Exhausted Slam

I think I finally hit the exhaustion mark, slammed into it last night at about 10 PM. Surprised I made it that late. I was quilting the birds and realized my eyes were having a hard time staying open. Just a note to the inexperienced: if you quilt with your eyes closed, there is a much higher chance you will sew through your finger. So I stopped. I finished the eyeball bird first though…

And then did the second diving bird…

Smaller than the last one. It’s for the Art Produce show, so it has to be a particular size. I still did all the windy quilting though…

And that’s what made me slam into the tired wall. I wanted to finish the other two last night too, but I fell asleep on the couch and then went to bed after that. There’s no point in trying to quilt when you’re that tired. You’re going to fuck it up. But that’s what school does…it’s amazing how exhausting it is being ON for 7 hours straight. There’s no down time really. There’s lunch and your prep, and you’re usually doing stuff during those, like peeing and eating. It’s just On On On. After the more relaxing pace of the summer, where I didn’t really get enough sleep either, the start of school is always kind of a body shocker. It takes a couple of weeks to get it under control.

Saturday I was going to get all this stuff done and my brain just rebelled. It was done. It was tired. I managed the gym and then the girlchild and I went to a local British pub for the Dr. Who season premiere with about 150 other people…there were lots of people dressed up, kids and adults. Girlchild says I shouldn’t even be allowed to go, because I’ve only seen like 5 Dr. Who episodes (true…time issue, eh? I started watching from Season 1 this week finally).

But we had a good time. It was a good show. Funny. And I drew during the commercial breaks…

I love my Tivo. No commercials. There’s a phone booth at the bar, so even though her face is still swollen from the wisdom-teeth removal, she allowed photos…

A friend texted me and asked how the first boychild-free weekend was going. Well I’ve had the girlchild all weekend, so it’s not like what it will be once school starts and she has a social life and isn’t around all the time. Or ever. So I cleaned his room a little (mostly laundry) and his dad has called every night to report, so it’s not the same. He texted back that he does NOT want a monogrammed laundry basket like his roomie has (damn.), although there is a list of things he does want, so we’ll deal with that. He texted back and forth with his sister last night while I was asleep on the couch, so we know he’s alive. And still up at 1 AM. So all that is normal. His cat misses him. She’s been a whiny butt for a few days now. It probably doesn’t help that Jake, the amazingly large-nosed German Shepherd, is here. He sticks that nose into cat faces, despite the claws, and they don’t like it much.

So. Yeah. And I’m pretty busy. Not a lot of time to stop and think about much of anything, whether it’s his being gone or my pitiful social life or anything else that tends to bring me down. I’m too damn tired. I really want to take a nap right now, but I have 70 trillion things to do this afternoon, and they’re all time-sensitive and incredibly important. So really, I should get my ass off the computer and get the freak out of here. (I’m finishing my tea. That’s why I’m still here. Plus I had to get all the online grocery coupons. Yup. I do that. It’s $20-40 a visit it saves me…that pays for my Netflix, right?). Anyway. Girlchild is gone all afternoon. Social butterfly. It’s not that I would be chatting it up with the boychild if he were here on a Sunday afternoon, but at least it would be another body in the house. Watching me nap. Can’t nap. No time.

Staying Up Late in the Name of Laundry

Oh yeah. Friday night. Hell, it’s Saturday morning. I meant to write this earlier. Really. I’ve been kinda sideswiped by life. Starting school, sending a kid off to college, that whole lack of sleep thing, which reminds me, the only reason I’m up now (because I’ve already fallen asleep on the couch once) is because I’m in charge of late-night laundering again. Girlchild dumped it all in the washer and then went to bed, and I’m fairly sure she needs it early tomorrow morning for soccer. Hmn. Motherly duties.

Staying up late in the name of laundry. Wish it was something a little more meaningful, like reducing waste or reversing climate change or curing cancer. But no. It’s because of laundry…laundry that could have been done at ANY time today. Without my assistance. Yup.

Thursday was an exceptionally long day, up early to send the boychild off (he has arrived and moved in, although reports on the roommate have been limited to insider knowledge about his plethora of monogrammed towels and accessories), then worked all day and went to physical therapy and then quilt class. I had been hoping to get all 5 birds quilted last night.

Wow. That’s crazy talk. What’s funny is that I was so tired that I couldn’t quilt FAST, so I kept moving the quilt in tinier and tinier squiggles…

I’m not sure that was a good thing. Lord, the lighting is horrible in this picture. Suffice it to say, it’s quilted.

I did miss stitching down the underside of the neck somehow…

So I’ll have to do that tomorrow. This is one being made for the Art Produce show, so there will be no binding, just a satin stitch. Also hoping to do that tomorrow.

I didn’t fully finish quilting the second eyeball bird.

Toldja I was quilting fucking tiny. Finish it off tomorrow. Then quilt the other three. Faster. And in a less anal manner.

Today was similarly crazy, although I got more sleep. I also started the 5 loads of laundry from the boychild’s room. Cleaned out his trash. Picked up the books in there. He won’t like that I didn’t alphabetize by author, but I need to leave something for him to do when he comes home, right? Plus I think I want to read half of them. Next week, I have to ship his piano and some other stuff. Yes. I said Ship a Piano. Don’t laugh.You want me to ship YOU a piano? I will. I have extras. I shipped paintings and etching plates home from Britain when I lived there for a year. We had to have a special crate built for some of the stuff that I sent home from there and it came via ship. Had to be picked up from the docks in Long Beach or somewhere around there after it cleared customs.

I forced my hand this morning and contacted my photographer to take pictures of the Mammogram and Menopause quilts. That meant I had to actually FINISH the second one, so I finished up the binding tonight. Tomorrow or Sunday I’m going to do some inking on it, I think. Maybe some embroidery. I get myself in such a rush that I don’t do so much of that any more. Both are being photographed early next week, so I will have to make sure they are DONE. For reals. Then finish all the birds and the floating house (I think I’m done with it…although…no…sigh…I don’t know). Then get the drawing done on gender equality, which has been kicking my butt all summer. It’s become a significantly high priority, which I actually think is a good thing. It means I can’t come home from work and procrastinate by staring at the computer. I have to work on art in order to get it done in time. Like every day. Seriously. I think that helps me keep a balance.

So yeah. I did that on purpose. Uh huh.

The art brain is excited about it anyway.

So my plan is (you know how I love to have plans that I can later dash to pieces) to get it fully drawn and numbered by Labor Day weekend, and then start tracing it in early September. I need it traced and cut out by mid-September (yikes. deep breaths. There’s only a million things happening in the next three weeks, because that’s what we’re talking about is three whole weeks…three whole weeks with an art installation that will take two days and revolving openings. Back-to-school night. Two of them. Don’t Think About It.). Then start choosing fabrics in mid-September. It’s about the size of the Celebrating Silver quilt, a little smaller, so maybe 15 hours of fabric-choosing. That’s at least a full week and a weekend. And another week plus to cut the fabrics out, so ideally, it’s fabricked by the end of September. October is for ironing and quilting. Holy crap. I’m in trouble here. I need another month. I don’t have another month. OK. Well, that decides some things, doesn’t it? I do think I have until mid-November. There’s a 3-day weekend in there. I don’t need to sleep in November, do I?

I need to get my act in gear. Good thing I have no life. Well, except for my job. And the girlchild’s soccer. And all the art stuff and hiking and book-reading I do. And the gym. Sleep? Eh. Not so much.

At least I have a purpose for the next few months. Besides surviving school. And flipping the laundry in the middle of the night.

I do miss the boychild. There is an empty space where he would normally be. But the girlchild has been a little less crazy this week (well, if you ignore the food issues because of the lost wisdom teeth and her freaking out about coaching soccer without her dad around to help). She’s been less screamy. She may just be lonely.

Anyway, I have a teacher’s aide at school this year, one of my good boy students from last year who follows instructions well. I’m going to use his talents best I can to reduce my load. I’m going to collaborate with my teacherfolk to get up and running on these Chromebooks and get off of paper. Google is trying to fix my Classroom access so I can actually use the system the way I want, but until then, there are other apps that will do. I’m doing a lot of winging-it this year. There’s a lot of change in the air at school and it seems positive. Well, some of it is just plain weird, but mostly positive.

I still have to stay up for another 45 minutes though to flip the laundry again. You know, in the past, I have gone to bed and set an alarm for an hour later to wake me up enough to go turn the dryer on. It’s a little crazy, but it works. I’m a little crazy too, so it makes sense. I started the school year with a little crazy in mind. I think my students are a tad freaked out by my crazy, but I really don’t care. I’m gonna hug their little brains with dissections and nerve-cell-exploding ideas about genetics and nutrition and what WHITE means (that’s in light and pigment and even in skin color). In fact, I might just do a whole lesson on What Is White (I do a lab called What Is Black?…I should just connect the two). Just after I do the Zombie Apocalypse unit. Seriously. I didn’t have the brain power last year. I was deep in a nasty-ass hole made by someone else. I guess I’m good at dragging myself out of holes that other people make for me. I think the next time I have to do that, I’m gonna go all wizard and demons killed with sharp silver blades on someone’s ass. Because it’s not cool to do that shit to people you’re supposed to care about…

You know, with the boychild gone, there are way too many leftovers in the fridge. Girlchild and I need to adjust the cooking volume. Mr. Bottomless has left the building. And is that skunk I smell? It surely is. Nice.

It has to be bedtime.

Oh Lonely Sriracha

I’m up at holy shit in the morning because boychild leaves for college today. I’m not taking him. It would be really hard to take the second and third days of school off without there being major issues, so his dad is taking him out there. It’ll be good for his dad to see Cornell anyway, and I would just annoy the crap out of him at the moment because I’m all girl-like and hey let’s get set up and fill out your I-9 so you can get a job and say HI to people and stuff. You know. Like a mom. Plus I probably wouldn’t stop crying, and that’s never cool when you’re a freshman in college, mom sobbing away in a ball of saltwater on your dorm room floor.

He has missing teeth in that picture. And girlchild, what is UP with the barrettes? Sheesh. (2004…ages 7 and 8)

I’m actually too tired to be emotional right now.

So I send him off this morning. Yesterday afternoon I got home from my first (LONG) day of school…OK, it’s only long because I haven’t talked that much without stopping since, um, the LAST day of school…OK, not even that…since the last day I taught something I had to talk a lot about (sexually transmitted diseases, to be specific, probably AIDS), and the boychild has dumped all his clothes on the couch and folded about 5 shirts. So I start folding and putting in logical piles and tell him to go find everything he wants to bring and he eventually brings more stuff (dude. where’s your jacket. seriously.). I realize I can ship some of the warmer stuff if I need to, because I don’t think New York is going to go to freezing before mid-September (we Southern Californians are not great with actual seasons, so I don’t actually know if this is true, but I do have a weather app that claims there’s a 54% chance he will be hit by lightning in the next two weeks), but it would be nice not to have to ship anything.

So we count underwear and he’s a little short. You have to understand that I asked him back in early July about his underwear (oh my god, mother, do we have to talk about underwear?) and suggested a two-week minimum. Because I went to college. And laundry is not fun. And you have to fight for machines, even if you’re a night owl like me. In fact, I do not even remember doing laundry the first two years. Maybe I didn’t. I remember doing it in Britain, because there were three buildings all attached to each other and you had to go to the very bottom floor (I was on the 4th or 5th floor?) of the furthest one away and it was like going to Siberia, it was so far away and no elevators, just up and down stairs, and a total pain in the ass. I asked about socks too. So it was no shocker to me that he only had 11 pairs of underwear (why is underwear a PAIR? a PAIR of what?) and 8.5 pairs of socks. One with holes in them. Where the hell is his sock stash? We never did find it.

You might be saying to yourself, Kathy, why did you not get him to pack earlier? Do you think I didn’t try? Do you think I haven’t been telling him to pack for the last WEEK? Or MORE? Yup. This is why I meditate. And drink alcohol. At the same time. In the morning.

So after my first day of school, at 5:00 at night, we got in the car and went to Target for underwear and socks. Sigh. Yes, I know he can buy stuff there, but…I wanted to at least attempt to send him off outfitted with those, because he’s got no cold-weather clothing or shoes and he’s going to have to figure all that out on his own. And I’m his MOM, dammit.

Then I get the big suitcase packed and it’s 3,000 pounds. Not gonna fly. Literally. Send boychild over to grandparents’ house to get smaller second suitcase that will fit inside big one on the trip back (his dad is bringing those back; we’re leaving him a duffel bag…it’s all he wanted) while I start making dinner. Girlchild is still mostly out of food commission because of chipmunk cheeks from wisdom-teeth removal. I did go to the store for her already and purchase soup and bread and ice cream and something else. I did not make her risotto like she wanted. She’s the cook. Yes, I did all that after school too.

Second suitcase shows up and I reapportion the load. We’re under the max weight on both of them now. Good job. Unfortunately, he wants to add stuff this morning, so I don’t actually know if it’s under or not. You know what? It is no longer my problem. He’s on dadwatch now.

My mom is driving them to the airport, because I can’t guarantee I’ll be back in time for school, and honestly, it was easier to have him do the dorky I’m not gonna look you in the eye OR hug you thing here. Boys. Asperger boys. Sigh. So yeah. He’s gone. I’ve already booked his flights for Winter Break. I looked at flights for Thanksgiving for me…he doesn’t get the whole week off, but I do. Not sure what I’m going to do about that. It’s not cheap. Girlchild wants to go too. But I will have to pay for all those college applications and test scores at the same time. So. Yeah. I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I’ve had about 4.5 hours of sleep and I’m teaching in two hours…and possibly two more cups of tea. Eyes. Open.

I did do quilt stuff last night. I stitched down all five bird quilt tops…

And then I started sandwiching and pin-basting.

None of them take very long to do, luckily.

I think I started after 10 PM. Can’t remember what I was doing before. I’m sure it was something very important. Yes, normal people go to bed at 10 PM. I know that.

Seriously. I’m not awake. Maybe I should go back to bed for an hour and set the alarm, except my hair’s wet now from the shower and it will look goofy as hell if I do that. Goofier than normal. And it should be obvious by now that I don’t go to bed at a normal hour.

I have quilt class tonight, assuming girlchild doesn’t need me at her soccer practice to yell at parents. She is having a hard time with a couple who don’t respect her knowledge base. Sure, it’s hard to think that a 17-year-old can coach 9-year-olds in soccer, but she’s been playing since she was 5 and helping her dad coach for like the last 5 years. I think she’s probably better than about half the parents I’ve seen out there.

Oh yeah, and I saw the final episode of X Files last night. I started rewatching the series back in January, because I liked it then and I didn’t remember most of it. I realized that I hadn’t seen the last season at all, which isn’t surprising, because it aired in 2001-2002, so I had a 4- and 5-year-old at home while working and going to school to get my teaching credential online. I finished my masters in May or June of 2002, I think. And then I got divorced that fall…well, separated anyway. It’s possible that TV was not a priority. The series wasn’t the same without Mulder, of course, although I love Doggett and Reyes NOW. The last episode tried to explain everything, which is kinda lame, but I did enjoy rewatching it. I guess I’ll have to start watching something else now…something that doesn’t have any major triggers and keeps me entertained but allows my art brain to pick fabrics or iron without too much distraction (yes, I have to distract my own brain in order to get stuff done).

Anyway, all this distracts me from the boychild’s departure, which is probably a good thing at the moment. Keep the brain over THERE. It’s also probably good that the girlchild is with me for the next 5 days, because her dad is gone, although she has three social events planned and at least two soccer practices. I might be in trouble with her because I didn’t wake her up to say goodbye to her brother, but we kinda ran out of time, because he kept handing me stuff to shove into his luggage. At the last minute. Because yeah. Probably he didn’t want to think too hard about leaving either.

Last night, he says, “Hey, if you clean my room, don’t throw anything out.” And I’m looking at his room, which is usually pretty neat. And it’s not. Sigh. OK. I’ll be cleaning his room, I guess. Only so it’s easier to clean up the cat puke. And find his secret stash of nudie magazines. OK. That’s not happening. Pre-internet, right? And it’s more likely to be sci fi/fantasy graphic novels…which I’ve already read.

The sriracha sauce will sit in the fridge unused for months now. And wait until Babygirl realizes he’s gone (I had to promise to comb her regularly last night…must find comb). OK. Have to go render young minds.

I Must Proceed…

A day. A bruise on my hand. Realizing at the gym that all the raucous music and distracting literature in the world can’t keep me from thinking. Dammit. Boychild leaves for college in 30 hours. School starts in 8 1/2 (yes, I should be asleep…I may finish this in the morning). I left school at about 1 PM today. I was done. I had stuff in my head that was unsettling me, throwing me off, and honestly, there wasn’t anything left to do. I came home and finished up what I could. I did physical therapy and the gym and meditation.

I did all the things.

And then I started in on the birds…this is number 13, Diving Bird 2.

It’s the same fabrics, but I flipped it by accident…

traced it upside down onto the Wonder Under. It’s a pain to iron then, because I can’t see the pattern through the paper as well. I did that once with an entire quilt. It was very frustrating. This one is not the same size, because it’s supposed to be 8×10 for the Art Produce show…so slightly different.

This one was the same, although…

I think the background fabric is different, because I was out of the other one.

I think. Not sure. Yeah, it’s different (you didn’t even know I clicked over to my website to look, did you?). Yes, I use my own website to figure out what I’ve done, thought, planned. So that was Bird 14, Hey Bird 2.

The last one was completely different fabrics…

because I knew I didn’t have enough to reproduce it as it was in the original. Well, that was the second version of it anyway.

And then I fussed about the background and decided on this one. It’s a little smaller than the other one. Maybe. Not sure. Won’t know until I finish it. Stitching and all. Hopefully tomorrow night I can stitch some down. Maybe? Who knows. Boychild is not packed for college, although he finally started thinking about it. It’s OK. I’ve already shipped two boxes with bedding, towels, and sundry other items, including a Horton Hears a Who plate. Because who doesn’t need that? Girlchild is already planning what she will bake to send him. He will gain the Freshman Fifteen because of his sister. Or he will be best friends with everyone on his floor. If he’s smart.

I wanted to finish watching the X-Files episode that was on Netflix, so I worked some more on the binding for the Menopause quilt…

I think I need to call my photographer and just set a drop-off date, because that will force me to finish it.

I gave boychild one piece of roomie advice, which he will probably ignore: Assume positive intent. I wish people did that with me. Because I’m really not out to get anyone, and I’m voted most likely to let you show me who you are, even if I have prior experience with you as an asshole. Yes, that has been on my mind today. Sigh. I always tell my students that I don’t care if your older brother/sister was a total asshole (OK, I don’t use that word), I will not hold it against you. You are your own person and I am waiting for you to show me who that is. Especially that kid who got 12 suspensions last year. I don’t wanna know about it. Come into my classroom clean. Start over. Clean slate.

Wish I could do that with my life. Wake up one morning with everything erased. Start over. There’s so much baggage weighing me down at the moment, I don’t even know where to start getting rid of it.

Anyway. So. School starts tomorrow and I might even be ready. I can’t get onto Google Classroom because I’m not special enough (or I am entirely too special), but I know how to use Edmodo and will do that if I need to.

Mental status? Eh. There’s so much change and shit rolling around that I’m just pushing everything into the corner again. I have a big bubble around me and I try to bounce all the unhappy and nasty off of it. I saw 5 of my girls from last year today and got hugs from all of them (let’s not tell them that I couldn’t remember their names for another 5 hours because I am that lame). So I’m sorta holding everything at bay. I cry because I realize the boy will not ever really come back. He’ll be here for vacations, but then he’ll graduate and get a job and go off into the world. I’ve been a full-time mom for so long. I expected to have a transition stage, but there was something there to transition into. I’m not sure what I’m transitioning into any more. More quiet with fabric. I don’t know if that’s good or not.

I have this sketchbook that fits in my purse and I used to carry it (or others before it) in my former life, when I went out to dinner once or twice a week, and I would always draw while waiting for dinner to come, and I would date and locate the drawing, so there’s all these names of restaurants in all these old sketchbooks. Now there are only dates, because I never really go out to dinner any more. The first few a year ago were at the movies, when I was trying to feel semi-normal and I would go to the movies on Saturday nights and sit there by myself and cry in the movie theater.

Now I just don’t go. I miss them. I can’t afford them…financially or mentally. So I just don’t go.

None of this is particularly healthy. Maybe the drawing is. I need to do more of that, I think. In between all the other stuff. Sigh. Time. Such constraints. And ALL the FEELS.

I am so not ready for the next few days. Or maybe I am ready, but ready means that I will cry. I am sad now and maybe in two days I will be all saddened out and it will be OK again. I just don’t know. I made the mistake the other night of looking at all the photos I was trying to put away, to find a home for, and there was the girlchild, not even age 2, at my brother’s wedding, and the boychild, happily wearing a button-down shirt and tie, shaved little head, big smile on his face, age 3 1/2. Girlchild holding her sippy cup and her hair isn’t even girl-length yet. It took so long for her hair to grow.

And I know I didn’t do it all wrong, because boychild is off to a good school, to Cornell, where he will be exposed to lots of smart people and hard thinking and he will come back a different person, and I know he is there because I did a good job raising him, but it still feels like I did something wrong. Like I didn’t follow the rules so I’m being punished. And I know that lots of moms (and dads) feel sad when their kids go off to college, but it feels like abandonment. I want to lecture him on all the diapers I changed and how long I nursed him and how long it took him to potty train, and dammit, call your mom occasionally and send some pictures of your roomie and where you live and don’t forget that she was there for you. Eh? OK? I see him rolling his eyes from here.

Yeah. I think I’m just gonna be surviving the next few days. Weeks.

I must proceed.

Yes, that’s e. e. cummings he’s talking about. I read Barron Storey’s blog, well, look at his drawings anyway. Must Proceed…

It Just Seems That Way…

Birds are back. It was late when I started ironing. Busy day. School starts Wednesday. But the birds…the birds need to get done, whether school starts or not. I’ve started school like 13 times now. Must be my lucky year. I keep thinking I’m forgetting something major. I might be. So what? I’ll figure it out and bring it the next day. Or maybe I’ll just wing it for the first month. Science is science…make the kids figure some experimental stuff out, aim for the standards, they haven’t done science in our school a whole lot, so anything I give them will be a learning experience. I have too many ideas. Not enough time as it is.

So I focus on the birds. Because I know when they have to be done. I ironed Bird 11, another dove…

I lay out all the pieces on quilts this small…then iron them down. The drawing is under a teflon-type sheet, so I can see it as I’m ironing. I love these things. I have about 5 of them, two that are really big and three smaller ones. One of the cats tried to eat one once. Not sure why. There are teeth marks in it. Will I throw it out? Nope. Need it some days when I’m ironing something big that needs more than one sheet. Not often, but sometimes. Yes, this is how hoarders are made.

I don’t think it’s the same as the last one. I couldn’t figure out what fabrics I’d used. So I guessed. The tail looks right, but the body is much lighter. Then again, that fabric is mottled all over heck and gone, so maybe I just picked a lighter part of it. Who knows. Who cares. This one will be for sale at the Art Produce exhibit in September.

I did pick the same background though…

There’s hardly any of that fabric left now.

Then I did this one again. I really like this one…

And it exists on a quilt that will premiere at IQF Houston at the end of October. I’ll be there. Woo!

I think this one is pretty much the same…

Because I really liked it. Someone wants this one already. Bird 12. Eyeball Bird 2.

There are three more to iron, but it’s late and I have to be up earlier tomorrow than I was this morning. I was at school most of the day, and then girlchild had her wisdom teeth pulled. She did not deal well with the pain, and the doctor called around 9 PM to check on her and said they were “tough little teeth.” I don’t know what that means, but I do know her tolerance for pain is not great. So she’s iced and medicated and sleeping. She hasn’t eaten since early this morning. I made her mashed potatoes (by request) but then she didn’t want anything but water. It’s OK. They’re in the fridge for tomorrow. She’s not a happy camper. Someone needs to work on a genetic vaccine that gets rid of those wisdom teeth before they grow…like it predicts mouth size based on genetics and says, “Um, no, they will NOT fit, so let’s not even waste the resources on them.” And then they don’t grow.

Yes, this is how I can write sci fi. My brain goes to those weird places without you.

Anyway, so much of my evening was punctuated by moaning and whining and bloody gauze (which eventually she could deal with, which is good, because she only bit me twice and that was more spit and blood than I really wanted to deal with today) and ice and meds and cooking, lots of cooking. In between that, I reduced the hoard. I’ve been trying to get my room cleared of all the stuff from the living room, and part of that is finding homes for many things that used to live in there but really don’t need to live in there. So I have this closety thing in the hallway that I’m sure is supposed to be for linens and towels, but fuck that. I store art supplies, stitching stuff, computer bits and pieces, slides (from the days when that’s what we submitted to art shows), photos, and extension cords. Lots of those, for some reason. And it’s a disaster. It was organized right around the girlchild’s 2nd birthday, and I was still married then. So that tells you something about the state of those cupboards. And yes, I got a weird bug up my butt, because I knew there were photos in there, and I had a ton of photos in my room that used to live in boxes in the living room, and they needed a new home. So they should all live together, like with like.

So I started pulling things out of the cupboards…

And yes, I filled the hallway. It was un-traversable at some point. And then I filled one trash bag and another. Here’s an example of what I found in there. When I came back from the UK in 1988, I was hooked on EastEnders (yes, whatever, judge away), and when I was in my last year of college, the OC played EastEnders on PBS, so I could keep watching. Then we moved to San Diego and no such luck, so a friend of mine who lived in San Francisco would tape the show on videotapes with a VCR (oh my lord, the olden days) and send them to me. And I would watch them. I found 10 of them. In a box. Dated 1995 and 1996. Impressed? Yup. I tossed them. If I really want to watch EastEnders again, I will get the DVD. And I don’t, by the way. I really don’t.

I managed to throw out a lot of crap, because I did a lot of stitching in the past and apparently wanted to keep all the patterns of things I had already stitched and tiny bits of thread that I had knotted onto labeled index cards and carefully stored in bags with the already used patterns. Yup. Tossed them. I still have some stuff to rehome, whether at a thrift shop or in the garage (because I probably don’t need to keep my respirator from my screenprinting years in the house. Because I’m not screenprinting at the moment, and if I were, it would be in the garage, not in the house).

My SIL was so proud. Oh yeah, so going back to the early years of Kathy Quilting.

Yes. Those are hand-drawn patterns on graph paper (yes, very small) with plastic templates that have been marked to fit together.

It’s an abstract pattern made of three main blocks.

I never made these blocks. Piece 26 in the middle of that log cabin-type block is 1/4″ square. I’ve never pieced that well in my life. My art brain vomited all over my shoes when I tried. Then I learned how to applique what I really liked to draw, which at this point, was all being made into screenprints, and I’ve never looked back. But I wanted you to see some of the places I went before I got to where I’m at. Because it’s amusing, that’s why. How did you become an artist? Well, I tortured myself with the rules for a while and then I gave up and made what I wanted.

Which doesn’t explain why I’m making more birds, of course, but they serve a purpose and they will be done soon. It’s really probably just procrastination from the next step…because finishing that drawing or the floating house might kill me.

Not really. It just seems that way.

Remind me tomorrow morning why I thought it was a good idea to stay up this late?

I Will Not FedEx Your Underwear

Parenting. Is sometimes one of the weirdest experiences. After a series of texts this morning where I tried to explain to my daughter that I was busy trying to get ready for school and deal with life tasks, I ended up (giving up and) driving to her dad’s house and delivering a check, her mascara, and a pair of underwear. Seriously. He seemed to think she had underwear there but didn’t want to look for it. And I’m wondering if in a year from now I will be FedExing her a check, mascara, and a pair of underwear to college. Because that won’t be happening. I’m making that clear right now. (Just so you know, girlchild doesn’t read the blog. Occasionally she skims for pictures, but that’s it. And if she knew I was writing about her underwear issues, she would scream at me. Then again, she screams at me for a lot of things and I basically don’t hear it any more. I’ll get screamed at later for something else I’m sure, and since I’m the parent in charge of soccer this weekend, because her dad has another team going to another faraway tournament, the screaming will probably make me cry at some point this weekend because I’m not in a great mental space and then she’ll get upset about that and and and. So the underwear comment is the least of my worries.)

While I was there, ex and I had a discussion of the boychild’s imminent departure for college (less than a week now) and how unprepared he seemed to be to actually FLY out of here (with his dad, who seems similarly unprepared). And now I have to make a list for them so they know what to do when they get there. 1. Find room. 2. Find all the boxes and books that are all over campus that we’ve shipped out there to make sure he has bedding and textbooks and maybe even clothing. 3. Get him anything else he needs. 4. Don’t text me, don’t call me, don’t panic and freak out. Deal. Am I allowed to put that on the list?

Because it’s not like I’m starting school next week guys. It’s not like my room’s not an utter epic-fail disaster at the moment because of the kamikaze destruction I had to do at the end of the school year so the summer school special ed classes could SAFELY be in a science room. I don’t know where anything is. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I can’t focus on any of it.

So yesterday, I did the online stuff I was supposed to do to “train” me for using tech in my classroom (cough cough. not helpful.) and then went down to my classroom and did that crazy thing I always do, where I start one endeavor (empty boxes, unlock cupboards) and then like a squirrel enticed by a nut stash, I quickly switch to another task, and then while doing THAT task, another job rears its ugly little head, so I start that, and then I wander back over to the first one again, until I sit down somewhere, put my head in my hands, and wonder if I might make a good barista. Or a wonderful gas-station attendant. Or perhaps a bagger at the grocery store. These seem like worthy tasks. I might feel more successful. I might be less crazy.

Then after I finally gave up and started driving home, I notice movement from the car next to me at the stoplight. It’s one of my former students (a real jerk that year) waving at me. I roll my window down, music blasting, tell him his music isn’t loud enough and wave back. Take off when the light turns green. He’s on Clash of Clans with me (except he doesn’t know it’s me) and reports a Nida sighting.

Fuck me. This job will alternately save my life and drag me under.

And you wonder why the meditation and exercise are so important to me. OK, maybe you don’t wonder that.

I did exercise yesterday, after I found and ordered the rest of the boychild’s textbooks (he was here…he’ll have to do it himself in December or whenever he signs up for the next lot. Like a good teacher, I have now provided direct instruction and modeled best behaviors. He can now do guided instruction by texting me his questions while he’s trying to order for next semester. And hopefully by next year, he will have graduated to independent practice and I will just be the one paying the bills.). And then I came home and stared at the things I needed to do and I picked the ones that hurt least. The ones that gave me the most peace of mind. The ones I could handle the best.

Because my brain was slipping back into that depressoid place. It was quiet here last night, third night running with no one but cats. Hours of silence and no interaction with anyone but the chick at the gym who scanned my card and the guy who handed me my dinner. “Hot sauce?” “Yes please.” He’d already put it in there. I only go there once a month…it’s all I allow myself…but he knew I wanted the hot sauce. Thirteen hours of silence.

I worked on the binding for the big Menopause quilt, which is almost done…

And I cut out all the Wonder Under for the 5 birds that need to be done by the end of the month.

Actually, I have leeway on three of them and none on two of them, and they have to be a certain price, so I will be shortening up some time on those two to make them hit that price in my head. Plus there’s a gallery commission on them. So they won’t have a hand-stitched binding. I’ll satin stitch the edges. Much faster.

But I”m almost at the point where I can call the photographer on the two big quilts I will have finished this summer, and then I need to really really really get my butt in gear on the next big one. Maybe tonight I will work on that, or iron the birds down to fabric. I’m stuck on soccer fields all weekend (actually, if I’m lucky, we’ll have Sunday afternoon free) and then school takes over my life. School and soccer.

There are so many things that need to be done and I just don’t feel like I can handle all of it. So I make a list and start crossing things off of it. It’s the only way to survive this type of shit. Right now, my list consists of: 1. find my watch 2. take meds 3. make more tea (you need it) 4. go to school and make it happen. I can’t get beyond number 4.

OK. Going to look for the watch.

You’d Think…

Sometimes it’s good to let the brain wander down new streets for a while…to let it consider other ways of thinking, of making, of creating. I have one art group I’m a member of where I am often doing this meandering down avenues I wouldn’t normally frequent. Which is why tonight found me wiring two coathangers together and handstitching organza on top…

No really. I’m building a floating house of sorts and this is the picture in my head.

Or at least, this is part of the picture in my head. There’s more. Again, though, the quickie painters kick my butt. The people in my group who just spend an hour or so on a painting? I’m so jealous. Everything I do is so time-consuming. I’m over an hour in and nowhere near done. I have some time on this one though, a couple of weeks. This is for a show about the border between the US and Mexico, and we’re working with a group of female Mexican artists. My house is ephemeral. Maybe. We’ll see what it really looks like in the end. This is just the base layer. I’m handstitching it to the wire and coathangers and then there will be more layers and more handstitching and those worry dolls I ordered. Maybe some writing as well. We’ll see. I’m just glad I finally got started, so some of the image can get out of my head and into reality. The head was getting crowded. Too many ideas in there.

I also traced the five birds I need to do next…

Three are commissions and the other two are for the same exhibit as the house. They will be for sale at the exhibit or afterwards. Girlchild picked the additional two…some of that was based on size, since they need to fit into a particular shape.

Midnight was very helpful.

Not. She is known for taking bites out of drawings that are on the light table. She was also watching bad television. And reminding me that I still need to hang the TV and sort out the technology storage and put shelves up for the books. And then hang art. Because I’m not stressed out enough at the moment about getting things done.

Have I told you that I have no idea what day it is? I really don’t.

The reason I finally got going on the birds and the house was because I managed to trim the big quilt yesterday…

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It’s not as straight as I’d like…the image, that is. The rectangle is in fact rectangular and not a parallelogram. Although I did consider a different shape. But in the end, I figured it was fine…

Although I would have liked the head to the left a bit…oh well. When you look at the whole thing, it’s not a problem. I see it, but most people won’t. Of course, now I’ve told you about it, so when you see the official photographs, you’ll be all judgmental, just like me.

When I bought the binding fabric, I saw some great reds for heart colors…

I actually had an idea for a quilt of a huge heart. Because I don’t have 17 quilts ahead of that one. I entered another show today and did some research for the next batch of shows, what can be in and what can’t kind-of-thing, whether it’s subject matter or size or date completed that causes the issue. I actually said out loud that if I didn’t get into one of the two big shows I’m entering, then that’s it, I’m done. No more quilts.

Yeah right. I know. Not gonna happen. But it is discouraging to have rejection after rejection for months on end, especially when you know the stuff you’re making is bang, in your face, detailed and amazing. You wonder where it belongs. You wonder if you will ever find a place where your life’s work belongs. It doesn’t have to be in a tribe of likes or anything…just to belong. I realize it has to fit into the shows I enter. Maybe that is the core problem, the fitting-in.

I got the binding sewn on last night, super late.

I used a lighter background fabric for once, so you can see the outlining.

I got everything pinned down and started stitching it down last night. Had a hard time going to sleep. Brain was racing around like a crazy car…

So I stitched for a while. There aren’t enough waking hours in the day to get everything done. I’d rather be awake and making art than sleeping. That’s probably not healthy, but it is where I’m at at the moment. At at.

This, by the way, made me inordinately sad.

To realize how much pain he must have been in. He was so great in Mrs. Doubtfire, and also in Dead Poet’s Society…in everything. At some point, I guess, it no longer matters that you haven’t read all the books or seen all the movies. I joke about not killing myself because my Netflix queue is too long or I don’t know if Arya will survive George R. R. Martin. I can’t possibly die not knowing that. I am not the suicidal type, at core, so that helps, but have experienced the depths seriously enough to feel an electric shock when I hear of someone who seemed like he had it all together and thought this was a solution. Look at that face. I’m very sad. My whole household was sad. Well, except for the cats, and that’s because they are just clueless assholes.

(I just had to get up and go look for Babygirl, because I realized I hadn’t seen her in a while…she’s an old lady and sleeps a lot. I found her in the dining area, deeply asleep on the floor.)

By the way, the girlchild’s friend who gave her the Frozen soundtrack? I hate you. You bitch. But it was amusing to walk past her bedroom as she was packing for their trip to Arrowhead and hear the music blasting and seeing the boychild (who spent 2+ hours with me today negotiating shipping boxes to New York, ordering textbooks from multiple sites, trying to figure out his mailing address, and trying to open a bank account, and finally walked out and handed me his phone, saying he wasn’t going to watch it for a phone call) sitting on her floor untangling all of her bracelets and necklaces, and when I asked him why, he said the knots offended him. He leaves in 10 days. Sad. I think he might miss us. I know we will miss him. Greatly. He tells me he won’t answer his phone if he doesn’t recognize the number. I suggested he might have to get over that in the next few weeks. Damn. Sending your oldest off to college, knowing they will only barely come back, that this is the line between childhood and adulthood, that now it’s his life and not his life as my child. That is just so difficult. More so knowing that he provides me with a level of sanity that I otherwise don’t have. I’m rewriting my life as I sit here. I don’t know what it will look like any more than he knows what his looks like.

I finally managed to break through the writer’s block that was stifling me the last 10 days on the science fiction novel I am apparently writing. Yes, it still surprises me that I am doing this, but I am definitely doing it, and already have a core outline for book 2, which is not related…or is it? Hard to say. I was stymied by the science at one point and kept thinking myself into this hole of wanting GOOD science, but not having a strong enough background to write it well. So I wrote a paragraph that was extremely vague and then, because I’m using Google Docs, wrote a comment telling myself to add a bunch of good science here, once I have a chance to chase down a source of said information (I think I need to pick someone’s brain, a plant geneticist or something like that), and even wrote “blah blah blah” at the end of one sentence, and then actually typed, “Add good science here.” And then? Then I could jumpstart the story again (although now I need a gun consultant, dammit), and it wrote another 1000 words all by itself without my even trying very hard. I think that’s the goal. Get the core story out and then go back and fix all the shit I don’t really know yet. Like people’s names…although the three core players in this section all have names. I still have a main character named Dr. Blank, though. Not good.

Anyway. Unfortunately, the rest of my week is full of school stuff, mostly professional development. I’m taking the iPad so I can work on the book if it’s boring (it usually is), and hopefully I’ll get the binding on that big quilt done this week so I can call the photographer, plus get the birds in gear and make a bloody floating house. The kids are gone for a few days to Arrowhead with their dad and grandpa. I get to house Jake, the amazingly large and overly friendly German Shepherd who belongs to my ex but really loves me more…plus clean up vast amounts of cat puke and negotiate a houseful of silence…which honestly might be a joy after three days of teacher talk. I shoved a hike in there too, because why the fuck not? And the weekend is full of soccer, or maybe it’s full of drawing boobies on the soccer field (the breasticle kind instead of the blue-footed kind). Whatever. Three to five soccer games in two days in the OC? There are many things wrong with that picture, but in the end? It doesn’t really matter. I will do this or that and make this or that and get into this or that show and whatever. School starts in a week and I am not ready, but then again, when am I ever? It’s a job and I do it relatively well, despite the mental crap I carry around.

I had to apologize to the kids about 14 times tonight. I tried a new meal (we do a lot of that over the summer, because there is more time than during the school year), and the recipe said 20 minutes prep time and 40 minutes cook time. What a joke! I think it took me 90 minutes to prep, and no, I wasn’t being particularly lame…there was just a lot of cutting and chopping. Girlchild says some recipes don’t count that as prep time (fuckwads!), so who knows. She is willing to look for shortcuts for me. So we didn’t have dinner until 9 PM, and I said, well, at least you’ll look back at these years and laugh, because your mom was so lame at the basics, like cooking and cleaning (because I was entering an art show!), but the thing that sucks is that the recipe was really GOOD (both kids went back for seconds), so I will probably have to make it again. At least I have leftovers for the next two days of lunch, right? Unless some kid bogarts it for breakfast. Seriously. I started cooking at 6:15. I’m not totally lame…just mostly lame.

OK, I really should have gone to bed two hours ago, but the brain is not complying. Fucked up, for sure, because that’s two nights running with very little sleep. You’d think I would have figured that one out by now.

Hopefully

I’m having a hard time focusing this morning. I know I have this huge to-do list that encompasses the house, the yard, school stuff, sending boychild to college stuff, and art stuff. It’s a stuff tsunami swirling around in my head. So I just sat here staring at the computer for a while, because I did a lot of stuff yesterday, but some of it was just soul-fixing stuff that needed to happen and some of it was family stuff that needed to happen (girlchild turned 17 yesterday), and my head was still whirling around last night, even though I did finally get to that magical place…I finished quilting that damn beast of a quilt…

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It took 18 hours and 36 minutes. I had estimated 20 hours, so that wasn’t a bad estimate. The quilting became a pain in the butt on Friday, which is partially why I didn’t write Friday night (that and being totally exhausted from lack of sleep). The thread kept breaking over and over again and I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do (saying prayers to the Goddess of Thread, wafting burning sage throughout the house, dancing the Dance of the Strong Thread) and nothing was working. I finally gave up around midnight, because I knew I had to be up super early on Saturday morning to hike (yes! I hiked! I’ll post that later) and I was just getting frustrated.

I hiked in the morning on Saturday, and some time in the afternoon, after napping (because that’s what lack of sleep and a strenuous hike does to your body), I sat down to finish quilting…except I had to be somewhere later…

But the damn thread was still being cranky. Its’ so irritating to deal with thread sometimes. I mean, you’re already changing bobbins way too often because they’re not very big and don’t hold much thread, but then every time it breaks, you have to tie off and start over again, and it just wears on you. But at that point, I could see the end. I had gotten about 2/3 of the way around the outside edge. I was almost there.

And then I had to stop! It was OK. I went to the Visions Art Museum opening. They currently have Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s 30 Quilts for 30 Years, which yes, was at Houston, but is still nice to see again. That’s not why I went. I went because of Deidre Adams’ Tracings, six pieces that she made just for the exhibit, but also because I was hoping to meet her after only knowing her online via her blog and comments she made when I sent photos in for SAQA shows. So that was really nice, not only to see her work up close…this combines paper and her fabric technique of layering color and marks on the piece…but also to see her face to face. You should go read her blogposts about making these pieces if you go…interesting insights into how we sometimes have to work even if our brains aren’t ready for it (I don’t know ANYTHING about that state, right?). I also wanted to see Arline Fisch’s Hanging Garden of California, which was a treat with the artist standing in the middle dressed to match. I’m a bit annoyed that no photos are allowed at all…I can see the point when the pieces are in a book that you can buy, but I think a picture of the art with artist standing by is really cool, and we weren’t allowed to do that. I guess they might find it easier to have the same no-photo policy for all shows, but I think it would be good advertising to let people take photos at shows where publications aren’t available.

So after that, it was the girlchild’s birthday dinner, which was nice, good food and she seemed happy with her gifts (we are supporting her dream of a trip to Paris next summer…scary stuff to think of sending her off, but she’ll be 18 in a year and then off to college).

When I got home, it wasn’t that late, and yes, I was tired again, but the quilt told me that it only needed another hour or so. And it was right. And this time, it didn’t break thread a million times, so I stitched like the wind…

And finished 44 minutes later. Yes, I use an app to keep track of time. My brain isn’t capable.

It was early, so I thought about trying to trim it, but I think this one might be difficult to trim…it’s not particularly straight (my fault…being lazy, stubborn, stupid, I don’t know what) and I’m debating making it not a rectangle. So I thought it would be better to make that decision when I’m fully awake (whenever that might be, because I have half a cup of tea in me and it’s most definitely morning and I actually had almost 9 hours of sleep last night for the first time in like a month, and I am nowhere near fully awake). Soon. Get the rest of the tea in me, finish this post, clear the floor, lay it out, let the brain wander in to a decision.

Shut the negative crap up. Because that voice is going ballistic in there…it’s referencing past failures, berating me for not being more careful when I ironed this together (there’s only so much I can do about my own mental state), it’s listing all the things I need to get done and yelling at me for sleeping too long, for hiking because it took up valuable time, but then also for not going to the gym this morning. So make up your fucking mind…either you want me to exercise and be healthy or you don’t. Seriously. I have to weigh every decision. I went to bed early without meditating because I was exhausted. I would have fallen asleep in meditation, so I just skipped that step and went to bed. Somewhere in my head, I know it was the right decision, but that stupid judgy part of the brain is questioning every single thing I do, every thing I say, every thing that I’ve done in the last 10 years, maybe more.

Shut the fuck up. We all have those voices. They’re just damn annoying. So I need it to get further away before I lay this thing on the floor and decide the damage. The next step. Then I can work my way through the shit on the post-it note in front of my computer, where I tried to corral all the crap that needs to happen today. I can feel inspired by seeing the art last night and the successful hike and the girlchild’s existence and even the fact that my ex and son cleaned the kitchen yesterday before I got home (apparently the girlchild had left a larger disaster than usual, which is what I had been expecting to come home to, so that was a truly wonderful surprise). I want to be invited to do a solo show at Visions, dammit. Don’t know if that will ever happen. My work is a bit more in-your-face than the work of those to whom they usually offer such opportunities. That nasty part of my brain is now telling me to make pretty landscapes. It’s telling me I’ll never get a solo show anywhere. It’s reminding me of all the rejections I’ve gotten in the last 8 months and asking me why I made art at all. Sigh. Making pretty landscapes wouldn’t work either. I need an exorcism. That part of the brain needs to wander off and get hit by a train.

Anyway. Hopefully by tonight, I’ll have it trimmed and the binding machine-stitched on so I can do the handwork. Hopefully I’ll have a bunch of things crossed off this post-it. Hopefully that negative brain piece will have duct tape wrapped tightly around its mouth. I do spend a lot of time hoping.

Meditate the Fuck through It

Yup. I think that is my mantra for the new school year, which officially starts in 13 days. Don’t count team meetings and getting the room set up and prep days and professional development. Because if you count all that shit, I started yesterday. It’s a matter of looking at everything they want me to do (“they” being an amalgamate of all the people who want me to do all the things) and deciding what pieces are actually possible to do and how much of the doing I will do. And where is the line, the balance, between being a fucking awesome teacher and getting institutionalized for overwork. You take a little piece at a time. You pick one thing, maybe two, that can be different. You don’t rewrite everything. You don’t become an entirely different teacher. You do a little at a time and remember that working yourself into the ground doesn’t help anyone.

There’s been a lot of deep breathing the last two days. I’m OK. My meditation app now includes short, 2-minute refresher meditation blips…passing period is 4 minutes long, so I could meditate in between each class. You laugh, but I did that last year on way too many days. Close the door behind the last kid, gather up the journals, take a handful of deep breaths, wipe tears from eyes, open the door for the next class full of kids. It’s not the best way to live, but when you are in survival mode, that is what you do. Last year, I survived. My counselor has decided that this year, I will have a fulfilling school year. She promises me this. She calls me on my negativity. I call myself on it, but I’m not as good at it. In fact, I mostly suck at it. The parts of my brain argue with each other and there is rarely agreement. My daughter calls me on it too. I guess that’s a good thing. It’s hard to be positive when there have been so many disappointing developments, so many high expectations just completely trashed by someone else. That said, I manage it with art rejections. I’ve been rejected from a ton of shows this year. I can’t get into anything, apparently. Do I stop making art? Do I question my purpose in continuing to make art? Not really. Briefly, and then the art brain tells me to fuck off and ignore all those losers who reject my work. It will get in eventually. I won’t stop making it. I wish I had that confidence in the rest of my life, in my job, my love life, my relationships with people. Why can’t the art brain get all hot and heavy with those parts of me? Where does her attitude come from? How can it just be in part of me and not in all the parts?

All philosophical questions for the middle of the night. Remember how I was going to be done quilting on Tuesday? Yeah. Well. Fuck that. I’m still quilting. I’m 15 hours in now…

So maybe 20 hours was an accurate guess. I have about 1/3 of the quilting around the outside of the image done, maybe a little less than that. I didn’t have a lot of quilting time today. School. Other stuff. So I’m doing a stipple to fill in the background…dark blue thread on dark blue fabric at night. In bad lighting. And the thread was doing really well for a good long time, and then it started breaking. Bastard.

So I gots a little frusterated in the last hour or so. There was swearing and yelling and growling and application of oily crap that keeps the thread from breaking.

This is the backing…

I have most of one long side, all of the top and about half of another long side to do…hopefully done tomorrow. Why do I even predict things like that? I already know how busy tomorrow is. Saturday is busy too. Sunday? Sunday is wide open. Next week. Sigh. I always want to have more done than I do. Always dissatisfied with my progress. High expectations and not meeting them. But it’s a good thing to have high expectations with the artmaking. I’m more realistic with the outcomes. I don’t often chastise myself for not meeting them…I just revise. Again…lessons to apply to the rest of life?

Stitching with friends tonight…still working on the never-ending Christmas stocking…

I post these pictures to prove that I’m actually doing SOMETHING…something besides endlessly stitching around and around in dark blue thread.

This quilt will be done soon. I want to get the binding either Saturday or Sunday, get it stitched on next week. Call the photographer. Move on to the next project(s). I need to build a fabric house, complete 5 birds, and get the gender equality drawing done. I think my brain will be less panicky if I can make headway on that in the next week. Plus school. And clear out all the stuff in my bedroom that belongs in the living room. If I move it out, I think I’ll be more likely to deal with it. If I work on just one positive thing achieved each day (hung a piece of art, finished one step in the next quilt, crossed one thing off the list), I think it will all feel better. This is partially why I’m doing the GISHWHES thing…it’s goofy stuff (we shot a rock album cover last night, and tonight I added the band name and album title and submitted it), but it’s fun and I am actually getting these silly tasks done. It puts my brain in a different place. I need my brain to be in a different place. I need it to stop going over and over what I did wrong, when in reality, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wasn’t psychic. Again. There’s a drawing in there somewhere. At least one. I need to find time for that too. The drawing is part of processing the bad shit out of me. The drawing is a way to vomit it up and get it out, like a hairball. Poison in the brain. Disgusting on the carpet.

Sigh. One of the projects that needs to be done before the end of the month is a floating house, and I have all the materials (coathangers, wire, organza, tulle) and I was thinking about what the house meant and how to build and decorate it, and all of a sudden, I thought: worry dolls. I need worry dolls. Kathy York’s quilts reminded me of them. So I’m hanging worry dolls off this house, but I think I’m also going to write some of my worries down, either on tags tied to the dolls, or maybe just right on the house itself, on the bits hanging off of it. Write down the worries, have them pulled down, weighed down, by the dolls. Because that is what worry feels like, extreme financial worry, worry for sending the boychild off to college, worry about my own job, worry about finishing stuff on time, worry about the girlchild applying to college, worry about my future, worry about so many things. Maybe if I tie all that to the floating house, I won’t have to carry them around myself.

You can see why I need the meditation.

Outlined

So the plus is that all the outlining is done. The minus is that I want to finish the fucker and I have to go to school today. I think that is the core problem with my entire life (not really), that I’m always interrupting my art with that silly job thing that pays the bills (and honestly, gets me out of the house and dealing with people, which I really don’t like at the moment, because otherwise I’d be a giant hermit who only comes out for groceries once a week and snarls at everyone when she does come out…oh shit, I think I already do that).

Fucking Sigh.

Anyway, I quilted for another 3 1/2 hours yesterday, not starting until late again (maybe I should just dispose of that notion that I get any work done in the mornings at all, because I don’t) and only stopped because I knew how early I’d have to be up this lovely fucking morning (can you tell how thrilled I am by the prospect of 7 hours of professional development?). And then realized that I wasn’t tired yet, that my brain was speeding along, all excited that the quilting is almost done (Is It? Is It Really? Or do I have hours of filling in the background to go. C’mon brain. Figure it out.), so I didn’t go right to bed, which is what I should have done, because I’m “awake” now and my brain is significantly impaired by the lack of sleep I got anyway, despite stopping early.

I was quilting the upper torso, head, a giant eyeball, a dog, and a chastising thought bubble. In fact, I think I’m going to make a small quilt just of that thought bubble and call it Chastising Thought Bubble. It would also make a good band name.

I had to do a lot of careful stitching through this section…I’m over 12 hours in at this point, but remember, I guessed 20. I think that’s an overestimate at this point, but I could be wrong. That’s the heart.

It doesn’t really matter. Time is time. It gets used up one way or another. I was looking forward to the detail of the line stitching on the face. It always brings the face to life. I don’t always use fabrics with a lot of contrast on bodies, especially the face, because I expect the line to be a major part of the image. So here’s the face before stitching…

And during stitching. I went really slow with the eyes because of the details. Even the whites of the eyes are filling up with tears.

This quilt is all about the sad. The lost. The losing. The changes. A friend of a friend posted a link to an article about menopause, a humorous article about the blood and the irritability and the facial hair and all those things that come with being a woman approaching her 50s, and her husband posted a beautiful remark, and I thought, “Wow. That’s what it should have been like. That’s what you’re missing. That’s what you didn’t have. Support. Unconditional love.” And all that’s in there too. This notion of what a woman is and should be, this crap from the 50s about the perfect housewife providing for her man in this way is still an expectation in the backs of many men’s heads, even as they say all the appropriately modern things about women being equals. I read elsewhere about “nice guy misogynists”…guys who are generally nice, but harbor these feelings deep down about women cooking and cleaning and always perky and happy and men needing things done for them after a hard day at work (think Mad Men, which I can’t watch at all). All that’s in there. Plus a broken heart and a lost something. Just plain lost.

There’s her face with the stitching. See the difference?

There isn’t actually a lot of background on this quilt…the image does a good job of filling the fabric, but today’s activities don’t leave much room for quilting, so maybe that will have to be Thursday. The schedule adjusts yet again.

There are a lot of tears on this quilt…both in fabric and real-live ones that fell while I was working on it. Drawing it, tracing it, cutting it out, ironing it to fabric…I cried. I cried when I trimmed the fabric, when I ironed it together, when I stitched it down, and when I quilted it. I will probably cry while I bind it too.

When I stopped quilting to go to sleep, my brain did not want to comply. It often just fucking ignores me, which is greatly annoying, but what are you going to do? No idea. Let me know if you figure it out. So I only had the sleeve left to stitch on the Mammogram quilt. So I did that…

Not an official picture, but it’s officially done as of August 6 at about 1:30 AM. Fuck. Not enough sleep, people. Not enough sleep.