Remembering How to Sleep…

Remembering how to sleep…something I have to relearn each time we start school again. People ask me all the time if I sleep, because I do all this stuff (I do a lot of it at the same time? Maybe?). I read at the gym. I am still writing that sci fi novel, mostly at the gym. While I’m waiting for dinner to cook in the oven, I’m in here writing or resizing photos or cutting stuff out. Drawings build in my head during quiet moments in the car or staff meetings (shhh…don’t tell). They color themselves in while I’m cutting onions or listening to a parent make excuses for their child. I grade papers at soccer games, in waiting rooms. Hardly anything in my life happens just one thing at a time. Right now, I’m eating breakfast and typing, while listing the things I need to take to work with me, accepting that I might not finish this post before I have to leave.

I do sleep. I don’t sleep much, that’s for sure, and the sleep I get isn’t great. I know that’s not good for me, but I can read any number of articles about how I should sleep more and better, and they don’t actually help me sleep. I’ve never ever been a good sleeper. I’ve always been a night owl. Nothing has changed. I’m just older. When I can sleep, I do. Last night was not one of those nights.

I didn’t start ironing until after 10:30. I was lucky and got out of school meetings early, raced to the gym (wrote my book and read my book), came home and cooked dinner, graded some papers (part of my plan to get caught up is to actually grade every day…what a concept), and then headed to the ironing board. It’s not like it would take long to iron this…

But ironically, I had missed numbering and tracing a part. That was lame. Picked a background…

Needs outlining. Nice camera strap in the photo there…late-night art photography. Did it on purpose! I would have stitched it down and pinbasted it last night if I didn’t have another quilt already under the machine. I hate changing out thread, so I decided to finish quilting this instead.

It was only another 37 minutes. Now you know how I stay up so late.

Even after that, my brain was racing, on overdrive. They talk about shutting computers off, that electronic light messes with your sleep. Hell, it wouldn’t matter. My art brain messes with my sleep. It wanted to finish both quilts last night and my adult/mom brain put the kibosh on that. Are you kidding me? You have school tomorrow. You are teaching young minds something tomorrow (shit, wish I could remember what I’m teaching…something ironically to do with the nervous system…this is why I lesson plan on Sundays, when I’m awake). You did not get enough sleep Sunday night. Now is not the time to take a stand for your art.

Anyway, so the one needs a binding and the other needs a couple hours of work. Honestly, it’s bigger and more complicated than it should be, but I’m OK with that at the moment…because it’s getting done. And the next big quilt is chomping at the bit in my head.

Hope the Dreams Make Up for the Reality

I have 6 post-it notes on my computer keyboard at the moment. Some are college-related…financial aid stuff the boychild and I need to do as soon as I can figure out my taxes for this year. One is a list of blog and Facebook posts I need to do for an art group I’m in. Another couple are related to college funds and having to move money around. And there’s one that’s a prioritized list of all the quilt-related stuff I have to do in the next week or so. My phone is regularly buzzing me to let me know where I need to be next or what I need to do on the way home or to school. I’m organized as hell, and yet, wow…I’m not. But I am. I’ve got my brain hemmed in by all these reminders to get it all done…I’m not letting it slack. I am a really highly functioning depressoid. It’s almost MORE depressing to be that highly functioning. LOOK! You CAN get it all done and on time and finished and You Still Feel Like Shit because none of it really matters deep down. I might be happier if I climbed into bed and didn’t come out.

So there we are. How do I make some of it matter again? I don’t fucking know. I go to counseling and ask her, and she doesn’t just pull out a list and hand it to me, dammit. I need a list…go through steps 1-5 and you will see that things matter again. Step 6 is optional, but will make things matter AND help you save the world, one kitten at a time. Or! Just slog through each hour, each day, and hope that you will see some light at the end of a tunnel some day in the future. Hopefully before you die. Yup. It’s the cheery hour here.

I got an email today asking me if one of my quilts could be used in a book…wow. Cool. But I’m also waiting on a rejection notice. Neither of those things really matters.They will happen and they will not make me happy or not happy.

I quilted for almost two hours tonight…

I think I’m up to 11 or 12 hours on this thing…and I’m not done. I’ve gone almost all the way around once, and still need to go around a second time. I wanted to finish tonight, but it didn’t happen. I also didn’t get binding today, because I opted for the gym instead. Good choice. I’m still losing weight, but it’s slowed down a lot…that’s good. I don’t want it to be a superfast thing. I want it to stay off. The first 20 pounds came off really slowly, and though it was frustrating, I still think it was much healthier than the next 25 pounds. Depression is a bitch with weight…you can’t control how it messes with your ability to eat. I can eat now…I had a 3-month time period when eating was seriously problematic. I’m better now. I’d rather be eating healthily and losing slowly than the kamikaze weight loss I was doing before. I get irritated at the people who want to know HOW I did it. I don’t think you really want to know. I just stopped eating. When I ate, I couldn’t keep it down. Vomit happened. Gaacking. Did you really want to know about that? Most of the time, I couldn’t eat. Not good. Better now.

I still haven’t solved the sleep issues though. I was never a good sleeper, and now I am an incredibly shitty sleeper. It’s not good for me, but I can’t seem to beat it. Some part of me just wants to stay up all night and finish the quilting. That’s the artist brain talking. The mom/teacher brain (the responsible part) has to talk the artist brain out of crazy shit like that. But I think I will finish quilting tomorrow, so I’m actually going to go get binding fabric before I go to the girlchild’s game…I think I have time. This is my life…it is scheduled so tight that crazy things happen like I’m cooking tonight’s dinner AND tomorrow night’s dinner at the same time, and when I finish the dishes for tonight’s dinner, I’m putting tomorrow night’s dinner into the casserole dish and into the fridge. I think that’s impressive, on one hand, but supremely sad and depressing on the other. I’m SuperWoman AND SuperDepressoid. This weekend will be like that too…getting the quilts done, plus art meetings, plus grades. There’s no down time, no time for a hike, I think…I will make it to the gym, but finding 3-5 hours for a hike doesn’t seem realistic. Too bad…something about being outside seems to help. Go outside. Exercise. Read. Talk to people. I don’t like that last part. I just cry, even now, so it’s hard to just talk about everything that’s in my head. It’s not kosher to cry all the time…to just plain old lose it.

I’m still a fucking mess. When does that stop? When do I get to be a human again? Why do I have to be like this? Why can’t I just get angry and move on?

When I’m not quilting, I pile everything up on the machine…

It keeps cats and dogs off of it…I am seriously so close to done that it is painful NOT to just sit here and finish it (it would probably be another 2 hours though). I’m a little obsessive. Will I feel relieved when it’s done? Yes. It’s due soon. I need it to be done. Will I feel happy it’s done? Wow. What does that word mean again? Maybe just successful. And even then, it’s hard to feel successful about just one tiny piece of your life…that downer part of my brain starts listing all the things I’m not successful about, and it turns into a downer fest. Not good. It’s better to just take some quiet breaths and think, OK, I did that. Moving on. Do something else. Don’t get the downer brain engaged in this…it won’t turn out well. Don’t even tell it that it should be impressed…just go on to the next thing. I don’t have anyone to celebrate with. It’s empty success.

When the kids leave for college, I think I will just fill the house with dogs. Jake has been singing to me when I get home, half-howling and body-slamming me with needy German-Shepherdness.

And then Calli feeds off of that and whines and brings me a toy. Well, earlier, one of them stole a toilet paper roll…the whole thing…not just the cardboard. So that was fun. Jake will only be here through Saturday. He’s not thrilled about being here, because we tell him the food on the table is for people, not dogs, and he thinks we are crazy for saying that. Plus I won’t let him help me cook. Or eat cats. Or sleep on my bed WHILE eating cats. He does not understand when I explain appropriate dog behavior.

Calli just wants to sit in my lap. Like all the time.

She’s not a small dog. She’s a Golden Retriever. My lap is not big enough for a Golden Retriever. Petting dogs is good therapy. Cats too. They seem to absorb some of the depressed stuff. I don’t understand people who don’t have pets, especially the ones that keep saying they want one and don’t get one. Stop saying it and just do it. There is no perfect animal or perfect set up in your home. Just go to the damn shelter and get a dog or cat and give them love and food and take care of them and pet them, and have them stare into your face and bat at you when you walk by (Babygirl) and squawk a little and need you and ignore you and pee and puke all over the carpet. Because if you can’t deal with all those things, then you aren’t a decent human being. If you overthink the process so much that you can’t even ADOPT? Then how human are you? If you just keep putting it off until the situation is perfect, then you will never have that unconditional love, that furry, bad-breathed love, that cold-nose-up-your-butt love. People with pets have empathy. I’m a big fan of empathy at the moment…of being able to engage with other people’s feelings and feel for them. I don’t deal with other people’s empathy well, but I still think it’s a better place to be than in asshole mode, where it’s all your world and no one else’s.

I have too much empathy. It hurts.

Yes, my brain is in wander mode. And in pissy mode. And in overwhelmed mode. I’ve been overwhelmed for so many years that I don’t know how NOT to be. I dream of a happy place where I get all excited about what I’m almost finishing, and I wake up and hug a pet and make a nice lunch and the world is bright and full of cinnamon and sugar.

Yeah, I know. I should just go to bed and hope the dreams make up for the reality. The plus is I’m raking in the hugs at school…all the kids came back in needy-hug mode. I’m down with that…averaging 15 or so a day. Can’t complain. OK, dreams. Take me away. Make it all OK.

Sleep…It’s What’s for Dinner…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protected: The Bones of Sad

Protected: Try Again Tomorrow…

Protected: Sanity Optional