Robin Williams – Kathy Nida

Exhaustion kicked my butt yesterday. Something about spending all day in a workshop about culturally responsive classrooms when you already know how to do that and what it looks like. Isn’t my masters degree in cross-cultural hoohaw? Yup, there’s some official title there, but I can’t remember it. I feel like there was a lot of eye-rolling and No Duh moments. Plus I was doing it on 4 hours of sleep. Troubled sleep. Almost killed the alarm clock with my sword, I did.

I did manage a kamikaze run through Walmart (no one goes there this time of year without fear in their hearts) and swore at their self-checkout machine, which kept telling me there were UFOs in the bagging area (no, you idiot…those are the bags I’m filling. They are meant to be there.), and then came home and attempted art.

I’m really not sure how I feel about it. I’m obviously messing around and there’s some feeling/picture/UFO? in my head that’s guiding all this…

I’m stitching vein lines on the sides…from certain lighting angles, the red looks really freaky…

And then it almost fades away. So then I’m cutting around the stitching lines.

I have a pile of bits and pieces…

Using wire and fabric and thread…wire cutters, needle-nosed pliers, scissors, pins. A little different than my normal stash of materials. Organza. Fucking loosey-goosey stuff. Anyway. It doesn’t require much thought because I’m just fucking around with this idea of home, what is home, what does home look like and feel like, is home a good thing, is home a solid thing (well, obviously not to me, eh?). The show is about the border fence, about these fences we put up to keep people in or out (hell, you should see my fence at the moment. I’m trying very hard to let the sides down occasionally to let people in, but it’s really hard, because even that makes things hurt more. I’m really tired of the hurting, I have to tell you. It’s just so never-ending. I’m staying away from the word relentless. It’s a bad word. It’s a hurtful word. It’s a word I will have to carry around in my heart forever now, I think. Long story. I know.). ANYWAY. Houses floating over the border, the fence. Birds. I’m not sure the bird group has explained the significance of the birds to me! I guess I don’t have to understand the whole exhibit to understand the little piece I’m doing.

I went out to dinner last night with mom because everyone else is in Arrowhead, and came back needing to exercise off the million calories, but Babygirl was hogging the bike.

Yes, I have an exercise bike in my living room. It gets used almost every day by me or the girlchild. And now, apparently, the elderly cat. Jake’s here, my ex’s rambunctious German Shepherd, so I think she didn’t feel safe on the floor…like this is out of his reach? Midnight was smart and moved to the top of the light table. Jake is NOT smart and has had his nose bopped by everyone but Midnight. She disturbs him by wrapping herself around his legs and ignoring his attempts to nose her to death. She is not scared of dogs. The other two are…well, not of Calli, because she doesn’t even notice them. But Jake is a cat chaser, or at least he would be, if they would run and stop bopping him on the nose. Then he looks at me, all confused. “Aren’t I supposed to chase cats?”

Anyway, more professional development to suck my brain out today. We are in Positive Behavior Interventions today…which my mother commented on, “Why would you want to intervene if they’re behaving positively?” thus proving that teacher PD is a waste of time (most of the time…I’ve had a few, all science-related, that were not). OK the real name is Positive Behavior Supports…and I’m the smartass who wants to know WTF to do with the kids who don’t respond to these supports. I have so little faith these days. The afternoon session was about behavior with technology in the classroom, which actually was helpful.

More about this Robin Williams’ thing that came up on the way to school, after I’d read a few more articles about his death (not on purpose…it just happened): The thing about really cool people killing themselves is that you know for sure that you will never be as cool or amazing as Robin Williams and he couldn’t keep himself going. So when you’re having a hard time getting out of bed or off the couch, something like his suicide can really rock you; it can trigger even more feelings of depression and uselessness and lame-i-tude (it is TOO a word). I came home after yesterday’s class and read The Bloggess’ post from January about depression and it just made me cry…and then laugh…and then cry. And turkey butlers! There is a community out there that supports you when this shit is in your head, when you’re down in that hole. Use it. Cry if you need to. Take a damn nap. Eat a piece of cheesecake. Or don’t eat it. Exercise (I did kick the cat off the bike). Draw. Watch shitty TV…or really good TV. Just don’t do what he did.

With that in mind, I’m gonna stitch those veins for a while as I watch bad television, while getting ready for a night hike…sunset at the top of the mountain and then back down in the dark. And I’ll think about the bit of news I got today that threw me back in the hole, although not very deep, because I realized it wasn’t a really bad horrible thing like someone dying of cancer, but a smaller sad thing that was disappointing, yes, and a downer, yes, but not the end of the world. I’m just so much more likely to cry when I’m sad these days, so it seems like a bigger thing than it is. It’s OK to be sad when there is a loss or an unhappy change. Then take a deep breath and move on.

If I tell myself that, it becomes easier to actually feel that way.

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…

Aug 11 14 001 small

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.

Tag: Robin Williams

Building an Ephemeral House…

You’d Think…