Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Deep Shit*

It’s one of those introspective weeks. I want to get more art stuff done, but there is so much other crap that needs doing…plus honestly, spending time with the monsters kind of takes precedence. I say that, but I’m stressed about getting the art done that NEEDS to get done. I have deadlines. I’m not a flake. I can’t ignore them. And my brain keeps getting tied up in knots, tripping over itself. I wish it would just get ON with it.

It doesn’t help that I’m still dealing with grief and depression, or both, or some sort of frittata of the two. Even the counselor was trying to decide which…she thinks I’ve been suffering from a low-level depression for a long time (yup. agree. since about March of 2012) such that I don’t know how to NOT be depressed. But there is definitely a difference between how I was feeling then and how I feel now. Now it is just a dead, empty feeling…a constant sad, even when things are good. The things that made me happy, joyous before? Even when I was depressed? They don’t. I keep doing them. I know I have to keep doing them. The art is part of that. I get a sense of peace from certain artistic tasks, like drawing and tracing, but some of it is just like work, and finishing one part just means there will be more work. There is a sense of relief from finishing a task, but not the sense of celebration, hallelujah, that I used to get. I think that just takes time. Some people think it takes meds. I’m not in that camp yet. I don’t see how that will speed things up…it will just put the emotions off, over there; I will still need to deal at some point. I’d rather deal now…even if it’s fucking slow and hurts like a bitch. I can take it. Better now than reliving it later.

And that just fucking sucks.

Today? Today I should be celebrating my ass off. I finally FINALLY finished quilting the Love (not love) quilt…

Yup. I hunkered down a couple of days ago and thought I would be done, but the thread conspired against me and kept breaking and there was cat hair everywhere and I just didn’t have the stamina.

Yes, it takes fucking stamina sometimes. So it took a total of 7 hours and 36 minutes to quilt that sucker. I’m buying binding fabric tomorrow. I won’t finish it until 2014…there’s really no point in trying to finish it as a 2013 quilt…it’ll age out even sooner.

I started quilting it over the Thanksgiving week break, so it took a month. I was kinda lame during that month though. You have to get into the rhythm to quilt and I didn’t get there. It’s not a huge quilt either…so who knows what my problem was.

I also finally finished cutting out the damn pieces for the Celebrating Silver quilt. Here’s the trash…

I’m scared to throw the trash out, in case I messed up and threw a real piece in there (it happens). It took me a total of 15 hours and 35 minutes to cut all those pieces out…

I started on November 25 and have worked pretty consistently on it. The pieces were fussy…that’s why it took so long. Tomorrow I’ll sort them and start ironing. I realized I probably have 40 hours left in this quilt and only two weeks of break left. Insert panic here. I’m figuring another 15 hours to iron it alone…so that’s my New Year’s Eve plans right there, eh? Yes, I’m a loser. I do actually LIKE working on quilts as the year changes over. Maybe it will signal a better year for me.

Insert conversation with counselor here. We’re having some growing pains, the counselor and I, wherein she believes certain things and I believe others, and the two are not meeting in the middle. I don’t think it’s a death sentence to the relationship, but there is some understanding that needs to happen. Meditation usually helps me with that…it seems less judgmental…more supportive of the shit I am dealing with. There’s the semantics of “letting go” vs. “moving on.” I think I’ve done the first on some level, certainly in my head, but am completely unprepared for the second…and probably that will be for a good long while. It’s not just a matter of trusting others…you have to trust yourself, and that’s a harder deal for me at the moment. I get real caught up in words, in what they really mean. But there was the question of what is making me so sad? Is this grief? Depression? Does it really matter? What did I lose? Did it ever exist? My brain worries these things into the ground and comes up gasping for air and weeping disconsolately. Fuck. Just shut up. This is why I go to the gym and read books…so I don’t have to listen to my mind trouble things out. Meditation has been very relevant lately…when someone else does something wrong to you, you are the one carrying it around. You can’t control what others think and feel…you can only deal with your own response…so that is what I’m trying to modulate…my own response. I need peace and resolution within myself. Everyone else can go fuck themselves right now. I just need to give my own head the space to heal. I’m doing that on my schedule. If you think I should be further along? Well whatever. You can think what you like…it’s not my reality.

This all comes back to finishing…finishing things should feel exultant, joyous, successful…like achievement has occurred…and it doesn’t. I just try to fill the empty space that is now there with another project.

The cats have been helping in here…really…

by leaving fur everywhere…

I had to pack up two quilts for a show opening soon and the cat hair was the biggest issue. I dealt. I deliver tomorrow. Two more to be delivered in the next three weeks. These are not bad problems to have. I just wish they filled me up with some sense of achievement. Instead, they seem to magnify the emptiness. That just really sucks. I hate that feeling.

Jake…Jake was farting heinously tonight…

But we played with him and I think he even got popcorn and maybe some chicken. Big mooch. Girlchild was in a mood, alternately happy and psycho angry. It’s kind of typical for her…

I have to go to a thing next weekend and needed a nicer top for that, so she helped…but really, she wanted to shop (and she did, and hey! The 80s are still back and are still frightening). I managed to get her to stop watching sitcoms for a while so I could finish cutting pieces out (I have a very low tolerance for stupid happy)…

This is the embellishment I finished last night at the alumni game…

Not much of anything, but something. I’m grading stuff too, a little at a time. I’m trying to be efficient, to make lists, because otherwise I just completely forget what I’m supposed to be doing. My brain is on vacation in Tahiti and it’s not answering texts. Asshole.

I finished this book today…Hammered, by Kevin Hearne…

It’s the third book in the series of the Iron Druid Chronicles…there are three more books out in this series, which is considered urban fantasy. The main character is a druid, but there are witches and gods and vampires and werewolves and demons and all sorts of good things going on. This was a good book…the last one, there was some argument about Hearne’s treatment of female characters, but he riffs on that in this book, talking about the macho imperative. I will keep reading the series, but need to get through some of the other books on my docket first.

*the title is from Hammered, Kevin Hearne. It’s how many days feel…better than being in the valley, but still in the shadow.

To Settle My Soul

Christmas Day: The house smells of red velvet cake, then cauliflower soup, and now short ribs. The deviled eggs are made, spiced with fresh pepper and mustard (it’s one of the two things I was allowed to cook). I’m watching The Paradise, a British program set in the 1870s (supposedly an “intoxicating love story”…I’m not sure about either the intoxication or the love, but it’s so far from my reality with the young girls falling in insta-love that it doesn’t hurt to watch it), while trimming fabric for the Celebrating Silver quilt. I’ve cleaned up all the gifting trash and the girlchild is cooking dinner. She’s a freakin’ expert at this point, needing zero help most days, creative in her exploration of food while simultaneously destroying the kitchen. Seriously…it’s now 24 hours later and I still haven’t cleaned it all up.

The day is quiet…

We have parents and dogs and cats, but their dad is missing (yes, he’s usually here), and the girlchild misses him. The boychild may as well, but will not admit to it (yes, he’s covering his face).

Calli is quite happy with her new toy…

And with all attention thrown her way.

I stitch through most of the present-opening. Stitching occupies the part of my brain that likes to wander off into WishLand or Depressoid World. So it’s better to keep it working on something.

Girlchild put on an amazingly presented meal, which of course, I do not have a photo of…or maybe I do on the phone. I don’t know. She even gifted me placemats and napkins for the dinner table, plus borrowed matching plates and bowls from her dad’s house (she preferred his color scheme to mine apparently)…

Impressive. I don’t know where all her cooking/presentation brain power comes from…it must be related to the part of my brain that makes art…the creative bent. But I couldn’t care less about food presentation…it’s just fuel to me…although she makes very good fuel, that’s for sure. I feel exceedingly lucky to have her and her cooking expertise in my life. I am a better cook because of her, and I eat better too (tonight’s open-faced chicken sandwiches with pea pesto were to die for…seriously. I wouldn’t even have made them, because it sounded too weird, but they were damn good).

After dinner, we play a rousing game of SmartAss (you know, like you do). It goes on for a long while; we don’t set an ending time (besides, I won in about 10 minutes on the first round…apparently I was a super SmartAss on Christmas Day…probably to make up for being a Space Cadet the rest of the time). I stitched through most of the game as well. By the end of all the festivities, I’ve managed an hour and 37 minutes of cutting out pieces for the new quilt PLUS I’ve sewed almost everything on the wool birds…

Actually, last night I thought I was done, but I realized this morning that I still have two cotton pieces to sew on…

Whatever. It means I start embellishing at tomorrow’s soccer game. I don’t know if it’s healthy to always be distracting my brain from the bad sad stuff, but I’m getting pretty good at it. It won’t go away all day, though. It always surfaces somewhere: at the gym, in the car, during meditation, when I wake up, in my dreams. There’s no escaping it. It’s just there. I don’t know when it will go away…maybe never.

We usually do a family photo with the kids in front of the tree with whatever animals we have that year. This year, we decided to toss me in there as well, because we have three cats who don’t like each other enough to be held by the same person. Kitten is my cat; she barely tolerates Midnight, the girlchild’s cat, and Babygirl, though she likes me as well, is definitely the boychild’s ward…as much as she is beholden to anyone (she really does channel her previous dead owner’s personality). Calli belongs to the girlchild, and Jake is their dad’s dog, but he was better at sitting still and in place than Calli, so we gave him an honorary spot…

There it is…the official 2013 family portrait. I do have copies of the real-live official family portraits my mom had done a few weeks ago…maybe I’ll post them later. It’s sad that I’m the shortest…by far. Oh well. I never claimed to be tall.

This is my Christmas fabric haul…

Mom says I needed more dirt because I seem to be making quilts with lots of dirt in them. OK. And flesh. I’m always using flesh…although I think some of that flesh fabric might be better as hair. And that black spotty fabric…now I feel a challenge to use it as flesh. Or dirt. Or both. Or not. I did enlarge a bunch of smaller drawings at the copy place on Christmas Eve…I had to go pick up my Sightlines quilt, which has now returned home after almost 4 years of traveling, so I decided to use the copy machines as well, since I was already there and it was on my To-Do list for break. I’ll hopefully be doing some of those in January. I copied WAY TOO MANY drawings, but they’re small. I’m worried about not having anything to do. Crazy, that, really, considering the number of big drawings I have sitting around too…and my To-Do list is staggering for the rest of life too, at the moment. But if it’s 10 PM on a school night and I need some art-related activity to chase away the depression, then I should be prepared. I’m a Girl Scout through and through.

I cut more pieces out today…almost three hours’ worth…

I’m over 14 hours in now…you can see the pile of trash is big. I was hoping to get everything done today, but the bin on the left still has a couple of hours’ worth of pieces to do. So I quit. I’ll hopefully finish tomorrow. Then I can start ironing on Saturday. I got all freaked out about getting done…with everything. I’m going in to school tomorrow to grade stuff too. I can’t let stuff slip, however much my brain is trying to force my hand, make me wallow in shit and not get work done. It needs to grow up and deal. The eye-twitch is gone. That’s good. I’ve been sleeping more…although not well. That’s good. Exercise has obviously been a priority, and that is helping. Spending time with the kids is also good…we’ve watched movies and played games and hiked and shopped (seriously, the boychild stayed shopping with me rather than go home with the girlchild…stranger things have happened!). I appreciate this time with them, because they will be gone soon…off to college and then to their own lives…and I hope they do it better than I did. I haven’t been the best role model for relationships, although I have definitely taught them how to get back up off the ground and survive, despite all the shit. I guess that’s something. I hope they have less shit in their lives…there are people I know who never go through anything really bad…may my kids be in that group.

The title to today’s post come from the PBS show I was watching…”I long for peace…to settle my soul.” Mr. Moray in The Paradise. I actually think Moray is a total ass in this show, but whatever…I’m with him on the sentiment.

Keep Driving…

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

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

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

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

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

which may just be about me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I am still cutting things out…

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

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

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

Compare and Contrast

A common school topic: compare and contrast. What things are similar; what things are different? Is there a Venn diagram in play? Christmas 2012: I was stressed, but relatively happy. I was very happy to start vacation and I got lots of art stuff done in the weeks leading up to Winter Break, as well as during Winter Break. I was happy. I even wrote that. Christmas 2013: I haven’t gotten through all of it yet, but I’m not really looking forward to anything…even sleep is kind of pointless, because when I have a chance to, I still don’t manage it. I will be making art, but I do that all the time now. It will be nice to have a break from school, and yes, I’m still stressed, but it’s all coated with sad and feeling bad, so none of it really feels like it matters. Even finishing quilts doesn’t feel like it matters. That’s lame. Definitely not happy.

So in the intersection, in the Venn as it were: stress, making art, finishing quilts. Does that mean those three things don’t contribute to my happiness? Then what does? How do I make the jump from YES, the last six months have sucked big time and you’re really sad, to a new life where I’m not sad all the time? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I know I managed technology issues this year for the big December school project way better than last year. I am a million times more organized. I only almost lost it twice, and in the end, I didn’t lose it. I breathed. Three kids survived my wrath. Seriously…sometimes teenaged behavior is beyond my understanding. There is no concept of consequences in their minds. Then again, some adults are the same way. I guess they piss me off the same way. No. That’s not true. I write off adults like that. They’re just fucking stupid. The kids still have a chance…their prefrontal cortexes are still developing and may still turn out less assholular. Empathy is part of that…there are adults with no empathy for others, no understanding of others’ lives, even when they are very different from your own. Empathy…a pretty important quality in a person, especially in a relationship. If there is no understanding of how the other exists, of how they navigate their presence on the planet, then there is no real relationship, is there? I get empathy from across the planet. Aliens are empathizing with me and I with them…I swear.

The kids and I ventured out together as a family unit to do some secret Santa and other Christmas shopping. I texted to the girlchild (on the other side of the store) about studded leggings for the niece (apparently not acceptable), while the boychild tried to pick out a stuffed animal for a girl he barely knows. Fun stuff! I did find plenty of Zombie bullets (see previous posts), so I am feeling OK about that. OK, girlchild found them. I paid for them. Nerf has gotten a lot of my money over the years…

Two more days of school…my brain has not even engaged with the concept of Winter Break. I’m so far behind on everything…it will just have to be that way this year. I suck this year. I may suck for years to come. I don’t know how not to suck at the moment. My kids are approaching adulthood and are weathering their mom’s suckitude in a great way. They are propping me up on either side. They will be there when I am old and crazy. They will make sure I’m OK in the end…they will make sure I get to make art until I’m ready to stop…if ever. I can’t imagine navigating this world without them.

And yet, despite the suck…I exercised, I meditated, I cooked dinner. I did artistic stuff…

Still cutting these fuckers out.

The pile gets bigger…almost need to just toss it out because it will make a mess soon. I’m at almost 8 hours. Four to go? Maybe? I don’t know how efficient I’m being…not very.

So the reason I was comparing the two Christmases was because I went back and read December 2012 to see how much art quilting I got done, because I am concerned about getting this complicated quilt done on time. In reality, I am much further ahead on my grading than I was last year at this time, and like I said, way more efficient about the technological parts of the projects that were due today. I will still have grading to deal with over break…that’s unavoidable…but last year was really really bad and I’m trying to avoid that this year. I did have two quilts in progress last year during December, although I was further behind in one, but the one I was cutting out had a lot fewer pieces than the Celebrating Silver quilt does. Plus I got out a week earlier than the kids last year, so I had all this time during the day and I got all the Christmas shopping done. I am having a really hard time with that this year, because I have no one around but me to do any of it…and even wrapping is impossible because they are always here. So I will need to deal with some of that at some point. I don’t know when.

As far as the quilting goes, I think I will be OK, because I do actually have a good chunk of January in which to finish, but I need to leave time for photography as well, so I’d really like them both done by the end of my Winter Break. So that’s my goal. Plus start a new large one and some smaller ones. Plus find some happiness somewhere and try it on for size.

I don’t actually believe that I can do that right now. I don’t think it’s an option. I don’t know how to get there.

Someone asked about Calli…

She is still in pain of some sort, although it is much better. We were told when she was very young to expect hip surgery (one hip at a time) when she was around 5 years old, which will be in about 6 months. I think the cold makes it worse for her. She’s definitely better than she was on Friday, but she is not necessarily good. I need to take her to the vet for that and for her belly (itchy rashy yuck), plus take Midnight and her stuffed-up grody nose, but I really don’t have any free time until…um…maybe Christmas Eve? Seriously. Sunday, but the vet’s not open. Soccer tournament, piano recital. Shoot me now. I made rice krispies treats tonight for the recital tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I have to make dinner for tomorrow AND Friday, because the soccer game goes until like 7:30 or something and I won’t have time beforehand and suspect exhaustion by the time I get home. I think I will just quit cooking over break and let the girlchild take over.

But then it will get a little easier as far as the schedule is concerned.

I guess the Venn diagram includes goals for break, goals for art stuff and school. Goals for exercise and healthy eating and meditation. Strangely, I am still losing weight, although it seems I shouldn’t be. My body is significantly confused. I have at least two major quilts in the planning stages for when I finish these two.

But when I compare and contrast Kathy of 12/12 to Kathy of 12/13, it’s really just depressing. There’s very little overlap. I sort of half recognize her, I realize she was me at one point, but I also know I won’t be her again. It’s like floating in space without a tether (no, I haven’t see Gravity yet…that is one of the depressing things: not going to the movies any more…everything is so expensive). I don’t know who to be. How to be. I know I want to do some things in my future, when I can…travel to the places that have always been on my list, but not necessarily other people’s lists. I want to write. I want to change jobs at some point. I want to do smaller things, like clean out my garage and finish my bathroom and the kids’ bathroom (major money issues there). I just want my bedroom decluttered. I wish I felt like I had the mental energy to do stuff like that, but it’s just way beyond my ability at the moment. It makes me want to crawl into bed and never come out.

Be kind to yourself, eh? It’s that time of year. Draw more. Comfort food. Plenty of exercise. Plan a hike with the monsters. Read a book (or 10). Clean a room. Donate some stuff. Toss some stuff out. Take some dogs for a walk. Pie for breakfast is OK sometimes. Sing a song. Dance to something. Comb a cat.

Stop looking at last year and expecting anything. There is nothing to expect.

I Made That…

This whole sleeping thing seems to be confusing my brain again. I don’t get tired until super late and then I can’t sleep at night and I can’t sleep in on mornings when I actually could (sleeping in meaning 8 AM) and then I yawn most of the day. That’s not how it should work. Eyelid still twitching. I don’t know if it will ever stop. Last year at the end of the school year, in June 2012, it twitched for over a month…took until about 3 days after I got out of school to stop. Maybe it will be done by Christmas.

I managed exercise (not enough), meditation (brain was barely present), and cutting out fabric (57 minutes)…

This one was fun. Yes, a spider web…in pieces. None of these pieces are easy to cut…they are all so complicated and fussy. Occupies my brain. Good thing. It was getting irritated by grading tests. Bad scores. My daughter and SIL were grading warmups for me…interesting experience for the SIL, a former teacher in a very different type of school. Maybe she has a better idea of my student population now. She made an interesting comment about holiday bonuses and teachers not getting them…she said, well don’t you get gifts from your students? Um. No. Occasionally. A candy cane sometimes. I’ve gotten mugs, a few picture frames, and a shot glass (yes, seriously), and a scorpion in a keychain. That was way cool. It’s OK. I don’t expect them…it was just funny to me that she thought we all got tons of stuff…she was in a private school in Seattle. Much different group of students.

So tonight I needed to do art stuff. The pile of pieces that are cut out is getting bigger…

Although it doesn’t feel anywhere close to done…and it’s not, at 5 1/2 hours. I suspect there’s another 6 or so hours to go. I wanted to be further along. I always want to be further along. I’m a little driven. I don’t know why. I mean, yes, there is a deadline and I have to get it and the other quilt done and photographed by a certain date, but it’s more than that. It has been for a long time. It’s worse now, like this is the only thing I have…and it has to mean something after all the shit I’ve been through. There has to be something that I can look at and say, yes, that was worth the time, the effort…because other things I have put that time and effort into? They either have failed or they don’t make me happy. At one time, the art made me happy. I hope it will again. Sooner rather than later.

And the pile of leftover bits is also getting bigger…

Usually I throw it away every night, but it’s showing me something. Progress. I need to see that at the moment. Everything else is such a crazy mess: the house, Christmas plans, school, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. At least one thing should be easy to look at and see progress.

Today was easier…spent time with the close family, my brother and his crew, parentals, and my own two monsters.

They don’t make me answer hard questions (much). Girlchild is going to be a mess tomorrow…no cousins, no dad…he flies to the UK tomorrow for two weeks. That will be hard on her more so than the rest of us. Jake will be here, for those who remember his exploits in escaping. We’ll have to see how that goes…hopefully he will curtail his awesome love for me and only jump up on me two or three times a day.

Some family member at the party yesterday gave the two male cousins each one of these…

Which of course they loved…but we decided that the TSA would NOT love them and so they were handed to me to ship to them with their (obviously going to be late) Christmas presents…which meant that my kids bogarted them as soon as we got home and proceeded to shoot each other all over the house and lost one of the bullets, but we think we can get a 30-pack, plus now I know what Santa is putting in their stockings. It was seriously dangerous around her for a while (they are nerf bullets…no real damage). I think Santa is sending extra bullets to the boys too…at least that’s what he told me.

Although he couldn’t explain this warning sticker on the guns…

These are Zombie Blasters, by the way. Apparently you shouldn’t shoot them near books. Or books are dangerous. Or you shouldn’t shoot them in libraries. Or if you shoot them, you will be attacked by books. Not sure.

Anyway. It’s a busy week. I will try to hold to exercise, meditation, and art on a daily basis. The thought of having to cook for real every night and schedule around multiple soccer games and juggle everything under the sun with no help is a little daunting, but hell…I’ve been doing it for years. Hence my stress levels. Working on that. It reminds me that I never had the help I really wanted. It wasn’t available. It’s on my list for next time, if there is one. Of course, knowing what you want and actually getting it are two separate things that rarely meet. Everything is so complicated. I think I’d rather just deal with my quilts for now. They’re complicated, but they’re MY complicated. I can handle that. I made that.

Reasonable Excuses for Weeping

There are reasons why people cry, good ones and bad. I find myself crying when people give birth on TV…the real thing, not the made-up stuff. Never happened before I gave birth to my own. People tend to give you an out if you’re crying at a wedding or a funeral. It’s OK to cry during a sad movie…a little less OK to cry while reading a sad book, at least in public (although I have done it at the gym…then again, at my gym, no one reads…they all watch TV). It’s OK to cry during a sad song (REM, Everybody Hurts), but probably not while out walking the dog. People look at you strange. PMS makes many women cry, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not one that we understand. Pain makes us cry…understandably…but less so for men, unfortunately, in today’s world. Frustration often makes us cry, although more so as a child…not being able to get what you want forces tears out of those ducts. Sorrow makes us cry…true…for whatever reasons that cause the sad in the heart…death is certainly the big one.

After all that, I mourn the death of my parents’ dog, Missy, who had a brain tumor and had been suffering seizures.

She’s been on this blog on and off for years, and she had a good long life, but it’s still difficult to have loved ones die, even the furry ones who eat poop and pee on the carpet and nip at you when they’re annoyed. She was a good dog, even when she wasn’t being good. She had been so anxious in the last few months…the tumor was probably pressing on something that caused that, or maybe she just knew something wasn’t right. Whatever…she’s OK now.

When I was trying to find a decent picture of her (she always looks a bit psychotic with the two different-colored eyes), I ran past pictures of three other animals of ours who are now dead. It’s been a rough run for animals…most lived good long lives like Missy, but it’s still sad to look back and remember them all. She will be missed.

So today has been a little more weepy than normal…I mean, normal for me now, which isn’t normal. Whatever normal means any more. Meditation has been having me ask myself questions…this week, the question is “How would you feel if you knew today was your last day?’ I always have issues with the semantics of their questions…last week’s really threw me grammatically for a while, but the idea is to watch your emotional reaction each day for a week and see where it goes. Obviously, they are aiming at getting you to see the big picture and stop worrying about the little stuff that’s annoying you, but my brain at first feels for my kids, who would probably be most affected. Today I focused more on the feeling that I’m not very happy at the moment, so it’s not that it feels like I’d be missing out on big happy moments. Kind of a depressing thought…funny that…a depressing thought from a depressoid. It didn’t help to look back at some of those animal photos from the past while looking for Missy pictures…there were many happy moments in there, reminders of happier times, and that hurts. I can hope to have more moments like that in my future, I guess, but it’s hard to see that at the moment. Everything right now is just very flat. Empty.

Every day. Even the ones where I spend some time with friends or go to the gym or make art. Flat. Empty. I’m really starting to dislike that feeling. It is in many ways worse than the sad…the sad is hidden underneath it, like the flat emptiness is a big down comforter, but not in the comfort sense of the word…in the suffocating heavy deadening sense of the word, and sad is squished down small and uncomfortable underneath all that.

It’s this feeling that forces me to do art every freakin’ night. And to draw in meetings. And to write every night. And meditate. And cry. Fucking dammit.

I cut out more pieces…

Doesn’t look like much because it’s not…I’ve done 4 1/2 hours total. Sigh. Wanted to be much further along. It looks a bit better if you look at the trash pile…

but not by much.

This is how fucking morbid I feel at the moment…was at a Christmas dinner with friends who are all older than me, and all I could think is that I would have very few friends left in my old age, because they all will have died before me. Awful thought. Stupid brain. But the whole night was screwed up…girlchild and I are fighting about grades and schoolwork and pies. Yes pies. Don’t ask. And white shirts and family photos and Christmas and stupid shit.

I also, though, spent a lot of time trying to analyze why the iPhone 5s is so much more droppable than the 4 was. I have dropped my phone (which thank god has a case) way more times in the last few months than I dropped my 4 in the entire 2+ years I owned it. I’m analyzing the shape, the slippery nature of the case, the size, the heft. It is none of those things. It is me. I am even a bigger klutz than I used to be. Depression fucks up your brain AND your motor control. Great stuff that. New biological weapon. Unleash depression on the country we are warring against. No need for bloodshed…just make them really sad and they will just burn down their houses by accident and run into other cars and drop their phones, and we will just win the war like that.

I managed another batch of ornaments on the tree…

not done. Or maybe it is. Depends on how I feel about it.

And if we’re depending on my feelings, odds are they are predictably sad. I try to associate happiness with Christmas lights and trees and ornaments. I will have to cultivate that feeling.

Meanwhile, I’m going to take my other reasonable excuse for weeping, depression, to bed. Yes, depression is a perfectly valid reason to weep. It would be better NOT to have that weighing on you each night, and as soon as I can make that choice and get out from under it, I will. But for now, I will just carry it around…I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter.

Yeah. I Know. Whatever.

Crying in the morning? Sheesh. Thanks brain. Stop repeating the same phrases over and over. You need to get through the week without all this trauma. It’s only Wednesday. You shouldn’t be panicking yet. Yes, the Have-To list is huge, scary. I hear Julie telling me to Be Brave over and over in my head, but I don’t have Brave left. I just have Survive. Survive will work for this time of year…it usually does. I remember to breathe.

Buried in meetings doesn’t help…I’m having real problems with afternoon meetings at the moment. It’s never been my best time of day…I’m fine if I’m standing, but if I sit down, my body thinks it’s time to nap. I’ve always had this issue with afternoon staff meetings. My solution was to draw…it’s the same thing I did in school when I had afternoon classes (or if the class was really boring). I drew all over the agenda, in the margins, wherever. At one point, I drew on my feet and on someone else’s jeans (high school and college). Drawing keeps enough of my brain focused so I won’t fall asleep. It entertains the part that gets in trouble otherwise.

So in today’s union meeting, while taking copious notes on the meeting so I could repeat the info to my team, I drew…

I didn’t really have a plan when I started with the turtle, and it just went from there. It kept my brain occupied for about 45 minutes (in between the notetaking). When I put the drawing away, the woman sitting next to me asked what I was drawing. OK. YOU look at the drawing above and tell me what you would have said. My answer? “Lots of things.” She was offended. Like she thought I was blowing her off. Girlchild said I should have just shown it to her, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain anything. Whatever. People have the expectation that artists want to share everything we do because we hang art up on the walls (or put it on a pedestal or suspend it from a bridge…whatever), but sometimes I’m just drawing and it’s not yours just because I’m an artist and share some of my stuff. I’m pretty private about my drawings until they’re done…or sometimes until they’re actual quilts. Ironic that I say that, because I put them on here all the time…but that’s not the same as you in person asking me about it. There’s some distance here. I’m really talking to myself anyway…because I need to spend more time doing that? Yeah. I know.

Or maybe I was just tired and misread her tone and look. I think she said, “I see.” But in that tone. I know. Whatever. Meditate your way past other people’s responses. Just deal with your own response. The drawing helped me in the moment. That’s all I needed it to do, and it was successful.

Because otherwise I would have had to say that I was drawing a turtle with a cat on its back and a bust of some woman whose hands weren’t really attached with a sunflower growing out of her shoulder and a UFO buzzing her head, as she flicks a fish out across the eyeball tree that is growing out of the turtle’s head, as a volcano erupts and a bird tries to avoid the lava and ash, and a small thorn bush grows out of a rocky landscape. And that just wasn’t going to fly. Plus I don’t think I could have said that with a straight face.

This was after a long day at school of presenting, duty, chasing down my errant computer cart (apparently reserving it is not enough). Technology frustration today as the server again crashed. The new system we’ll be using next year in February or so will not have this problem because it won’t go through the server. God knows what problems it WILL have, but that won’t be one of them. I am the Queen of Adaptation, though…we made it work. The next 5 days of school will be a lot of adaptation on my part and my students’ parts as they get a big project done for science. Fun stuff. Solving the world’s problems.

Speaking of solving the world’s problems, Sion posted a link to this video describing depression as a black dog…it’s really well done…

Mine is never a black dog. It’s a cloud or a hole…or both. I like dogs too much to saddle them with that. I usually feel like I’m in a hole. It’s cold and muddy most of the time. Sometimes it’s very quiet, but not in a comfortable way. Sometimes everything is muffled and I can’t hear anything right, let alone feel it right. Occasionally something pokes through and really hurts, but mostly it’s like being wrapped in cotton balls…again, not in a good way, but sort of a suffocating way. I wonder how long it will be like this. I do all the right things. Good Kathy. Bark.

Yeah. Whatever.

I’m managing Christmas decorations at home (I still have Halloween up at school…if it weren’t for Janet, I wouldn’t have any appropriate holiday decorations at all in my classroom) very very slowly. We got the tree and I got the lights up. I managed the mantle yesterday evening. Tonight I did 10 ornaments. At this rate, I’ll be done by January 10. Maybe some kid will stop by the tree and hang some things. You never know.

I had this discussion in my head of highlighter colors. I like orange and blue. Purple is too dark. Yellow and pink just suck, but I’d rather use pink than yellow. I used 10 colors of whiteboard marker at school today. That made my day a little better. Stupid stuff. I didn’t even know I had two shades of brown. The teacher just wants to color.

It was pajama day at school today, my favorite day of the year. So comfortable. I even went to the meeting after school with them still on.

I’m hiding from my email at the moment. Trying not to read anything from anyone. Hiding from Facebook. Hiding from school email. Can’t handle anything rocking my boat emotionally. Not feeling stable. Just feeling. Meditation says if we never acknowledge and spend time with the bad feelings, we won’t really understand the good. I do believe that. I know people who think they never feel bad, never feel cranky or irritable when they obviously do. I am less cranky now…the sad doesn’t leave much room for anything else. It’s kinda big. Encompassing. Overwhelming.

I cut out pieces tonight. I didn’t have the energy to draw the rest of last night’s drawing…

Maybe tomorrow night. I didn’t cut out very much…I didn’t have much time.

The leftovers are sometimes more interesting anyway.

We’re worried about Calli tonight. She is in pain from something…hard to tell whether it is her hips (she has a bad dysplasia and will need surgery sometime in the future) or her stomach or something else. We’ve decided to watch and wait until tomorrow morning. Trying to fit a vet visit in right now is a little crazy. I have so many things on my work/home calendar that I probably shouldn’t attempt sleep at all…until the 22nd maybe.

She couldn’t get up onto the girlchild’s bed, which is where she always sleeps. We couldn’t even lift her up…it hurt her too much. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow morning. Poor baby.

Looks like I will have a piece in Ojai, California, February-March. I had to look it up on the map. Besides knowing it was in California, I drew a total blank. More on that later…for now, I need to try to sleep. More sleep good. Maybe then I can hold off the morning weepies.

Braindead…

I’m feeling more and more braindead this season. Intellectual conversation? With whom? Occasionally a kid or two, but on nights when they are with their dad, the conversation is missing. I talk to the cats. I read. I talk to nothing human. Seriously…I have talked to no one since 5:25. Before that, it was the guy at Petco who wanted to know why I looked so tired (gee thanks mister). That’s it. I joined some groups where I might be able to get some of that conversation, but it’s hard to fit it in to days when I don’t get to the gym until almost 6 PM. Am I really thinking I’ll be going out after I work out, shower, and eat? That’s after 9 PM? Yeah. Not happening. The non-gym nights are taken up by kid stuff and soccer games.

Then I realized it’s already December 10 and I haven’t dealt with Christmas much…I usually send a letter (um. yeah.) and I need to do the online shopping like very soon. Plus there’s all the holiday parties with potluck stuff, because I have time to cook as well. Sigh. I’m not a fan of this time of year. I say no to lots, but there’s some things I just can’t get out of.

So once I had finished the gym and feeding the body (don’t really care much about food any more), I had an internal debate between the brain that wanted to draw and the brain that was worried about getting everything cut out before Winter Break. Drawing won.

It’s been a while. I have about 17 drawings in my head. I’ve taken notes on some of them; they’re on my phone. This one obviously isn’t done. More crone/menopausal stuff. I do have a couple more in the sketchbook that I still haven’t finished, though. I need some concentrated time to draw without other things weighing on me (cough school cough). I’m already thinking ahead to what’s next, trying to make plans.

I’m hoping to finish the quilting of the Love quilt sometime in the next week (it’s probably only an hour or two), plus finish cutting out all the Celebrating Silver pieces. There’s a soccer tournament right before Christmas that will eat up a ton of time…I’d like to have the quilt all ironed down before Christmas, but I’m not sure I can pull that off. I need to have the Silver piece done by the end of break. I think I want to do a couple smaller pieces to start the new year, but there are also two larger drawings I’d like to make into quilts. BUT, I have another piece I have to finish by November as well. I haven’t drawn it yet…maybe my goal over break is to just get it drawn. I think I’m OK on time even if I toss another big quilt in there somewhere.

Of course, reality usually kicks my ass, so we’ll see. I like to make plans, though. People always tell me how impressed they are by how much I get done. I write it down. I have time spreadsheets in my head. I hold myself accountable here. I probably chastise myself for not getting stuff done too much…obsessive? Yeah. I guess. It’s a drive, though. It’s so strong, I feel sick when I don’t make/create. It’s worse now…miss one DAY, and I start to get antsy, like I’m coming out of my skin. It really is my sanity at the moment.

I finished Kevin Hearne’s Hexed tonight…

It’s the second book in the Iron Druid Chronicles…easy but interesting read…vampires, werewolves, druids, witches, and a variety of gods and goddesses…always fun. Quick to read and enjoyable. Not sure what book is next on the list…there are quite a few. There’s another book club book, plus the third book in a series I’m reading, plus I don’t know what else. Hard to choose sometimes. I have about 6 real live paper books on hold at the library, some are on their way for pick up and some are hold 43 of 280. I don’t know when I’ll see that one. Then I have another 4 books on hold through the online library, which is the same library but a separate lending system, which is often confusing. Then the girlchild has a couple real live books for me to read and wants to loan me a series of three or four books that are on her Kindle, which means I have to be able to read them within 14 days, because that’s how long she can loan them to me. Confused yet? I am. I see so few people reading these days…except for Facebook and email. It’s sad. I love reading.

I also seem to be getting back into reading graphic novels, partially because of NetGalley, but also because I just like them. I don’t have the money to go to the movies as much as I used to, so this is the next best thing, when I can find them free…which is hard sometimes, because I like the more alternative stuff and it tends NOT to be available that way.

Anyway. I blame my braindead status on reading and drawing tonight. Oh and the gym. I don’t know if braindead is good or bad. I did meditate too…it talked about change. Do I want it? Yes I do. I just don’t know how or when. That’s always the problem, though, isn’t it? I don’t want to change so much that I am no longer making art or spending time with the kids. I don’t need something big. I need a change IN me more than outside…a change in how I feel about life, because this isn’t fun. But that’s the harder thing, isn’t it? Being able to change this cloud over me, the hole I’m in…that’s just slow and plodding. There’s no magic wand or pixie dust for that. Meanwhile, my brain is blank. Maybe it’s just tired. Try again tomorrow.

Apparently Balanced

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Road Is Burnt Out…

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

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

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

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

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

for an hour and a half…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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