hope for her sake that she is not feeling the rest of my angst. It was nice to hear her talk, to feel her deep hug again, to feel a connection to a fellow artist who plumbs the depths of her artistic self to make work in the middle of the night, by the skin of her teeth, in the early morning light. To feel a connection that deep to someone you barely know…simply because of the place you go when you work.

Art can be amazing that way.