I’m Not Very Magical at the Moment…

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

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

2. Why do you hate me so much?

3. Why can’t you go faster?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I came home and cooked and then sewed some more.

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

And I did.

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

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

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

I’m not very magical at the moment.

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

Holy Panic Attack, Batman…

I think today needs to be wadded up in a tiny ball and thrown in the garbage disposal. I had a list of things to do, and even finished some of them, but then the day conspired to pick me up and throw me into a blender. As Robin would say, Holy Teeth Grinding…in case you are Batman-deficient, here’s a great compilation of some of Robin’s exclamations of holiness…

My favorites? Holy Sudden Incapacitation and Holy Knit 1 Purl 2. I wonder if Robin knits?

I think stress started in last night, and I’m not sure why, except that there are a lot of deadlines pressing on me at the moment and not enough time. So I couldn’t fall asleep until after 2 AM sometime last night, and then I was awake again at 4. I think I slept a little between then and 7, but not a lot. The kids went back to school today, so maybe that was it…who knows. I vowed to stay in my pajamas (something I really haven’t been able to do all Winter Break) at least until the health coach called. I started stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I really thought I was going to be able to get this done today. Ha! The universe looks down on me, puny and small, and steps on me. Seriously. I got about an hour in. I was hoping the health coach could help with the sleep stuff, but she says I’m already doing everything, although she pointed me towards aromatherapy, which I did once upon a time. I just went and checked the medicine cabinet (which is not actually a cabinet any more, just a hole in the wall between studs because the old cabinet’s glass was slipping out, so I just took the whole mess out before it killed someone, and I’ve never been able to find a replacement that wouldn’t require changing the hole size in one direction or eleven), but there’s nothing. It’s OK. I got a glass of wine instead…because it’s 12:20 AM and I am WIRED. Like I’m going to vibrate out of the room. Not good. Grape aromatherapy.

So at 10:30 or so, everything was still according to plan. I showered (I got to stay in my pjs for a little while…the simple pleasures) and got my list together, and went to the auto-part store (windshield wipers), the hardware store (lightbulbs and replacement keys and extension cords), and the grocery store (boychild has expressed a shampoo preference that is DIFFERENT than his sister’s for the first time in 18.013 years). I came back, changed the wiper blades in 14 seconds flat (it has taken me 46 years of practice to be able to do that), filled up the car with all the oil I had (it’s going in on Wednesday), installed the lightbulb, threw out the stomped-on extension cord, put the keys together for the girlchild (who has been complaining about not having her OWN car keys), and declared the kids’ bathroom a national, no, INTERNATIONAL disaster area (I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with them in the future…and I think I know what they will be doing this weekend, if I have to scream and throw cat turds at them until they do it).

All good. It still wasn’t even lunch time. I was doing well.

Yeah. Then I got an email about the journal for the Earth Stories project. Shit. Dammit. Fuck. I bought the journal two weeks ago. I started trying to find photos for it, but I had stopped filing photos properly last March (normal for me…I usually only clean them out about twice a year, when I have to), and honestly had put off dealing with it because going through photos was just too damn painful. Fuck. Cannot put this off any more. She wants it now. What she wants doesn’t exist. She’s perfectly within her rights to want it now…I said I would do it by early January. It is early January. I did not state which year, but I suspect that doesn’t matter. Unless I can manufacture a deadly illness or necessary surgery right now (not a joking matter), I’m stuck. So I started going through photos…I thought I was going to be able to do this whole Google Docs thing (trying to get used to it for school purposes) and maybe work on it at the soccer game on the iPad, but I’ll write more about all that when I write a good long horrible post about how NOT to make a journal after the fact.

Boychild arrived home, criticized my lunch fare, and I went off to get the girlchild from school and fill the gas tank. While I’m pulling up to the gas station, my cell phone rings from Upland, California. I don’t know anyone in Upland, California (OK, maybe I do, but I don’t KNOW that I know they’re in Upland). I’m going to ignore it (I am driving), but girlchild asks to answer it, and promptly uses goofy voice and tells them, Yes, She IS Kathy Nida. Oops. Then quickly hands the phone to me when she realizes that pretending to be me is a big mistake, because the universe is after me today and I just don’t know it yet.

Thus begins a strange conversation. It’s Road to California, an annual quilt show. They want to know if I’ve shipped my quilt. Um. No? I didn’t get in. Yes you did. I didn’t get an email. It’s in your spam folder. It wasn’t, by the way…I do check all my spam and it never came…now I could have apparently checked online to see if I got in, but it meant logging in to my Road account, not just looking at an online list, and that was early December and apparently it never crossed my mind…I just assumed because they said they would only send emails to accepted artists that I hadn’t been accepted. Luckily, they did call me and were still willing to have me ship the quilt, because it was due back on December 27 (oops). So I’m in Road. Which I guess means I’m going to Road. And they took the naked one! I was shocked. So one of my uteri will be in Ontario (not Upland), California…January 23-26. I’m not going to show you a picture of it, because if you’re at Road, it will be the ONLY quilt with a uterus that is at Road. Seriously. Wanna bet?

So I walked in the door with the girlchild and realized I had no boxes, drove to UPS while girlchild went to her soccer game, then back home, packed up the quilt, had to ship through Fed Ex, drove to Fed Ex and dropped it off, then drove back home because I had forgotten my tea (crucial for surviving January soccer games), then to the soccer game (I was only 11 minutes late). Watched the girlchild play, stitched some feet, no fucking way is my plan of finishing three blocks in two games going to work at all, because I am too slow. Whatever.

Yes, we are playing midgets here (not really…and we’re not supposed to call them that…this young dear thing actually pulled my daughter down later in the game…at least I think it was her…it might have been one of the other midgets).

It was late afternoon…hence the pretty light…but most of my pictures were fuzzy crap due to the declining light. I don’t know why I try.

I especially like how everything is tinged with orange, their team color…probably there was a very pretty sunset going on behind me, but I was too busy freaking out and stitching bird feet. Stitching does actually calm me down. Imagine how messed up I’d be right now if I hadn’t done that. At one point tonight, I sat down with the last of the heart disease comics to grade, opened them up, brain vomited panic and anxiety all over the page, and I put them away again.

Ironic that, because if I don’t get through all the grading soon, there will be a whole ‘nother level of anxiety going on.

I need time, dammit Spock…TIME. Spock seems better for that request than Robin…Robin doesn’t seem capable of helping at all, except to make me laugh. Holy Inappropriate Comment, Batman. Holy Pointy Ears, Batman. I hate being anxious like this. On the other hand, I often am uber-efficient when I’m this stressed. Holy Adrenaline Rush, Batman.

Luckily dinner was in the crockpot (I did that in the morning too) when we got home, and then I spent two or three hours manhandling photos and Google Docs and finally giving up and importing into Word, which was bitchy in a different way. Am I done? Fuck no. Don’t talk to me.

Oh! And I cut up a Christmas tree in the middle of all that, with the boychild’s help. In the dark. With a saw. And tried to fix the oven using the weird MacGyver device the oven guy left me (I failed at this attempt). And exercised, and meditated (in the 20-30 seconds when we are allowed to let our minds wander wherever they like, my brain performed dangerous karate fight moves and beat the crap out of someone. It’s OK…he deserved it…and it made me giggle.). And then I made the mistake of looking at college financial aid stuff, which just makes my head spin, and they want everything done by February 15, and that includes tax forms and statements and all this crap that has to be up-, down-, and side-loaded in 14 different locations. I guess the only people that get financial aid are those who have stamina. I have stamina, dammit. I do.

No more quilt action happened today. I did copy the missing pieces from the drawing I was taping yesterday (Fed Ex is where I copy, so I had the presence of mind to bring the sketchbook with me when I shipped the quilt).

I do wonder if I missed some crucial email from Road? I searched all my folders, including spam and deleted items…I have the confirmation that I entered and the email they sent today, but nothing else. I could have sworn I saw a rejection email, but maybe not. I just don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m going crazy with all this stuff…I can barely keep track of what I need to get done on a minute-by-minute basis, and then this stuff happens…makes me wonder if I’m all there. Where? There. Over THERE.

Anyway. I’m hoping tomorrow is better. I’ve made a to-do list already. It makes me feel better, more organized and calm, to have the list. I have timing issues tomorrow, but if I’m wide awake in the morning, then I will take advantage and do the gym early…I work better on the art stuff at night, and that will free up time for that. Presumably the exercise will get rid of some of this crazy anxiety too. Hell, some of this is probably hormonal (I just realized this…you’d think I would learn that any crazy seesawing from one mood to another is of course that stupid-ass estrogen fucking with my system again). Holy Uterine Involvement, Batman! Anyway, just be glad you don’t live with me at the moment, although it would be nice to have some calm influence who rubbed my feet and back and made me a bubble bath and a cocktail (I don’t actually drink those or sit in those, in either order) and told me everything would be all right…not that I’d believe them…I don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone who says that to me again. Sad but true. But someday. Maybe. Maybe I will be allowed to have that. Fucking universe. Go fuck with someone else. You’ve messed with me enough.

The universe says, Yeah, but you got into a show that you didn’t even know you got into. Isn’t that a good thing? Well, universe, wouldn’t it have been OK to tell me on the normal date and have me be able to plan ahead to ship and all that? Yes, yes it would. And then I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering how crazy I really am.

All right…it’s 1 AM and I’m still wired. Holy Melatonin, Batman (doesn’t work on me), what next? Read a boring book…breathe deep…maybe the quilt fairy will come in the night and finish my stitching, or even better! Maybe the financial aid/tax fairy will come and do all THAT for me. Now that would be a useful fairy. Don’t even ask where the depression was today…front and center…when I write about creating the journal.

Until the Feeling Sticks…

I planned a hike for this morning. I figure once school starts up again and the soccer season hits me fully upside the head (that starts tomorrow), I won’t have as much time to be wandering all over the place. I’ll write about the hike later. But I was sitting in a parking lot getting ready for this hike, and I had had a bad night and a bad morning, and I was already trying not to cry (as usual, what’s new), but…my ex emailed me (and a little while later, the girlchild texted me) that his mom had died last night…and I lost it. I’m not the most emotionally stable person at the moment, and I haven’t seen her in years, and yes I’m divorced and all, but she wrote me every year, usually more than once. And even when it was getting hard for her, she still wrote…to me. She kept up that communication for 10-plus years post-divorce and I always greatly appreciated her doing that, for not cutting me off completely, for keeping the lines open, for her news of a family I no longer officially belonged to. She was a caring woman and I will miss her spidery handwriting with her tales of music and fruitcake.

So I guess I didn’t start the hike out in the best frame of mind.

I’m not processing most of the day any better. I hiked…well, walked really. I went to the store. I weathered the teenaged girlstorm of last-minute planning (I’m kind of tired of that storm, I must say). I graded papers. I read a little.

More importantly, there was art. I think no matter the pain in your heart, whether sadness or loss or just a plain old bad day, being creative, even in a stupid paperwork kind of way, is good for all that. I’m not happier right now, but I am less anxious, more at peace.

I managed to iron down the whole Celebrating Silver quilt this afternoon…

I did it all on the entryway floor (luckily I chose to do this BEFORE we removed the very dead Christmas tree from the house, thus scattering pine needles into corners where they will not reveal themselves until some time in August). I had the whole quilt ironed together in a few large chunks: the earth base, the lower torso of the Crone with the Maiden and the Mother attached, the one bird, the upper torso with arms and staff, and the head and hair entwined with cat and owl. There were also some smaller loose pieces that couldn’t be attached until the whole thing was down on the background fabric.

It took a couple of hours, maybe three, to get the whole mess attached. At one point, I was looking at it and noticed the one dirt piece was much longer than the others…

Why? Fuck if I know. I cut it off.

Once I had everything sort of tacked down on the background, I moved it to the ironing board and tried to do a better job of attaching it, spraying each section with water and heat-setting it for at least 30 seconds.

I can’t show you the whole thing until the exhibit opens…in October. Seriously. I’m sorry. It’s really cool though! Seriously. It is. I’m happy with it.

Of course, I have hours of stitching left, so I should hold on to my feelings of relief for a bit longer. The happiness is a temporary feeling, chased away by anxiety over getting it done this week.

Despite having prewashed every fabric in the quilt, about three of the darker browns bled…

It’s not too obvious and I don’t know if I care. I have used colored pencils in the past to deal with that. I can do that again.

I set up the machine for the stitch-down phase, to start tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s under that towel.

Which is under that cat. Yeah. I know. Damn cat. She has a T-shirt that says Occupy Mom’s Quilts.

My brain is already thinking ahead to how it will stay occupied when this one is done…I have the breast drawing I showed you yesterday? Friday? Can’t remember what day it is now, let alone when I posted about that…I had enlarged it months ago and started taping it together tonight…

Once again, brain short-circuiting reveals itself. One section is copied at the wrong percentage (how the hell did I do that? Must have been unconscious) and I missed another two sections completely…so tomorrow, I will be going back to the copy place to deal with that.

I also started cutting and taping some of the smaller drawings I copied earlier during break…

I want a whole stash of drawings ready to go…this one needed to be filled out on the right. I often run out of page (I have been drawing things off the page since 4th grade, maybe earlier…the problem is not solved by bigger paper) and have to tape bits on to finish the drawing. I need to draw feet for one other one I got taped…

Anyway. These smaller ones are about 14×17″ or so. Maybe I will do one of those first? I do have another smallish quilt top that needs to be stitched down as well. Maybe I will find time for that this week…just continue the stitch-down process after finishing the big one (the big one with tons of pieces that will take me forever to stitch down, who the fuck am I kidding?).

I only got three of the smaller ones done, and now I need to fix another copy issue with one of the drawings. I really did not have full brain power when I went in to do these…amusing (or not) since they were done on two different days, about four months apart. Apparently my brain will not be returning soon. It has left the building and wandered into another time zone.

I meditated with cat on lap.

At least she’s warm. I’m always cold these days. I take my iron pills and the higher thyroid dosage, but it’s not helping. I’m constantly freezing. I need a fur coat (not a real fur coat, but a grown one, like Babygirl has…just carry it around on your skin). I’m OK with genetic modifications that might keep me warm in winter.

Meditation is focusing on feelings still…I’m good at the feels. I’m not good at good feels, just the feels themselves, mostly sad or anxious, occasionally angry. Some people think I should be angry more…more often, more angry. I can’t find a lot of anger. So the meditation says that intellectual, rational thought can obscure underlying feelings…yup. Not mine, though…I told you. I’m good at the feels. I’m not so good at the rational part. I can be intellectual, but I am ruled more by the emotion, the instinct, that gut feeling…Mr. Meditation says that feeling is about knowing what’s right for us. Sigh. That’s the part I’m having issues with right now. I know what’s right, but it isn’t making me happy. It doesn’t feel particularly good. I get little twinges of it, I remember what it feels like…sort of, when I got the whole quilt ironed down (yes, the one I can’t even show you right now)…so that is a good thing. I will just keep doing that until the feeling sticks. And if it happens to stick around for any other part of my life, awesome. I don’t expect much at the moment. But I will be prepared with lots of artwork to pull me through the coming months. Art Saves Lives. Seriously. It does.

Sleep…It’s What’s for Dinner…

It’s funny how depression messes with your ability to remember things, like the part of your brain that’s normally engaged in “oh hey, you need gas,” or “wash the damn bras, ” or “take down the stupid Christmas tree before it spontaneously combusts,” that part is on vacation. I’m not really sure where it goes or what it’s doing. It did not leave a note. There’s some sort of short circuit there that is different than the “I’m so busy” short circuit that I normally have to deal with on a daily basis. My calendar helps with that, as long as I remember to put it in the calendar in the first place (always an issue).

I’ve found that I am having other brain short circuits, though. I usually pick background fabrics for my quilts before I start ironing Wonder Under to fabric. I have the background fabric sitting right next to the table where the pieces are laid out, so I can compare and make sure the new fabric will work with the background, as well as with everything else. I am usually really good at picking appropriate background fabrics well before the rest of the fabrics are chosen. The quilt colors itself in my head, and I just follow that diagram.

Not so on this quilt. I still love what I picked, a deep dark rich purple…

But a lot of what I picked to go on top of it just isn’t going to work. Or even show up. I had a giant brain fart, I guess. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’ve never changed the background at the last minute like this. EVER. What IS that? Demon possession? If I weren’t so afraid of what I might find, I’d go back in the blog and find out when I picked the purple fabric and see what was going on then (nuclear disaster, dying pet, stroke).

Anyway, despite the brain fuzz, I finished up the ironing today…putting the owl together…

I was missing a piece, the leg above one of the claws, so I pulled the fabric for that (this is why I keep all the fabrics I’ve pulled for a specific quilt in a separate box until the quilt is done…then they can go back with the general population), opened it up, and found…

The missing piece…still attached to the fabric in there. Lucky.

And then all the thorny branches (which still don’t look good on that purple)…

And then I piled the whole mess up into a plastic box and drove to the quilt store, where I messed around with a couple of fabrics, all the while knowing what the background wanted to be…

That blue…which is much more turquoise in real life…and is now washed and ready for ironing (new blue on left, old purple on right). I had a not-work party (not a required work party, but a nice party where a lot of people from work just happened to be) tonight, and managed normal social interactions (shocking, I know). I came home and folded fabrics…

Because you can’t just buy one…and then tried to decide which I would do tonight…ironing or sewing binding on…because I also trimmed the Love (not Love) quilt (I really need to pick a name on that one)…

And sewed on the binding this afternoon…I still have to do all the handwork.

I started this afternoon, but didn’t get very far…

Plus Babygirl wanted to sit on my lap…or chew a hole in the quilt. I noticed the eye was twitching again and I’d been grinding my teeth since yesterday morning. Apparently a ton of exercise and art completion and some wine and even good news from the doctor do not make the stress disappear. Not even meditation does that. The balancing is not working well at the moment, at least mentally (ironic, since I’m on Winter Break still)…when I take time out to exercise and hike, it leaves less time to get everything done. But exercising and hiking do relax me, give my brain a break. But then I get more stressed because I have less time.

This is a frustrating conundrum. Still a work in progress. Speaking of which, apparently I looked so pained at the gym this morning, the staff needed to make goofy faces at me and talk to me so I had to take my earphones out and then they had to ask me if I was OK. Shit. Did I look that bad? I’ve looked way worse than that, I know. Sheesh. Carrying all the depression around in my face.

Anyway, I looked at the clock, calculated my wakeup time for tomorrow’s hike, thought about how tired I was from not sleeping well the last three nights, and decided to try going to bed early…now I started writing this post at 11:18 PM. In a former life (as Ms. America? doubtful), I would have been heading for bed at 11:18. Nowadays, I’m still artmaking then. I start to worry around midnight and think it might be time to stop that stuff and move on to the blogging stage of the evening. I’ve been making it into bed between 1:30 and 2 AM for the last two weeks, I think…with an occasional early night, but mostly not. I go back to school in a week. I think I have to readjust the sleeping soon. Anyway, I wrote the post and I’m going to go to bed, kind of a New Year’s resolution on sleep: do more of it and better. Or something. Sleep…it’s what’s for dinner. Nope. That’s not it. Please don’t send me any studies on how a lack of sleep guarantees you will die a horrible and early death. It’s not like I have any control over the process. I’ll get into bed and my brain will revolt against me and wander off into wakey wakey land for an hour or so.

The point was, I didn’t sew and I didn’t iron. I folded. And then I tried to sleep. Wait. I haven’t done that part yet. The cat on my lap is simulating that activity for me. She does it so much better than I do (not hard).

Brain all over the map today. Really. It just sucked. Tomorrow I will force it to be focused and aim for some semblance of what Kathy’s brain used to be. As a backup, I put everything I needed to do on my calendar. All of it. Seriously. If I don’t do it, it’s not important. Until it is.

Guardian Angel

I’m sitting in the parking structure at Radiology downtown. I have 10 minutes before I need to check in. I cried all the way here. I know the odds of there being something really wrong are extremely low, but it doesn’t stop my brain from being upset. I’m not worried, because I know that whatever it is, it already is…something or nothing…I’m just scared. Not too scared to get out of the car…trying to get my eyes to behave, my tear ducts under control. If I look upset, the nurses will be more solicitous and I can’t handle that now. Better that they’re rude so I can be irritated or angry.

They won’t be rude. They never are.

This is the drawing I did back in late June after a followup mammogram.

In June, I had my normal mammogram, and then they called me at school (strangely, I answered) and wanted a followup, but they couldn’t say why. Way to strike fear into a woman’s heart. My doctor called later that day to explain. Whoops. Timing issues. So I went in for the followup (it’s not the first time) and they did 4 or 5 mammograms and an ultrasound and the doctor came in and said there was this thing, deep behind the nipple, but it had been there for three years without changing…but he was concerned. Not so concerned to biopsy it, but concerned enough to have me back in 6 months. So I did that drawing. Ironically, it’s the wrong breast…but I guess I drew it as facing, on the left side. Anyway. It will be my next big quilt, I think. Maybe.

So I went back in today. I wasn’t worried…I was just scared. Those are different feelings. I do my monthly exams. I have no family history. I breastfed for a good long time.

They did three mammogram views and then she said they would call me, and I said, um. Yeah. Can you just have him look now, because I don’t want to have to come back? So she did. And yeah, he wanted an ultrasound. I pack myself out to the “Women’s Lounge” (a separate room in Radiology, so I don’t feel weird about sitting there double-gowned with my clothes in a pile on my lap). I tell them my time constraints (girlchild had her CT scan for today too). They take me in for the ultrasound, and I watch her, watch the screen, watch what they’re looking for. I don’t know what is good and what is bad. She says, “It’ll just take 5 minutes.” Twenty minutes later and she finally says I can clean up, but she wants the doctor to look. “You can get dressed.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” Yeah. I got dressed, and then she came back with the doctor and I got undressed again. Everything is covered with that ultrasound gel now. I think I stopped breathing normally somewhere in there. I sent a message to the girlchild, told her to meet me at her appointment. We already had a contingency plan in case this happened. Her text back made me tear up. She said good luck.

Doctor comes in. His name? Lumpkin. Seriously? (OK, it might be Lumkin, but still!) She does the ultrasound again. Shows him something. He asks about something else. They stare at my breast, then at the ultrasound. Then he smiles and says, “It’s that same thing, a shadow. It’s been there since 2007. It hasn’t changed. I just want two more views on the mammogram.” Gel off, new gown (old one covered in gel), sit in the ~~waiting room~~ Women’s Lounge (I am still not lounging) again. Back in, another two views, which makes five total. Deep breaths. They do the twisty roll thing this time. I’m laughing. The woman is on her knees on the ground, trying to position all of my parts in the right place. I’m looking up at the machine, and someone has put some sort of scented thing on the machine…lavender…to calm us. I’m calm. I’m in pain, but I’m calm. I’m not breathing right, but I’m calm. Whatever it is, it’s already there. It’s been in me for 6 1/2 years or more. Flashes of Aliens movies.

It’s OK. He says it’s normal tissue. I go back in 6 months to my normal mammogram. As long as it stays the same, I’m good. That foreign shadow is part of me.

As I head out for the girlchild’s CT scan, I wish I had my sketchbook. I haven’t drawn all break. No opportunities, I guess. Other priorities. I haven’t done much of anything, it seems. Not true, but it feels that way. Achievement low. Must fix that in the next week.

So I came home and started ironing again…

Didn’t have much time in the afternoon, because I was wrangling with the FAFSA (financial aid for college). I was supposed to know city and state for every college the boychild applied to (I didn’t).

Damn breast is sore. I got all of the torso ironed to the staff, so I pulled it off the teflon sheet and rolled it up on itself…

That’s how I store it until it’s time to iron it all down to fabric. I wanted to finish today, but ended up needing to think about sleep. I am actually fairly wide awake, even now, but I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, so I can’t stay up until I’m done. I do want to get a different background fabric tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I’ll take some of the pieces with me and toss them down on the floor, thus freaking out everyone in the store. Yay me.

In between all this, girlchild had a game…

I graded for the hour before the game…I bargain with myself about work vs. stuff that’s more fun.

Because taking pictures during the night games is totally pointless. I did more embroidery on these.

I’m working on the first two month’s worth. I’ve done all the embellishment in the background color on all 6 blocks, and now have moved on to eyes and feet on all 6. I originally estimated 2 games to finish 3 blocks, so it would be 4 games to finish 6. I’ve put in 2 games’ worth of time on the 6 blocks, so I should be done at next Wednesday’s game. I might be done with grading by then too, if I’m lucky…or at least the grading I can do while sitting on the bleachers. She played half the game tonight, so that was good, but there was all this stupid coaching politics going on, so who knows. I stitch because it keeps me calm during games. Plus I like to stitch. The one guy who’s been asking me about the birds every game asked me if I was done today. You so funny. I’m never done.

Anyway, we had been smart enough to put dinner in the slow cooker, so it was ready when we got home. I exercised and meditated, and finally started ironing really late, unfortunately.

I’m finally ironing the crone’s face…I got all the hair and the cat done, and then constructed the eyes and complicated bits down below on the pattern, so I could put them on top after…

It’s easier for me to see the pieces that way. I think each eye had about 10 pieces in it. She’s a complicated woman.

And I really like how she turned out. Deep breaths. I think this quilt is going to come together and be what I want it to be. I’ll feel better when I see it all together. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show the whole thing before the exhibit opens. I’ll have to go read the rules. You might have to wait until October. That would suck. I really don’t like rules like that.

Tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get it all together…there’s an owl to do and some thorny bits, and then I need to find a new background and iron the whole thing down. Not sure whether I can do that all tomorrow…and Sunday is a bit busy as well. But I’ll try. I also still have a binding that needs to go on.

I finished this book today…Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

I really liked it in the beginning, like 5 out of 5 liked it, but it really wore on my nerves by the end. He has a way with words, but nothing really happened in this book. It was interesting enough, but also irritating. So yeah…down to a 3 out of 5 by the end. It would have been better if it were shorter? I don’t know. I’m going to read some of his other stuff, because I like the words, but these two that I’ve read are apparently not his best, OR he’s all over the map. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really trust GoodReads reviews unless it’s someone I know who reads books I read. Otherwise, every book has been rated a 1 or a 5 by someone.

I have done a good job of keeping up with all the library holds that came in while I was on vacation…I’m not caught up yet, though. It’s been a good run…I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve also been watching Firefly, the TV series that is a Western in space. The boychild recommended it to me, and I’m almost through all of them. They grew on me. I wasn’t sure about the first two episodes, but the last four have been great. The dialog cracks me up sometimes…”That sounds like science fiction.” “We live on a spaceship, dear.” I’ll miss them when they’re gone…I guess that’s a sign of a good show.

So all the angst of the morning is still sitting in my chest, ironically, around about the same place as that shadowy invader, whatever it is. I’m calling it my guardian angel at the moment. Everyone needs one…she might as well reside in my left breast. But all the ironing helped. Getting the face done helped. It was successful. I need more successful, apparently. Eases the sorrow. The pain. The sad. I have this lockbox, open, inside my chest. It’s waiting for my brain to gather up all the feels associated with this pain and put them in the lockbox, close it up and walk away from it. Move on. Let go, says the counselor. My brain is like a pitbull with a steak in its mouth. The brain won’t do it. It picks up a piece here, a piece there, but as it’s reaching for that piece way over there, it drops one of the others. Goes back for that one and drops another. Comedy of errors, of lame-ass behavior, of not really trying? Who knows. I move on. I don’t, but I do. I move on and my brain stays back and tries to continue picking up pieces. I’ll come back when she’s ready for me.

Ironed My Way Out of a Hole…

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

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

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

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

I’m getting closer to done…

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

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

I finally started on the crone…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Resolving Anything…

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

Worth it for that tree alone…

And these…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She went together fairly quickly…

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

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

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

I’ll Let You Know When It’s the New Year…

So this is the magical change over to the New Year, when everything is fresh and you have a new slate and the whole year can be different than last year. Yeah. I bet you know what I think about that. It’s just a day, a night, an hour. I watched some of it earlier, not by choice. I reveled briefly (not really). I ventured out briefly. Then ironing fabric called me back. I spent too much of today asleep (girlchild’s bus was really late…she stumbled in around 4 AM and I didn’t really sleep until she was home), at the gym, or reading. Or just plain procrastinating, trying to give my brain some space to exist with itself.

So I did start ironing eventually, but my kamikaze plan to be done tonight is not happening. Not shocking really. I make plans so I can break them and make new plans, right? I’m not as motivated to finish as I should be. Part of my brain is squawking about deadlines and the to-do list, and the other part is trying to relax and be on vacation. They’re a bit at odds.

So I ironed the mother’s head…

I’m rethinking my background fabric. I think it will be too dark. I also think I need to do some serious threadwork or something…two of my fabrics are too close together. Or something. It may be that when everything is all together that it will make me happier. Until then, I’m stressed about it.

I was less stressed when I came back from trying to be sociable (it’s OK…I failed…) and started working on the bird…

Is it a hawk? It’s something not-raven for once…

And it has over 100 pieces in it, and it’s now done. I’m at about 550 pieces ironed and 5 1/2 hours in. Sigh. Less than halfway done…and the next three days are busy. But I think if I focus better (fuck, what’s the probability of that happening?), I will get done.

I made some more geocaching thingies today, but screwed two of them up by not remembering the instructions…

Anyway, if I have time tomorrow, I’ll do a couple more…

I don’t think it really matters how many I have…

I forgot to take an after picture, but I put two of them in upside down by accident…

So they didn’t flatten properly. Shrinky Dink science is very particular, and I am too much of a space cadet to follow instructions. So I made cookies instead. Actually, I didn’t do too well with those either, but they’re good to eat at least. Do I need cookies? Fuck no, I don’t, but I made the mistake of going to the grocery store after the gym and before eating anything, because I needed to buy supplies for the boychild’s birthday cake, and we’re all just damn lucky I didn’t buy a lot more food. Do NOT go to the store when you’re hungry and depressed…it is just a fucking bad idea.

Anyway…the mood is still rancid, so I’m dragging my ass outside on a hike tomorrow with people who don’t know me (really, that’s better for everyone involved…I can handle my kids or strangers…nothing in between), hopefully to beat my brain into some semblance of peace and calm in honor of the New Year, which again, is just the next day on a standardized calendar that doesn’t really make any sense. I’ll let you know when I think it really IS the new year. We can celebrate then. Apparently there are quail hunters on the loose where we will be hiking (I did not know this was legal, and I’ve never seen quail out here…I think…so I’d like to see one, preferably not shot, and I’d like to NOT see hunters). And then hopefully I will come back and iron the maiden (Iron Maiden, huh uhuh uhuh…) and then move on to the next thing on this beast. If I need a new background, I can decide that once it’s all ironed together.

Anyway, another loser New Year’s Eve for me…wish I could have spent it differently, but such is my life at the moment. At least fabric was involved…that’s always the best way to start a new year. Which reminds me, here’s the quilt roundup from 2013…

Not a bad year for quiltmaking, which was the good news…one is only a detail, since I’m not allowed to show the full quilt until May 2014…but 8 quilts finished (with one about to be finished this week and another within two week’s time, just like last year)…albeit, three were relatively small, but two of them were quite huge. So…achievement…in the face of nasty ass depression. At least I can still do that.

Sideswiped…

I keep getting sideswiped…like 2-ton vehicles slamming past and pulling me with them, too fast, throwing me to the ground. I try to figure out the why, why now? Why today? Is it hormonal? Is there some reason for the mood change or the lack of control of the mood? Is there something that has made meditation become a weepy place again? He talks about not knowing your emotions, so looking at the frustration, the worry, the doubt, and trying to find the underlying emotion to that surface feeling. Dude. It’s sad underlying sad. It’s sad all the way down. It’s just plain sad. I don’t need help identifying the emotion. But I saw something today that hit the sad into overdrive…and it’s not something I have control over…it just is and I, as he tells me, sink my mind down into that emotion and just sit in it…just sit there, like it’s a big overstuffed beanbag chair, kind of sticking to the back of your legs and not particularly comfortable, making noise every time you move…I just sit. And it’s an ugly color too, and those stupid tiny white styrofoam balls? They’re spilling out on the carpet too, but you can’t find the hole. Apparently the emotion should move on at some point. I’m curious when that will happen. What am I sad about? When will it move on? What is the difference between grief and sadness? Tomorrow I’m supposed to have a question for meditation. One? That’s it? Will he magically answer it? There isn’t enough magic in my life.

Yeah. So I didn’t do well with the sleep thing last night, so it makes sense that I’m writing this past one in the morning. I’m not at all tired, wide awake really, wired. I suspect it’s the artmaking doing that. I didn’t get to it until late, but then I couldn’t stop…I did the 100 pieces of skelly…

dead bodies hidden in the ground. Then moved on to a few other things I buried underground in this piece…

This quilt has symbolism all over the freakin’ place. It’s like my depression got a home in fabric. It will be oh so fun to explain. The boychild quite liked this part…

He’s been writing college essays for the last two days and hopefully his mother’s art was not the subject of a huge number of them…he won’t let me read any of them. I spent about 2 hours with him going through and paying for all the tests to be sent to the various colleges, and then going through and sending all of the application fees. He has 5 more to finish, 4 before Wednesday and 1 later next week. Then we’re done…until the acceptances go out, no stress, and I still have to do the FAFSA and we need to try to hunt down some scholarships. It’s all very terrifying, especially when I look at how much money I charged to credit cards today for all the fees. Yikes. Anyway. We’re mostly done until next year, when we have to do it again with the girlchild.

I went to school in the morning to grade the last of the science journals…

I had to do it. I had put it off already for two days…but it was as depressing as I thought it would be. There are parts of my job that I enjoy, but the hard work parts of it just make the rest of my life seem so much worse…so I sat there for a minute, staring out at the empty room (they’re waxing floors on Thursday, so everything is up or out), and cried. Then I turned up the music real loud and graded and wondered what magic miracle was expected of me to get some of these kids to give a shit about their classwork, based on what I was seeing. I probably shouldn’t have done that class last…they are a bit challenging. But getting pressure from higher-ups that makes you feel like any F is a failure on YOUR part, and then going through simple assignments like this? Makes you want to quit teaching and go work for the Republican party. Yes. It’s that bad. It would be easier. I think.

Anyway…politics aside, I’m pushing through the grading best I can, because grades are due the week we go back to school. It depresses me to grade at the moment, so I try to do it in small amounts, spread out over many days.

I’ve been falling down on some of my jobs for an art group I’m in, so I tried to get my act back in gear today. I just need a routine. If it feels hard, I just put it off at the moment. I can’t handle anything hard. I say that, but I’m ironing a million tiny pieces down. Hard is relative.

I’m geocaching later this week, and I didn’t know what to bring to put into them, but remembered I had been given an Shrinky Dink oven and supplies many years back, so I pulled them out and started drawing…

Then colored them in and put them in the oven…

Which is powered by a 60-watt lightbulb…

They came out teensy weensy…

But I think that’s OK. The flame head folded over on itself a little and didn’t fully flatten. I’ll make some more tomorrow.

The boychild is interested in geocaching, so we might do that on his birthday. He’s turning 18 on Thursday, which is more than a little terrifying. Not as terrifying as paying for college, but close. His Christmas present included hiking boots (his request), so I’ve been trying to get them broken in.

We spent a few hours this evening picking up the kids’ dad from the airport; he’s been in Britain for 2 weeks visiting family, especially his mom. Part of my Christmas present came back with him. One thing that always amused me about British TV and books from when I was younger was how important tea was to their culture, but I didn’t really understand it until I lived there. It’s where I got addicted (and I still drink British tea with milk, thus confusing the majority of Americans, including all my students)…this mug was a gift from my ex-SIL and family, and entirely appropriate to my life at the moment…

Tea does solve many problems, simply by making you sit down and drink it properly. Sometimes a cup of tea perfectly brewed and at exactly the right temperature can bring an immense amount of calm to my troubled brain.

So I washed and folded all the red fabrics I bought yesterday (yes, some were NOT red)…

The one on the left was going to be the binding, but it lost out to one of the other ones, which I was lucky to have bought a yard of anyway, because that’s all that was left on the bolt and I had this niggling feeling that it was a better choice than the one above. I’ll try to get the binding on sometime soon so you can see it…but right now, I’m still on a roll with ironing…

I was going to stop after the bird, but the woman was calling to me…above, she is still in pieces…

Apparently she called quite loudly, because I got all of her ironed except for the head.

Which maybe is why I’m still up (but finally getting tired) at holy crap in the morning. Plus the girlchild is coming back from Pasadena, where she’s been working on one of the floats for the Rose Parade. I wouldn’t be a good mom if I didn’t wait up. Actually, if I’d thought I could have gone to sleep earlier, I would have.

Earlier today, Babygirl was helping me use the mouse.

Right before I took this picture, she actually was sleeping with her head on my mouse hand. Ugh.

Then Midnight was standing watch for a while too…

Actually, she spent most of her time sleeping.

Jake went home today, so the cats seem to feel more free to move around. Jake chases them, stalks them. Calli could care less.

Anyway. I’m hoping to iron more tomorrow…it’s taking me about an hour per 100 pieces, so there are about 8 1/2 hours to go. That’s a lot. Hmn. That might be unrealistic, when I look at what else is going on tomorrow. The ironing did distract me for a long time from the sadness that is lurking around and gut-punching me on a regular basis. Meditation made me think about something I had said or done that was positive, and I remembered making an effort to tell these two girls who are in one of my roughest classes that they were rocking science right now (they really are…and the other positive thing I had come up with just made me cry more, so I picked the girls)…they’re both kind of different and went into teen-girl glow mode when I said it. I was just thinking about trying to encourage girls to be more into science through high school when I said it, plus I wanted them to know I appreciated how hard they worked. I don’t get any happy glow out of it, though. I’m supposed to…for making them feel good. But that’s part of my job. Sigh. I think my emotional machine is out of order. It doesn’t react right. And I’m getting this vision of the Wicked Witch on her bike (broom? Wizard of Oz?) cackling that I will PAY, my pretty, I will pay. That I have been wicked somehow and I will pay.

I should probably iron a lot more tomorrow instead of spending close personal time with that part of my brain. It needs a vacation or something. And the sad? It can go fuck itself. I’m tired of it. If it’s going to be sad, be sad about something that’s real, that’s true, not something that was apparently bullshit and a lie. Oh if only it were so easy to direct the mind to be sad about the right things and to drop the wrong things. The creative mind…it kinda does what it wants. We can try to direct it all we like…it will decide how to be.

I’d like to decide to be asleep now.

Loosening Knots…

I’m trying to move on to the next steps for both the in-progress quilts…I keep getting behind on my self-made schedule. Sometimes it’s just getting side-tracked…sometimes I just can’t find the right mood to get to work. Today was more of the latter, I think…a very moody day. I delivered two quilts for a show up in Orange County opening in January, then went to the quilt store to try to find binding for the Love (not love) quilt.

I think I bought a lot of red fabrics and I’m not even sure that the one I chose for the binding is all that good. It’s a little difficult to open up your naked-lady quilt on the floor of the quilt store when there are that many people wandering the store, and it’s easier for me to choose when I can see it from a distance. My red stash is getting low, though, and good reds are hard to find. I’m not sure I really did the right thing with buying more red, but…sometimes, the fabric calls. I was in a bad mood, so that was not probably the best time to go shopping. Sigh.

Money is such a mess at the moment. The car’s catalytic converter is dying or has died, the upper oven in the kitchen is going twonky again, but in the other direction…I can’t afford to fix either of those at the moment, and luckily neither is particularly crucial. The car will drive without the catalytic converter working until it needs a smog check (I try not to think about my contribution to climate change, thank you), and there is a second oven that works fine at the moment. I can try adjusting the oven again like the fixer guy showed me, or I might need another part, which is another hundred bucks or so that I don’t have at the moment.

So yeah. Maybe I should have pieced my binding from scraps off the floor. I do think that sometimes…what am I doing making art and entering shows when money is tight? I have two quilts that need to ship this month too, so that’s more money out. Sigh. I’m sure there’s a balance and I haven’t found it…probably never will.

I did make myself sort fabric pieces earlier today though…

I love the light table for this…it makes my life so much easier…I used to do this on the floor…

and my foot would fall asleep and it would tweak my back. Now it’s a piece of cake.

It took about an hour and a half to sort all 1250 or so pieces into the bins, one for each 100 pieces.

Lots of tiny little freakin’ pieces on this quilt. Seriously. It’s detail heavy. I hope it’s worth it. I hope it looks good. It does on paper.

I started ironing tonight…this is the first 100 pieces or so…

I was going to keep going but (1) realized I hadn’t exercised or meditated and it was getting late and (2) realized the next 100 pieces were pretty much teensy weensy skelly parts…

And it was going to take me forever to cut out all the finger and toe bones…some parts I don’t cut out until I’m ready to iron them down, because they’re so small, I will probably lose them. This quilt has lots of those. Anyway. I’ll do that tomorrow, when I feel a little less tired. Hopefully. I always forget how addictive the ironing is…it can be really exhausting, but it’s also very mind-consuming at times…it eats up all the available space and puts me in a great head place, very meditative and calming. Luckily, that’s what tonight was like…which is why it was hard to stop and do the stuff I knew I needed to do. That bodes well for getting this sucker ironed quickly. I want it done in the next two days. Seriously. Then stitched down and quilted. Yes. Seriously. I can do it. I think.

Yes, there are other things on my list for the next two days…but I think I can get it done.

I’m not sure the mood is better, now that I ironed some, but there is progress. Progress is good, even when it doesn’t fix everything. Sometimes moods are bad. Sometimes you wish you had done things differently, better, so that you wouldn’t be stressing over buying red fabric and fixing an old car so that it might last another 4 or 5 years. Too many regrets. Regrets sounds like egrets. Too many egrets. That is a better picture. I’m going to think about lots of egrets instead.

Sigh. Yes, I have to talk my brain out of the hole on a regular basis.

It didn’t help that I read this today, Joshilyn Jackson’s Someone Else’s Love Story…

I loved this book at the beginning…it was a great story that grabbed on and stuck. I had a hard time putting it down last night, but I managed to force myself so I could get something fabric-related done. I finished it today and…sigh…the ending. Oh well. I still love her writing…she has an easy, lyrical and descriptive style to her stories, and the depth of character is wonderful, but this one fell apart in like the last 30 pages. I was disappointed in the end…it was too pat, too pretty, too perfect. I’ll still read her stuff, though, and in fact, I started reading her books because I read her blog and she is hysterically funny, and that does pop up in her books. Her characters are quirky and the stories are too.

This story had sad running through it, though, and that made it harder to read…just because of where I’m at. I keep reading advice for the depressed, for those trying to be happy, for how to have a better life, and so many say that you should only read/see happy things when you are sad, and I’m not sure that’s good advice. I’ve been reading happy, sad, neutral all along, and the happy is kind of annoying at times, and then even more depressing at other times…like, why do THEY get to be happy when they are such lame-asses or assholes or fuck-ups? Wait, does that mean I am even MORE of a lame-ass? Yes, the brain ties itself up in that knot and I have to undo it…like the knot I took 20 minutes to undo at the soccer game on Friday night, cold hands and all…sometimes you just have to sit there and work the knot until it releases. I’m really good at that. I have lots of practice, both with thread and with my brain. This knot it’s in now? It’s gonna take a whole lot of time to undo. It’s a thoroughly fucked-up knot, all twisted together and hair strands are holding it together, like something that tied itself together in the dryer, tangled and tight and messy. I’m just picking at it with cold hands, cold heart, pulling at it, worrying it, fussing with it, making it loosen and come apart, a little at a time. It’s a stubborn knot, but it will eventually give.

See. I have hope. I always have hope. I don’t know where it comes from, and it often gets beaten down by the part of my brain that sees the world as all gray and oversalted and empty, but it’s always there, like a weed popping up in a crack in the asphalt.

With that, I’m going to take my cold self to bed, where Kitten awaits…

She sleeps on the pillow behind my head, and when she wants me to get up, she hurdles me, chirping the entire time…over and over again until I get up. Hopefully she’ll wait until a decent hour tomorrow morning. That would be a nice change. Maybe the knot will be a little looser too…