Rethinking…

Triggers: places where I have no definitive purpose. I had to limp the car in to the car guy, stopping every 3-4 blocks to get it to stop overheating, girlchild following me, turning the engine off at every signal. She had an early appointment and was tired and cranky, so she didn’t want to go back home. She needed makeup for her senior photo today, and though I had tried getting it last month when I was in a store I visit approximately once every 13.5 months, she didn’t answer the text in time, so of course it was my fault she didn’t think of it until 9 PM last night. So she argued I could drop her at her appointment, go to the mall (aaargh, shoot me now), buy it, and come back in time to pick her up.

Sigh. I hadn’t eaten. I thought I was going back home. But I pick my arguments these days, and sometimes it’s just easier to go along with her.

So to the mall I went. And realized Walmart and Target are here, so I might as well get school supplies off my list (your friendly neighborhood public school teacher just spent $150 of her own money on your kids…one woman thanked me for my service when she asked why I was buying so many folders.). Because that’s not depressing. Half the mall stores aren’t even open until 10 though, so I’m typing this on my phone in Panera (better than Cold Stone for breakfast), where Wyatt cheerily and spacily took my order (oh my lord, you dear sweet boy…who hired you?). But I still have 25 minutes until Macys fucking opens and the muzak and early morning mall people are driving me nuts. And I just realized the kid who told me I could keep the plate that he did his cell model on must have stolen it from Panera. Ok, probably not. I don’t want to accuse someone of stealing just because it looks exactly like this plate in front of me that had over 500 calories on it that I will have to burn off later.

And you know what? The mall, by myself, is a fucking trigger. It makes me sad. It makes me depressed. Sitting around and watching mall people in the mall doing mall things, all being mall-like, I shouldn’t be there. If I go in knowing exactly what I need, like a target strike, and get the fuck back out quickly? I’m fine. Or with other people, I’m OK. Mostly. Depending on the purpose and the people. But this really fucked my mood for the day. I was doing OK yesterday. Not great. Just OK. Bearable. Not drowning in anything. Today. Today is different. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow does not include the mall.

At comic book club, we decided we didn’t like the book…Pretty Deadly, Vol 1. The art was nice, but the story was just not present. Or coherent. Sigh.

Or should that be comic-book book club. Or comic book² club. No one knows.

I did quilt a lot yesterday. I got everything done up to the breasts. I only did about 4 hours though. I wanted at least 5, but when I got home, girlchild wanted help picking her photo outfit, which turned into “what’s my favorite color”…

(yes, that’s a snake on her head and no, that’s not what she wore for pictures, although I did double dare her), and I needed to draw something for GISHWHES, and my SIL called and I talked to my brother, because he remembers “write me a note telling me WHY,” from middle school, and then it was really late and I knew I had to get up early to deal with the car. And tomorrow is a total loss (first professional development of the year, expect nothing and you will only be surprised by whatever it is, although the over-2-hour long movie presentation planned for 1-3 PM will make me sleep…is he fucking NUTS?). And now it’s after 4 PM and I still haven’t started quilting today. FUCK.

My scheduling has deteriorated into a WTF moment. I am losing it. Deep breaths. I achieve small things each day; some days the achievements are smaller than others. They are still achievements.

I think I need to go crawl into a ball shape and put a pillow over my head, and then maybe my eye will stop twitching and faeries will come and organize the hoard, plus make a reasonable schedule of all the tasks that need to be completed before August 31, and if I’m lucky, they’ll suss out my personal life as well so I can feel more human and less like everyone’s mom. EVERYONE’S mom. Yours too. Or a sad ball of snot. That’s not your mom.

So quilting…

And more…

And even more…

Not much to say, except wow. There’s a lot of quilting on this sucker.

Learning to think differently about things is not the same as positive thinking. When people tell me to be more positive, I think actually it is more useful to me to have a neutral response to things that might normally cause me to stress excessively. For example, when my credit card number was stolen, in the past, I would have freaked out and stressed and verbalized all that. Instead, I had a very neutral, calm response. Shit happens. Go through steps 1-3 and shit will go away. And I did that. And it did. So as more stressful things are popping up this week with school coming closer for me and the kids, and the thought of sending boychild off with all the stuff that goes along with that, I’m better off thinking about major stressors in a neutral way. It’s in my nature to want to be prepared, so I have a couple things in my brain for one thing that’s coming up that is causing some PTSD related to authority figures. There’s a mantra in my head from a recent stressful event…”don’t say anything until they’ve talked. don’t freak out. don’t say anything.” One friend said I wasn’t being true to my self, but I’m not sure that my self is particularly helpful in these situations. Sometimes she just needs to calm down and hear all the words…and all the NOT words, because there seems to be a lot unsaid. I spent the last few years feeling attacked for having the wrong feelings and saying the wrong things, and feeling like no one was listening to what I was saying, even though I was the only one actually communicating. But what I said was never heard. It was never considered. In multiple parts of my life, that is still the case. I feel a need to guard my self more carefully now. She needs more protection than she used to, and it’s possible that communicating what she’s thinking is not in my best interest at the moment. Maybe I just need to hold what she’s thinking carefully in my head instead of putting it out there. For now. I’d love to be able to trust someone enough to not feel that way, but I don’t.

“If we decide to think positively, that may be useful, but it is not meditation. It is just more thinking. We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called positive thinking as of negative thinking. It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate, illusory, self-serving, and wrong.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

To me, all that overly positive thinking, the cliches and cute little things on Pinterest and Facebook, it’s just a mask. It’s not real. It’s hard for someone like me to read them and think, oh yeah, if I just THOUGHT hard enough (because I don’t think hard?), I would be happy. It’s magic. I’m just not doing it right. No, ma’am. You’ve spent two years being told you weren’t doing it right. I was doing. I was talking. I was thinking. I was watching. There is a change that needs to happen, and it is, slowly, like a snail traversing gravel, but it’s not about cute little maxims. It’s about changing the response. Letting the big bad stuff just roll over into the swamp behind me. Pushing forward through hanging vines and snakes without letting them grab on and trigger that fear, that fight-or-flight response, that adrenaline rush caused by stress. Or even that sad wave, so different than the fear, more of a washing over your head than an electrical charge to the heart.

OK. With all that in my head, it’s probably best that I quilt for the next 10 hours before talking again.

Plans Shmans…

So much for planning to quilt, eh? Sheesh. I don’t think I even started quilting until almost midnight. Oh wait, I lie. I did 17 minutes and 51 seconds before I went to the girlchild’s soccer game. So no, I didn’t get much done. I was tired too. Maybe an hour and 15 minutes. That just sucks. It means I am on a mission today. I am going to quilt my ass off. I would take a picture right here of my ass before and after so you could see it, but I’d probably get in trouble for that. It does help that I have no car today…one needs fixing and is mostly undrivable and the other one has been bogarted by the girlchild.

Here’s some highlights of things that were quilted Sunday…electrified monitors…

Lots of octopus tentacle suckers…

This is what it looks like all piled next to the sewing machine…it’s a really LONG piece, so shoving parts under the machine to quilt in the middle is a pain in the ass.

She’s all done though. Down in the water.

I’m almost done with the water section and I’ve done the two larger things on either side of the main figure. Today I’m going to hopefully get a good chunk of the torso done. Seriously, I’ve got somewhere to be tonight, but otherwise I have no excuses. Well, I do have lots of other things I should be doing as well, but I’m blowing them off. Here I am telling you that I’m blowing them off, so no, no shelves in the living room, no hanging art in there, no starting my lesson plans, no getting that other drawing done or doing anything with the 5 birds that now need to be done or that house thing, no clearing all the living room crap out of my room, and certainly no yardwork.

I am trying to do at least one GISHWHES item a day. Yesterday involved Legos, and despite the boychild adamantly refusing to be part of anything, wow. There he is. On the floor. Aged 18 and playing with Legos. Now he didn’t try to build a lot of novel stuff like the girlchild and I were doing, but whatever.

Again, photos of these challenges will go up when I’m allowed to do that (maybe next week?). And yes, me (age 47), my daughter (17 next weekend), and son (18) were all playing with Legos for at least an hour. There is nothing wrong with that. Calli was remarkably useless. At one point, she tried to eat Hedwig (you can see the small white thing about 6″ from her nose), but then she just gave up and slept.

Soccer was interesting, in that another almost-fight happened. Fun stuff. Girchild was funny, said something about how they’re all almost 18 and this is how they’re behaving? Like a fight will help? Love that kid.

When they go to head the ball, they all close their eyes and leap into the air. The ball often misses all of them completely. Interestingly, the ball hit girlchild’s head and she headed it into the other player’s head. Yes, it all sounds very dangerous. Because it is.

This flew over.

I don’t know why I took a picture of it, but it came out better than the other 72 soccer pictures I took. Sad but true.

OK. My ass. Quilting. Because if we’re still looking at my original plan of finishing tomorrow, I have about 15 hours of quilting to do in two days. HA! Laugh all you like.

Head’s in a Weird Space…

I’m sitting here at midnight on a Saturday listening to the rain pour down through the trees outside my office window. It’s been so warm the last week, and although it is still warm (and now abnormally humid for San Diego), the air has that rain feel to it. It’s nice. It feels good to my heart. Deep breaths of that rain air. Makes up for a long silent day of sitting on soccer fields and not feeling connected to anything or anyone. It’s a tournament weekend, obviously.

I really wanted to get a lot of quilting done today, but soccer was not helping with that. I realize I could send my daughter, who drives, off to these games by herself, but this is her last year in high school, the last year she’s home. Plus it always irritated me that my parents blew off most of my sports events once I was old enough to drive. Her dad has his own club team this year, and all the games are conflicting and at totally different fields, so he’s showing up for about half her games. She needs someone there. And she? She really does.

I did quilt today. I wanted to do 4 hours. I did 2.

This quilt is so detailed and complicated to quilt. I’m still down in the water section, although I’ve started one of the things that sits on the water on the left side…I still have to finish the seaweed, fish, and water on the right side. I’m still sticking to my 20-hour estimate though…

I just may not get 20 hours in total by Tuesday PM. At this point, that would mean 5 hours each day, and I just don’t think I can pull that off. We’ll see. I’m a little obsessed with this art stuff.

Still raining. So nice to hear.

I have to admit, it was a hard day today. I wrote sci fi for a while before the first game, only a thousand words or so. I’m stuck in this place where I want the science to be good, but I don’t know enough about it to make sure that it is. I will have to deal with that at some point. I kinda wish there was a plant scientist sitting right next to me sometimes. I write comments to myself (I’m using Google Docs to write), reminding me to check this scientific process or vocabulary later on. Right now, it’s probably more important that I just write.

That is what my document is called by the way: JustWrite.

Girlchild had two games today.

She also broke up a fight in this one. First time I’ve seen the girls almost come to blows, and she yelled out in this deep voice to get them to stop…I recognized that voice. It’s the one I use at school when I see a fight about to happen. Or when the kids are just getting out of hand. Deep. Guttural. They pay attention. It worked. The ref? Sigh. Take control, man.

So one of the things that started today was GISHWHES (The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen), which is a goofy image/video scavenger hunt with over 150 items. Teams of 15 people work to get the images and videos uploaded over a week’s time, and many of them require some feats of magic, honestly. I’m part of a Geek Girls Meetup group (yeah, laugh at me. I am one.) that had I think 9 members willing to play, and then we were combined with a group of college girls out of Illinois. This is the stuff that Old Kathy loved. I’m not allowed to post pictures of my items until after the event closes, but I’m saving them. I’m trying to do one a day, although there are some we will try to do as a local group maybe? I tend to pick the more artistic ones (shockingly), but there might be a duet between the girlchild and I, if I can figure out how to pull it off. She sings better than I do, but I have heart and soul. Or something.

She totally is willing to assist, but the boychild is adamantly against helping in any way, shape, or form…which is funny, because it’s totally a college-kid kind of event. Anyway. This is who I am. The wacky creative sort that can figure out what condiments mix together to make flesh colors. Not to mention, we have a lot of Legos.

Please try to figure out how many people are in this photo. I count 7 legs in the pile-up. That seems wrong.

We won one and lost one…

It rained for most of the second game. It RAINED. In San Diego in August. So fucking delightful. I put sunscreen on for the first game, because I will fry in overcast skies, but for the second game, that’s the umbrella and my stitching underneath it. Humid and warm, but wet…

I’m not actually getting much done on the birds, because she’s playing a lot of the games…lots of injuries on the team at the moment, so more opportunities to play. They played the team she used to be on in the second game, which was a little weird…

And unfortunately, that’s the game they lost (by one silly goal). If they make it to the finals tomorrow, they will probably play them again.

Because my brain is not working properly again (fuck me. When DOES it ever work properly?), I thought we’d have time to go home in between the two games and we really didn’t, so we found a weird little Starbucks with crappy Wifi nearby and ate lunch and hung out there. I wrote a little, read the worst book ever (I have to write a review later), and filled in the GISHWHES chart we made so that we could each sign up for specific tasks. By the way, if you know a friendly professional barista in the San Diego area who wants to conspire with me on an artistic activity, let me know. I’m not a professional.

After the second game, I was a good girl and went to the gym. And there are games tomorrow. And maybe tomorrow I can handle the Lego task for GISHWHES. And quilt for 5 hours. I haven’t talked to another human being since 4:42 PM. That’s the stuff that drives me bonkers. I think I already spend way too much time in my head for that shit to be healthy. In fact, the girlchild was trying to listen to an audiobook on the way back from soccer, and I was talking, and she got all irritated because she was trying to listen to the book, and I told her, “Hey. I have no one to talk to until tomorrow…19 hours or so from now.” She felt bad and talked to me on the way home. I wasn’t trying to guilt-trip her. It was reality. I really didn’t have anyone else to talk to. I needed to quilt. I also needed some human connection before I went into the cave that is my antisocial silent world. Talking to the cats and the TV doesn’t count.

Tomorrow? More of the same. Head is in a weird space. It may never come out.

Yarnbombing the World and Other Fiber Stories

I spent a lot of time with fiber today…

I went up to Oceanside and Vista to see some quilt-related stuff, and that led to yarn bombing stuff…

Like this yarnbombed payphone that is actually an iPhone…

Pretty well done, actually…Wait. Actually it’s NOT an iPhone. It’s not even a payphone. It’s an empty space where a payphone used to be. Actually.

This is in front of the Oceanside Library, if you want to see it…

And the other cool stuff that was there…like sweaters for hamsters hanging out to dry.

Lots of yarn was used up in this endeavor…

As well as all those bits and pieces that you started knitting and crocheting and don’t know what to do with them?

Now you know.

Plus. If it has eyeballs…

Then odds are I’m going to take a picture of it…

But since this is the entrance to the library, you know the kids are gonna love it too…

Or be totally creeped out by it and refuse to go in.

Cool feet. And eyeball.

I used to knit AND crochet. Regular Renaissance woman, I am. Now I stick to being a modern woman. Except minus the pointy bra and the Mother’s Little Helper in the cupboard for afternoons post-child.

And yet I don’t yarnbomb. I’m kind of a fan of trees. But also of the absurd. I think it would be cool to yarnbomb a single tree about 20 miles from any access point, like way out in the mountains. But someone’s probably already done that.

So we went to the Rancho Buena Vista Adobe for some quilts that were there…

It had been a while since I’d been there, so I probably have a picture of this mosaic from a million years ago…

And no, it’s not like I needed inspiration to persuade myself that lots of pieces is better than not very many.

I really like that sun. And I liked her…

especially her face up close…

A level of peace I find hard to come by. Plus…waterspots. And this sign…

Too many words for drunk people.

From there, we headed to the Oceanside Museum of Art, where one of the traveling portions of Quilt National opened this last week. No photos allowed, but what’s funny is that I don’t remember some of the quilts. I must have gone through that exhibit 17 times over the three days we were there, and I didn’t remember some of them. There are some wonderful pieces up there, though, totally worth the $8. I would pay $8 just to see Susan Lenz’ graveyard rubbings and Paula Kovarik’s round piece again. Oh yeah, and Brooke Atherton’s journal/map piece. Drop dead gorgeous. So that was nice.

And afterwards, we had Thai food…I don’t know that I’ve ever had Thai, because…well, let’s just say it wasn’t a choice I made…to me, Asian food is all very similar, plus this spice or that one, minus this grass or that one. Then again, the only food I really can’t handle is fish…well, and chocolate, but that’s not usually the main dish.

Van Gogh was checking the time…

I love these Van-Gogh-esque trees (so much drawing inspiration…like I need MORE of that).

Even the tulips on the utility box…well, one of them anyway…

The other one was very bad and didn’t deserve tulips.

I didn’t start quilting until late…I know I have to finish this one up quickly, because I’ve got lots more to do before school starts…and this one is a big bad beastie of a quilt…this is the back…

Luckily, the thread isn’t breaking very often and it’s quilting well, but there are just a LOT of pieces and fiddly bits, so it takes time.

I made it through all the dirt parts, I think…Calli was incredibly helpful, of course.

This is where I gave up…I realized how early I have to get up in the morning for the soccer tournament, and my car overheated today, so I was down in the driveway at almost midnight putting coolant in the radiator, and I still don’t trust it to drive to UCSD tomorrow morning, so we’ll take the kids’ car, but it needs gas. Sigh.

I wanted to get like 5 hours of quilting in today (probably somewhat unrealistic). I managed two.

Eighteen (at least) to go. Realistically? I could finish quilting her by Tuesday maybe. I could do sooner, but only if girlchild doesn’t make it to the finals on Sunday. And I’m probably not supposed to hope for that. There’s no time between games tomorrow, but I have most of the afternoon…although I need to go to the gym and I’m blowing off any possibility of a social life to make quilts. Now there’s a decision for you. So I could realistically get maybe 3 or 4 hours in tomorrow. Sunday, maybe the same, depending on the final and grocery shopping. Monday could be the last bit. If I buckled down and worked my butt off. So I’m sticking with my Tuesday estimate. Of course, I’ll probably have to go back to the fabric store for binding again. Maybe that should just be my Tuesday thang. Buying binding fabric. Whether you need it or not.

Then I have all the materials for the house thing I need to do, plus now I need to do some birds for that as well, plus potentially three more birds. And the gender equality drawing needs to get done and numbered and traced. Plus I might need to actually think about and prepare for school. Nope. Fuck that. I will figure that balance thing out if it kills me. I did OK with balance last year in terms of art v. schoolwork. I just need to make sure I take care of myself too, and that was difficult last year. I have permission from my counselor at the moment to cry as needed, to do what I want, and to take care of myself for the next two weeks without dealing with school. It’s not a very realistic thing, that, but it’s nice to keep it in the back of my mind for when I’m feeling a bit crazy about going back and losing the boychild and coping with my existing life. I’m so incredibly busy, but so incredibly alone in that incredible busy-ness. Not good.

Working on this quilt though? Good. It’s powerful. Of course, that means it won’t get in anywhere, but whatever. It will still kick ass.

Purple’s a Bitch…

I’m fairly sure the guy who runs my meditation app did not expect me to be using the breathing/thinking exercises to deal with purple thread. But that was the most useful thing I used it for yesterday, and you know, it wasn’t REALLY about the purple thread or running out of the purple thread with only 8 square inches of quilting left, or that I also needed binding, and I couldn’t get the binding in the same store as the thread, and that I had just been to JoAnns (hate that place) the day before for OTHER thread and things that I probably didn’t need (is now really a good time to relearn crochet? I think not. Shut up, Susan.) or that the girlchild wasn’t home yet from the beach and she had been on the phone with me (on her friend’s phone, third time in the last week her phone has died and she has called on a friend’s phone…I laugh about this) because she was convinced her soccer shoes were here (they weren’t) and that I had purposely moved them. Because when I come home from the gym at 8 PM, instead of showering, making dinner, and quilting…I move soccer shoes.

I don’t, by the way. So once the hurricane blew out of here (ie, the girlchild…I was still on the phone with her dad, who had located the shoes at HIS house, when she blew into HIS house with the same level of screechy noise, so I got to hear it again), I was able to leave for thread and binding. But by then, all that shit had settled in my gut, my chest, plus people are emailing me and texting me about school, despite my constant requests to Leave It until August 1 (which is tomorrow, yes, I am quite fucking aware), so I started to breathe in and out. I breathed the purple thread IN and breathed the irritating crap OUT. Seriously. Meditation. It’s good for you.

So my goal (ha ha ha!) was to finish quilting the Mammogram quilt in the morning (I did actually START in the morning) and get it bound early and then start quilting the Menopause quilt.

I guess technically I did finish in the morning…it was just the NEXT morning and before I ever went to bed. Cuz that’s how I roll.

You’ll notice a black cat in lots of these pictures, because apparently she wants to help out with the quilting. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. A lot of that was breaking thread.

I finally changed the needle (again) and that didn’t help at all. Sigh. Never really sure what helps. I can go for hours with no problems and then they just start up and I clean and replace everything and it doesn’t seem to matter (wow, kind of a metaphor for life there).

So here’s the deal with purple. It’s a pain to match. Yesterday was about two hours of trying to match purples and either giving up and going to an entirely different color or making an effort and getting the same purple. I actually had three or four dark purples that I thought might work, so I started with one, and then I got this bad feeling (my poor stomach yesterday), so I stopped, pulled the quilt off the machine, and went to find some real light. Out on the deck. In the sun. Yeah. So that was not going to work. It was too blue.

So then I went to the quilt store, which I had been planning to go to anyway for binding. I had enough of the purple to bind it, but it doesn’t really finish the edge if it’s the same color. I like something a shade darker in that case, so I folded the quilt up and headed out there. And then spent about 45 minutes trying to find that dark purple binding fabric.

Purple’s a bitch. She’s either red-tinged or blue-tinged or even brown- or gray-tinged and there’s never enough choices. In fact, if you find a good solid purple, you should just buy it, because it won’t be there again. I tried many purples. They all sucked. So then I laid the thing out on the floor somewhere that people weren’t hanging out, because GIANT BREAST is why, and I realized that either red (to go with the arteries) or blue (to go with the lungs and the bird and the giant eyeball) would be good choices. I had already tried gray and black (FAIL).

So I pulled a red or two…GAACK. Not happening. Then I pulled a turquoise batik and it was…OK. So I went back into the main part of the store and hung out in the blue section, trying to find something close to the blues in the quilt. I was there for a while. I had the quilt on the floor, but folded up so you could just see the face and the bottom of the hips, but nothing else, and I was putting fabrics underneath to see how heinous they were (sigh, really searching for that perfect blue…at least there were more choices), and a nice old lady came over and said, “How lovely! Can I see the rest?” Oh dear. Um. You look very nice and I don’t know whether you can handle the GIANT BREAST. So I said, “It has nudity, if that’s an issue,” and she continued to smile beautifically (I can’t wait to be old enough to have that smile all the time, like you’ve gotten past the nasty shit and you realize you’re old but it’s wonderful to be out and about and in a fabric store and no one is going to scream at you when you get home and if they do, it doesn’t matter because you can take your hearing aids out), so I unfolded it, and she clapped her hands together twice and clasped them to her chest and said, “Oh that’s FABULOUS. It’s WONDERFUL.” Wow. OK. Thanks. Smiled at her? I did. And I said thank you. Because my mom raised me right. And then I went back and got the turquoise batik that didn’t send my heart into paroxysms of wonderment, but would probably work.

Then I came home and decided to use the turquoise fabric I had lying around from when I did the bird quilts. It’s OK. I can use the other turquoise for something. It’s that standard Turq Batik color, but the one at home was darker and slightly…um…stronger. So shopping for binding? Waste of time. It was here. That is ALSO a metaphor for life.

There’s the 8″ square that still needed quilting…I got to it around 10:30 PM.

Because I didn’t get home from JoAnns hell (quilt store didn’t have the right thread, so I had to go out there again) until after 6:30, and then I had to cook dinner and I did all the dishes that had piled up that can’t go in the dishwasher and then I exercised AND meditated AND did physical therapy. So it was late. I did about 3 hours of quilting yesterday, for a total of 8 hours. I was thinking it would be more like 4 or 5, but I think all the outlining is slower than background quilting, and this sucker is mostly image, not background.

At that point, it was almost 11:30 at night and most of my friends and family were asleep in bed. Well, neither of my children were. And I knew what my plans were for the next few days and what I needed to get done and the limited time I would have, so I laid it out on the entryway floor…

And I trimmed it. Yes, that’s a really dark picture. My camera likes to make random decisions about when it needs to flash. It trimmed really easily (nice quilt). And then I cut the binding and started sewing it on.

Yup. It was late. And then I pinned it down so when I’m at my sewing meeting today, I can do the handsewing. This whole sleep thing? Yeah. Fuck it.

But if I finish her today, she’s a July quilt. Otherwise, she’ll be an August quilt. Probably gonna finish tomorrow. I’m still significantly behind my original schedule for this week, but that’s reality for you. Slaps you upside the head. And then I meditate through it. Because none of it really matters. I’m glad to have this one done. A year and a month from drawing to finish (there’s reality again for you). Got tons of stuff in the mix at the moment. It all wants to be made, and since the rest of my life is such a clusterfuck, especially with school LOOMING the fuck around the corner again (funny how that keeps happening), I need the art to be the balance. Last year, I took very little work home on a daily basis. I made art almost every fucking day, even if for only 30 minutes. It saved me. That and Brussels sprouts. And my kids. So that’s still on the table for my sanity.

OK, so it’s time to go out into the world and runneth the errands of the kingdom. Or something.

In the Silence

In the silence, there can be peace. There can be lies. There can be fear of the truth. Silence can be golden. It can be heavy. It can be loaded. It can be beautiful. It can carry memory. It can remember. Silence is painful, awkward, and deadly. Silence is a relief. Silence is torture. Silence is a treatment.

Three nights a week here it is silent, except for the sounds of my cooking, the cats complaining about my presence or lack thereof, not petting their bellies or actually doing so. The TV is on, so people are talking. Sometimes they are something I have on to just fill space while I cook (tonight, it was Real Housewives of somewhere richer than here). Sometimes it’s something I am actually watching (tonight, it was The Lottery…how can they set it just a few years from now? Not realistic. I was eating while I watched, AND reading a book. Too much brain stimulation needed these days.). Sometimes it’s something I like but don’t really need to watch because I’ve seen it enough times (tonight, it was X-Files…again…still). It’s not that I want TV as a companion. It’s that that’s what I have. Sometimes it’s music, if I’m quilting, although tonight, I chose X-Files over music, because music has more emotional triggers for me. I had been listening to music before and it was causing issues, so I chose not to tonight. It’s easier during the day when the kids are around. They are my emotional buffers. Yes, I often think about what it will be like when they are gone.

I quilted for about 3 hours today…

This thing has about 4 hours in it at the moment (quilting, that is). I probably have another hour at most of outlining to do, if that, and then there isn’t actually much background quilting. The image pretty much fills the space. I’m hoping to finish early tomorrow so I can get a binding on it and move on to quilting the next one. That of course presumes that I have an appropriate binding fabric for it (I’m pretty sure I don’t). Road Trip! To the fabric store. Which is a whopping 5 miles away. I’ve been good, though. I haven’t gone for a long time.

Quilting blood vessels. I wonder how many miles of blood vessels I’ve quilted. When I posted a photo on Instagram of where I was in the quilting, girlchild liked it. I wanted to tell her it was past her bedtime (because it was). She’s not here. Hence the silence. Last night, it was all girls giggling and yelling and TV on and squealy girl noises. Tonight? Tonight is so silent. I can hear the fan. The computer keys tapping. The computer humming. Occasionally there’s a cat-related noise: scratching, mewing, hissing.

The first part of quilting involved not stitching through the cat’s tail.

See Midnight behind the machine? I just draped the quilt over her and she would occasionally twitch, but she wouldn’t move. Whatever. Remind me again why sleep is so important?

If these lung bronchioles and alveoli (if you don’t know what those are, you didn’t have me for 7th-grade science) don’t look just like Dr. Seuss’ trees, truffula trees, I don’t know what does.

It’s hot here during the day. The house was 90 degrees when I went to the gym at 5 PM. There’s not a lot of sleep happening in that heat, so I just stay up late anyway. Plus I don’t sleep. Bad brain. So cats and dogs sprawl…

Wherever they think it might be cool. Temperature cool, not attitude cool. Although with Babygirl, you never know.

I’m officially doing physical therapy on the knee for a month. He thinks it’s a sprained LCL…possibly an IT band issue as well. The right knee is definitely weaker than the left, and he’s given me strengthening exercises to help. I’m not allowed to hike for a week, but after that, it should be OK. He thinks it’s a very solvable problem.

I wish I were a solvable problem.

I also got the materials for the weird-ass project I need to do for my local art group, not quilting at all. Well, that’s not true. I think they want a wall quilt too, but I’m just not sure that will happen. It kind of depends on what I get done this week. If I can get both of these quilts quilted and bound, then I’ll think about a wall quilt too, but right now, I’m designing a 3D floating house. It’s been in my head for months. It needs worry dolls. It needs organza. It needs coathangers and wire. Wire tomorrow. Then build this sucker. Worry dolls go on last. They’re getting mailed to me. But I have to finish the rest first. I shopped in the fancy fabric section of the store. It’s been a while since I’ve hung out in there.

I wanted to draw tonight…got drawings pawing at me at the moment to come out…”Please Please Ms. Nida. Let me out. I’ll be good. I promise. Just let me out.” Pleading. There are only so many hours in the day. So I quilted instead. Sometimes I’m not sure if letting more drawings out of my head is a good thing.

It’s so quiet here. I hate it.

Looking Back…

So the bird quilts were a success, thanks to friends and family and groupies and the like (there is some overlap between the categories). There are three left for sale, and tomorrow (which is actually today; I just haven’t gone to sleep yet…) I will move them over to the Recent Work page. I’m also doing one more as a commission, once I finish the obligations I do have for this month. Which I was supposed to work on today, but today ended up being errands and house-cleaning, because I currently have a houseful of teenaged girls. OK, there are only 3, but that’s kinda like a houseful when they get going. They aren’t leaving, either. They will be here until some time in the morning…the REAL morning. Not the morning it is NOW. Hopefully not until after I wake up. And have tea. Because I can barely deal with my OWN teenagers in the morning these days.

I need to get my ass in gear on quilting this week. Hours of it. Starting…um…not now. I spent a chunk of today making and sewing on labels on the bird quilts…

Yes, I’m weird. I sew them on. I read about someone who was removing labels and then putting her own labels on the quilts. So I started fusing AND sewing them on. It might be overkill. Some things are just habit. Not necessarily a good thing.

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I have two to go, I think.

I’ve been referred to physical therapy for the recurring knee problem, starting tomorrow. It’s probably too much to ask him if I can hike on Thursday, eh? I will ask anyway. Or I will do it anyway. Who knows. I’m not willing to stop hiking because my knee is cranky.

Yesterday, I forgot to eat until 3:30 in the afternoon. I forgot before I went grocery shopping in the morning. I planned to eat when I got back, but the kids came in staging World War III, and by the time the screaming stopped, it was time for me to leave…so when we got there (to the meeting) and I thought, “Why do I feel so shaky?” and then wracked my brains trying to remember what meal I’d actually eaten that day…um. Yeah. So the brain is still out to lunch. With martinis. She’s in a real mood at the moment. Actually, it’s somewhat easier to exist when she’s out to lunch (except for the part where I forget to eat). There’s less drama. More just getting by. Minute by minute.

The last year has been a bitch. You might have noticed. Here are the positive things that happened though:

In the last year, I’ve written 380 posts averaging about a thousand words a post, some quite a bit more than that. That’s about 380,000 words. That’s kind of a lot.

I started writing a book. I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I’m significantly into this thing at the moment. Hopefully I’ll figure out how it’s supposed to end soon…and maybe get around to naming all the characters.

I learned to meditate. I still meditate almost every evening. I think it has helped give me some distance from my sad brain and situations when I am wigging out. I have meditated in hotels, cars, my classroom (with or without my students), and staff meetings. I have told my students I am meditating right now. I have taught them how to meditate as well.

I’m hiking pretty regularly. The physical exercise is obviously good for me, and the type of exercise is a good alternative to my gym time, but I’m also outside and hanging out with a different group of people on a regular basis. In nature. With the bugs and snakes and other crawly things. And I only fall down occasionally.

I’m reading a lot. I guess this could be a negative in some ways, because my hermit self probably doesn’t need more excuses to hang out with its nose in a book, but I’m reading a good variety of stuff and doing book clubs too for the intellectual stimulation (and just plain goofiness at times).

I remodeled (with the help of the boychild and my dad, and sort of the girlchild) the living room, getting rid of tons of crap and hopefully streamlining the space a bit. Next year, we’ll do the other half of the house if it kills me (and it probably will).

I made a bunch of quilts and drawings that will turn into awesome quilts. I do this every year, but it seems important to note that even when I’m dealing with massive depression and breakdowns, I can still do that. Thanks to the artistic brain for pushing the other shit off the cliff on a regular basis. It keeps climbing back up and getting in my face, but that art brain is unstoppable. She rocks.

I outlasted my boss.

I helped one kid get into college with a pretty good financial aid plan, and hopefully he will remember where he lives after he leaves. There was a lot of paperwork and too many deadlines.

I reintroduced myself to the dance, theater, and spoken-word performances that I used to go to all the time, and I rediscovered my love of comics.

I got some of my diabetes numbers back to the normal range. There have been other issues associated with that, but the HbA1c is the same as someone without diabetes. It’s been over 12 years since it’s been there.

Most of all, I survived it. Moving on. Of course, that’s easy to say right NOW. When that silly brain comes back from her extended cocktail hour, I might have to force the issue a bit more. And there’s that part of the brain that is always yelling “but but but!” whenever you say you did something good…it needs to take a hike. In the opposite direction. Tomorrow, I quilt. Seriously.

Birds for Sale…

So here’s the 10 birds. I have 5 people in line, who get to choose first, in order. If you’re interested in something, let me know. Payment is by Paypal, unless you (a) live in San Diego and I trust you to hand me cash or check or (b) you have some heinous issue with Paypal and you can suggest an alternate payment method. Prices are based on hours and size and include shipping costs, if necessary. There is a hanging sleeve at the top…I might even be able to locate a dowel to fit in it (OK, let’s say I can handle that). If you have any questions, let me know. They are all actual rectangles, despite my lame photography and lack of ironing at this stage…I will iron before I ship (but then I will ROLL it again, so what can I say?).

Bird 1: Dove, 11.5“ w x 10.5“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 2: Spotted Bird, 9.25“ w x 9.25“ h, $105. (SOLD)

Bird 3: Bird with Eyeball, 10“ w x 10“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 4: Diving Bird, 9“ w x 14.25“ h, $110. (SOLD)

Bird 5: HeyBird, 14“ w x 11“ h, $130. (SOLD)

Bird 6: Falling Bird, 9.25“ w x 18.5“ h, $140. (SOLD)

Bird 7: Bluebird, 19.5“ w x 11.5“ h, $150. (SOLD)

Bird 8: Purple Bird, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

Bird 9: Blackbird, 16.75“ w x 13“ h, $205. (SOLD)

Bird 10: Owl, 15.5“ w x 18.25“ h, $235. (SOLD)

Contact me with any questions. You can go through the comments section below or the contact page on the website. I will mark them sold as that happens. If the one you like is sold, I may be able to remake it in similar fabrics. Many thanks!

Bringing the Brain On Line

Not the most effective use of my time yesterday. Mental breakdowns never are. The plus is I seem to recover fairly quickly now from the parts where I shake and can’t focus. Thank meditation for that. And the help of some friends who say the right stuff, remind me that I am OK…remind me that just because one person in the world believes something about me doesn’t mean it’s right.

I tortured my son and ex by dragging them to the Cornell San Diego barbecue, mostly for me, really, but also so the boy might recognize people who live near him. Not that he will use that info (but all my college friends are yelling Road Trip!). He’s disdainful of the process, and actually came up and asked why the other older students made a point of telling the kids to wash whites separate from other colors, because we don’t do that at home (it’s true, we don’t, although I was raised doing that). I reminded him that the colors of his college include RED. Which RUNS. And makes everything white turn PINK. His dad admitted to making that mistake in college. Boychild wears no white, though, so he’s probably OK.

I tried to work on bindings in the car, but the curvy roads were making me sick. I wanted to get two done yesterday, but had to settle for one…Bird No. 7…

Can’t remember what the other name is for this one.

For one thing, I also quilted a bit (not a lot) on Mammogram…

It’s piled up to keep cats off it.

I finally found the purple fabric I needed for the birds…it was hiding under something else, of course.

I knew it was here. I hate that my brain is still pulling this shit where I’m staring right at something and I can’t see it…I lost the teabag squeezer (probably there’s an official name for that) the other day and was going nuts, but it was right where it should have been, except up an inch or so on a pile of stuff. Right in the wide open. I don’t even understand how I couldn’t see it. OK, I know…because my brain was playing games. I can’t find my turquoise hand-sewing thread either. I’m sure it’s somewhere. Oh shit. I know where it is. Fuck. Dumbass. OK, I know I’m not a dumbass…I just need days of processing time now. Hard to know how much of that is age, hormones, or depression. Or a revolting combo of all of them. The big part of my brain is just not available on a regular basis. I send a messenger down there, into the deep hole, and sometimes the messenger comes back and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the message is so garbled that it’s useless. And sometimes 24 hours later, the location of the turquoise thread pops into my head.

But in order to manage some of my crazy, I called one friend and emailed another, and we ended up going to see Boyhood…

Which was interesting, although I was more interested in the mother character. It was an interesting concept, although the boy was not very engaging in the first few years. He was much more interesting when he aged and had more mature opinions, and certainly, being about to send a boy off to college, there was some relevance there.

I can’t seem to get my brain working on finishing the stupid pile of small tasks that would finish the living room remodel. Which means my bedroom is a disaster. And now apparently a bunch of teenaged girls are coming to spend the night tomorrow. OK. Well. There’s some motivation to move it along. Or just shove it all in my bedroom and close the door. Whichever seems to make more sense. Taking care of myself is often a collection of behaviors that others do not understand. They don’t get that I’m dragging my brain along with me, behind me, and sometimes it’s strangling me by trying to dig its feet in. Recalcitrant asshole.

More car time today…sitting in a meeting too. Four more bindings. Today. Done. Really. Maybe then my brain will come back on line. Ha.

Working Through It

It’s been one of my (many) mantras this year, work through it. Just keep making. At some point, it will feel different again. The plus with making quilts the way I do is that there are tasks that can be divided up and finished in shorter periods of time. If something is long and difficult, this is how you get through it, one chunk at a time. So when I’m sitting there stabbing needles into that one place on my right middle finger that gets a callous when I’m doing a lot of hand-stitching, I know that it is not an endless, Dante’s-Inferno-of-Stabbing-Pain, but a task that will end, and if it is supremely heinous, then there will be a new and different task to follow it.

I finished three more bindings yesterday. It was difficult, but Endeavour Morse helped me survive it. I never watched the Inspector Morse series, but I like the prequels.

This is Bird 4…they have names now too. I have a hard time remembering the numbers.

Also known as Diving Bird. Obv.

In pricing them, I’ve really only looked at the time. Quilters Newsletter Magazine recently had an article on pricing your work, and I do usually use a combination of time and size, looking at both calculations and arriving somewhere in the middle.

This is Bird 5…

aka HeyBird. The article was interesting in that it touched on two points: those who underprice and undervalue their time are hurting the rest of us…and it gave actual pricing info from some quilters, including Luke Haynes and Caryl Bryer Fallert, both more famous in the quilt world than I am, but I was able to compare my prices for my work with what they would charge for something similar…

This is Bird 6…

aka Curvy Bird or maybe Falling Bird. I haven’t decided. And I found that my pricing formulas do actually make sense. You are paying for my 25 years of experience, my drawing ability, my quilting ability, and for the rarity that is a small Kathy piece without boobs in it (as my daughter would say). Because honestly, this opportunity may never arise again. I find these little quilts a pain in the ass to make, and they don’t give me any satisfaction to make…except when I see them in a pile. That’s kind of cool…a pile of birds. Until the cat tries to sit on them, and then I have to hide them again. And my prices are significantly lower than Fallert’s (as they should be).

Updated: I had to add this after a conversation with the boychild. Minimum wage in California is $9/hour at the moment. If I sell these birds in a gallery, I can lose up to 50% of the price to the gallery (understood, by the way…I’m not arguing against that), so I have to consider the pricing with that in mind. The smallest one, right now, is the only one priced under $100, and if it sold in a gallery, I would get just over minimum wage. Sigh. But these weren’t complicated and I didn’t draw NEW birds…these are existing birds from drawings and quilts that are already done. Plus I think most if not all of them will sell outside of a gallery, so I’m OK with the pricing.

Four more to go, but I already set up the sewing machine last night to start quilting Mammogram. I want to get on with it. Next week is really the last WHOLE week I have free from school stuff until December (oh my god, that is so depressing). I need to use it wisely. This is why as the summer goes on, I become more and more hermitlike. In the early days, I leave the house for lots of errands and fun stuff and lunch with friends (not really), but by the time August 1 rolls around, I’m in lockdown mode. School looms towards me, swinging claws towards my free time and my sanity, and Fall is notoriously bad with soccer slamming me as well. Although this year, there will only be one kid around…one kid who has taken on coaching her OWN team (am I required to go watch that? I feel like I should go at least once.).

And I am exercising and meditating every day. Another way to work through it. One chunk at a time.

“Keep mindfulness alive even in the darkest moments, reminding yourself that the awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.” Jon Kabat-Zinn