This Sad Dark Room

Strange question today. Counselor asked if she had met me a year ago, would she be counseling the same person? No. You wouldn’t. She asked about stress, if the school and kid stresses would have been the same? Well, the college and financial aid stress is new and heinous, but otherwise, yes, they would be the same…at least similar. Would I have the same attitudes? Was I crying all the time? No. Hardly ever. PMS occasionally. Not like this. This is horrible. Endless. Awful.

I think I confuse her. She says that I don’t let things control me, that I change the things that are bothering me or I at least act against them or on them or something. I don’t just sit there and let it control me. So why? Why am I letting this grief control me?

This is where I go back to that magical step…I don’t think ‘let’ is the appropriate word. I don’t seem to be able to get the upper hand on this. I argue with myself all the time about it…tell myself that reality was different than what I thought and I need to get over it, to move on, and I just can’t seem to drag that stupid-ass part of my brain up and out. It’s just mired, lost, sinking…depressed.

Counseling was a giant weepfest. I guess there is some catharsis in that. But no resolution. She doesn’t have the magical step, apparently. I think if she did, she would give it to me. She asked me to name one thing I was grateful for at that moment in time, and right then, at the end of a long week, with things hanging over my head like guillotine blades, I struggled to find something that wasn’t an absence of something bad (I don’t have cancer…I’m grateful for that)…something that was actually a glass-half-full instead of just feeling empty.

In this conversation I had the other day with a self-professed Myers Briggs expert, she made me think about how I think…metacognition in teacher speak. I’ve said this before, that I wish I could get far enough out of my head so that I could get past this, but maybe this is part of why my artist brain is so good at what it intuitively does…I spend So Much time in my head with the art–drawing and interpreting and observing–that it’s almost impossible to get out when the brain is tying itself up in knots. When I am working on a big project that is taking up huge parts of my brain power, processing through images and compositions and colors, no one, including me, questions my interior focus. It’s what I’m meant to do. It’s how I function. The reason I was thinking of all this was because the Earth Stories quilts are shipping this weekend, and I had to iron, dehair, and label them…so while I was ironing, I thought again about using ink on the quilt…

And I did. And no, it’s not in the catalog. I’m OK with that. It’s not a lot. It’s just enough. If I had been in a different mindset back in August/September, I would have handled the last stages of this quilt completely differently…there are things I would have done that would have extended the finish time by a month probably, inking and embroidery and maybe even beads, but I just couldn’t. I associate this quilt with the worst of my depression, with the three weeks of shock and the craziness after that. I did NOT want to spend more time with it then. So I found mistakes and problems when I was cleaning it up today…I fixed a few of them…but then I made more mistakes when I was trying to get it cleaned up…I actually ended up ripping out stitches in the background by accident in two different places. LAME. So I had to fix those.

My bad. Not focusing enough. Not wanting to think too hard about this quilt and all it represents to me right now. It took me about three hours tonight to deal with the two quilts because of screw ups like that, but also because I had it all wrapped up and then remembered I needed to pack the small quilt with it…and then realized I was supposed to put labels on both of them. So I unwrapped and rewrapped about three times. Just inefficient and stupid.

It’s so frustrating to be working with my brain when it’s this disconnected. But I remember the high level of focus I had when I was drawing this thing…it took over 22 hours of my Spring Break last year to draw it, and I had to literally rip it out of my head. I was never without that image in my head, building and rebuilding parts of it, revising the composition until it made sense. Same with picking the fabrics. So deep into the crevices that I am carrying the image in the front of my mind at all times, whether I’m in the classroom, at the gym, or out to dinner. It’s always there, niggling, engaging the deeper, intuitive parts of my brain into making it work.

And I don’t think any of that is bad. That is how I work. That is what makes me good at what I do. It’s also what makes it so freakin’ hard to get my brain OUT of shit like this, shit I can’t explain, shit that makes no sense, shit that makes me question my entire existence and future and past and every fucking thing. Shit that makes my sleep interrupted (even more than before). Shit that makes me cry at the drop of a hat, the drop of a word, the hint of any tiny bit of sad, stress, overwhelming emotion.

I can’t really expect my brain to treat this problem any differently than it does an artistic problem.

So. I guess we are working on that. I feel like the part of my brain that has the answer, the next step, the magical pill for the cure…it’s hiding around a corner…I come chasing through the hallway, racing after it, and it slips into a doorway that locks behind it, and I end up banging on the door, screaming until my throat is sore and my voice ragged, and I can hear its breathing, quiet and hidden, but it won’t answer, it won’t come out. It’s huddled in the corner, head on its arms, covering its eyes, hands covering its ears so it doesn’t have to listen to me. It’s processing.

I don’t know what the solution is.

Girlchild was playing like a beast last night for the time she was on the field…

It seems strange to think that she will have back surgery in about 6 weeks, but there we are. She was back to normal today, helping in the kitchen, telling me it’s OK when I explained why I didn’t think the NYC trip could happen, that I just don’t have enough of a financial cushion for that, that we could reevaluate in summer, but that the money stuff just isn’t good at the moment. She said, “It’s OK, mommy. I understand.” And I told her I understood that it didn’t seem fair because her brother had three trips, but that I didn’t pay for all of it and my finances were better then, and now they’re just messed up, and I was really really sorry. Proof I guess that she is growing up, that she’s becoming the amazingly understanding adult I know she will end up being…probably too understanding.

Anyway. I spent all evening in my head telling my brain how stupid it was being. Not a good thing. Tomorrow I will try to erase some of that bad hinky stuff with a hike, and then hopefully I will get the next big chunk of financial aid hell done with and move on to something that feeds my soul or art brain or whatever that might bring me out and let me wander freely on the planet, instead of being kept in this sad dark room.

Seesaw World…

Still freezing tonight. Must be fighting something off. I actually managed a social evening, although I was meant to socialize with 11 other people (and did for about an hour), but then ended up talking the rest of the time to the one other person I talked to LAST time I was at book club. The plus is…I like the books…and these are my people. Sort of. Counselor dings me for always remembering that I don’t fit in. Yeah well. I’m old. I don’t know where all the old people hang out, but it’s not where I am…actually, I am middle-aged. The old people are retired and they all show up, and the young people all show up, and all the people my age are on vacation? Who knows. The discussion wandered through books, cleaning, Myers Briggs, food, childhood, and god knows where else. For two and a half hours, I was mostly at peace. Good thing.

I was a giant stress monkey before that, though, because the financial aid stuff is due sooner than I thought, despite W-2s JUST showing up on Saturday. So I finished my taxes tonight. In January. Earliest ever. Tomorrow I will try to track down the vast quantities of data the other schools need in order to give the boychild an education. Meanwhile, he has another interview…someone should do his laundry so he has something to wear to that.

It was eyeball dissection day today…

It was pretty easy. Sometimes I think I could do some of this stuff in my sleep. I think I’ve walked almost 2000 kids through eyeball dissection at this point. I need to do the dishes tomorrow. Exciting stuff.

Boychild had Academic League and knew some amazing stuff…

He’s on the left. They beat the rival team by 10 points, but it was a tense match (funny to say that for Academic League, but it WAS!). Two of his answers were Walt Whitman and women, but I don’t remember the questions. One had something to do with the State of the Union speech, which I didn’t watch and he apparently memorized. Make me feel stupid, boy.

Girlchild had soccer last night…but he wouldn’t play her. I spent a lot of time watching the sky…

The sunset was gorgeous…

but I watched her get angrier and angrier.

Don’t blame her. There are girls who mess up continually who are playing. It’s frustrating for her and for us.

I think her dad is just going to stop coming.

I will still be there. There are nice sunsets at the away games (which always face into the sun)…

I stitch…I did this…

Finished the bottom one, and started Month 3…just barely got started on the background stitching.

And then today at Academic League, I did this…

Finished the background stitching on the blue ones and one of the purple ones (Month 4). I end up getting about 5 hours a week of stitching in at kid events. I can’t grade in the crappy light of soccer games. I guess I could have graded at Academic League, but I didn’t feel like it. Sigh. That will come back to haunt me at some point.

I really need to get some focus. I started tracing Wonder Under for the mammogram quilt, or whatever it is, lumpy breast…

I did NOT get very far. Like I said, I didn’t feel right last night. I feel off again tonight, but not like last night. Obviously I’m doing financial aid tomorrow night or Friday night, whenever I can find the time. Lots of numbers to locate and input. Stress.

Trying to think about things I can do that will be good for me, like book club, but won’t take so much time. I thought about joining another book club, but I don’t have time to go to another meeting right now. Same with life drawing. Number of hours in the day is a finite number. I don’t have any. What was interesting about last night is that I went to bed about an hour and a half earlier than I have been for weeks, but I couldn’t fall asleep, and then I woke up for a significant stretch of time in the middle of the night and right before alarm time, so I got about the same amount of sleep as I have been every night (nowhere near enough). Have I trained my body to only allow itself 5 hours a night? Or is there something else going on?

Stop thinking so hard. Go to bed. Sleep…sigh…maybe it’s just not something you get to have enough of for a while. Maybe it’s like ice cream…it does affect my mood, though. Not enough sleep and I get more sad, more depressed. No balance. Seesaw world.

It Just Is…

OK, so remember that post-it from yesterday that had all the quilt stuff prioritized on it? I didn’t even write two (three?) things on it, because they were weighing on me so heavily, finishing these two quilts before Sunday, that I figured I didn’t even need to write them down. And then I got an email that has added to the priority list. It’s getting a little hairy here, but I think I have it all under control. I’m just one crazy tense mama at the moment. Seriously tense. Hate that feeling. It’s been stalking me the last two months. Won’t go, except after a hike or the gym, and even then, reluctantly. I don’t like being this person. I want to be more mellow. I don’t know how, especially with all this riding on my shoulders.

Anyway, I did manage to make it to the quilt store after school to buy binding for the Celebrating Silver quilt. It was a pain in the ass picking a color, though. I thought a gray to match her hair, but it was dead-looking. So then I tried a dark reddish brown, which worked near the base of the quilt, but was a problem higher up. So then I thought I should head for the batiks and see if I could match the brown batiks that are in the staff. Couldn’t find any that worked…nothing was dark and moody enough. So then I tried oranges and red-oranges and red-browns and reds and oranges with greens in them and then just plain old red. Even some blues. Nothing. It all sucked. I found one dark brown that was eh, so I grabbed it, feeling desperate, because here I am tossing my naked-women quilt on the ground in the store and hoping some woman with a nudity issue doesn’t come around the corner and ogle my uteri while I’m doing this. I go back to the dark browns, out of the batik section. Ugh. It all sucks. Browns are always an issue. It’s all wrong. Too many different browns in the quilt…they work together fine IN the quilt, but you can’t just pick one for the binding. Back to the grays and blacks. There we are. A dark gray. It’s not in the quilt, but it seems to ground it…not to drag too much away from the quilt itself, which is what the reds and oranges were doing. It works in some quilts, but this one is way too busy for that shock factor. Dark gray it is.

It’s such an intuitive process. I don’t think hard. I just grab and throw under the quilt and reject within seconds and move on to the next. I love that part of my brain, the part that can improvise and travel so quickly from one place to the next without a lot of introspective thought. It just does. It knows. It’s the good part of my brain.

I talked about mental illness at school today. We teach the nervous system, but it only focuses on physical problems: strokes, epilepsy, spinal-cord injuries. Why don’t we teach about mental illness? I have students who have been diagnosed bipolar, depressed, anxious. WHY THE FUCK don’t we teach this stuff? Girlchild says she got a little of it in AP biology in high school, but mostly in terms of genetic mutations. We need to teach this stuff so it’s not so confusing, so magical, so scary. I want my kids to know that this is actually somewhat normal. I heard one kid ask about bad stuff that happens to kids, can it cause XYZ? Well fuck yeah, it can! So besides the zombie unit I’m developing, I’m trying to fit mental illness into the content standards? Seriously, though…let’s teach what they really need to know.

Can you imagine? I teach depression and say, hey, your teacher suffers from this. This is why she has lost so much weight. This is why she cries in the classroom when you aren’t in there. This is what makes her the teacher who stands in front of you…it’s OK. You can get through this. Or you can’t. Do you know how many of my kids have been affected by mental illness, whether their own or their brother’s or their parent’s or whomever’s? And we don’t teach it. What the fuck is up with that? No wonder people can’t deal.

The binding fabric is washed and dried and ready for cutting. I needed to buy it today before the girlchild’s game, because the quilt store doesn’t stay open late tomorrow, and I was hoping to finish the quilting tonight so I could put the binding on tomorrow, and then do the hand-sewing on Saturday. I could have bought it Saturday, but then I would lose tomorrow night’s hours. Yes, I’m thinking that crazy at the moment. Can’t afford to lose hours.

I took the other quilt to the soccer game and sewed the rest of the binding and most of one sleeve on…nobody even asked me what I was doing. I love that. Two older ladies gave me an eye, so I’m glad they didn’t ask to see what I was working on (yeah, not flashing that vulva on the bleachers of the high-school stadium). I had it folded up so you could only see the back of the quilt. I don’t have a lot left to do, so that’s good. It was a tough game, so I didn’t sew particularly fast…unlike Tuesday’s game, which was incredibly boring (9-0 score). Tonight they played one of their big rivals, and they did freakin’ awesome until about 14 minutes into the second half, and then it fell apart…

Girlchild didn’t get to play much…this coach just confuses me. But when she did play, she was basically covering one of her good friends…it was getting dark, so my photos are crap…but you can see them here fighting over the ball. The high-school team is not a great fit for her, and the coach is not what we would like, but I guess it teaches her resilience in the face of adversity. They ended up losing 1-4, which just sucked, because they did so well for the first hour. Frustrating to watch…this is why I sew during games. It keeps me from getting as tense as the other parents, who end up yelling stupid things like, “Hit the back of the net!” Dude. Really? It just needs to go over the line. We also have one parent who is apparently a professional hog caller and practices her talent at the games. You think I’m kidding…I’m not.

What I really love about high-school winter soccer in Southern California is that the weather runs the gamut from requiring you to wear 4 warm layers, Ugg boots, gloves, a scarf, and a blanket one week to flip-flops and short sleeves the next week…it was 85 degrees at the beginning of the game. I did put the sweatshirt and the boots on for the second half (in January, it cools down very quickly), but it was nice otherwise to not be freezing by the end of the game. We have another week of nice temperatures here in San Diego, and then it will go back to cold (which yes, means like 50 degrees when the sun goes down…you do not need to mock me).

I think I’m still having anemia issues, because I’m still freezing all the time. Or it’s the thyroid. Whatever. They’ll get tested again in April. I do take my meds.

I was hoping to eat when I got home…had the boychild put the casserole in the oven when he got home from piano (they really are having to pull their weight at the moment…and I am so glad I don’t have to do this every day, all the time), but girlchild had some secret sisters thing for soccer that she had to do. She drew the name of someone she really doesn’t like at all, but she prides herself on being a really good secret sister, no matter what, so we hit the 99-cent store (candy is cheap!), where I was oh-so-glad to score my 2014 Baby Animals calendar (OK, it’s not THAT bad) for school…because I needed a calendar and it was on my list, but it wasn’t a supreme priority, so it was WAY DOWN the list. And I get to look at baby animals all year. Plus secret sisters wasn’t as expensive as it usually is.

Finally we got home and ate and I exercised, and then, finally, got to quilting…

I was right. I needed another 2 hours.

This thing took a little over 14 hours to quilt. I can’t post full photos until the exhibit opens in late October at Houston, but I took it to school today so I could get the binding, and for the first time ever, showed one of my quilts in person to the team…I got oohs and aahs and even a couple of dangs. Dang is good. DANG. I like the sound of that.

Anyway. I’m relieved to have the quilting done. I kept saying to myself, you need to stop. You need to go to bed early. You’re tired (I was yawning…it’s been a rough week). But in the end, artist brain won that war and bullied through all the stupid-ass thread breakages and slow quilting speed and just got it the fuck done. That’s what I needed. Then I meditated and soon I will go to sleep, yes, too late, but fuck it. I needed it to be done. Tomorrow night will not be easy either…trimming and binding does take some significant time and energy, but I feel much better about where I am on the to-do list with that step done.

Maybe all I get at this point in my life is short respites. No happy. No joy. Just relief for a short amount of time, until I turn to the lime-green post-it note of TO DO and freak out about the next big thing.

Actually, I’m hoping that the next big thing isn’t a freak out. I do have a piece I have to do by next October or November, but I’m not ready to draw it yet. I think I’ll aim for Spring Break for that one…except I want to do another big one over summer again. I’ll have to think that one through. I figure I’ll be starting a new quilt, tracing stage, by next weekend…I hope. I do have some significant stuff to do before then, and Road to California is next weekend (yay Julie for wanting to drive me up there!), so that may get pushed out a bit. I wonder if I am becoming this artistic hermit…I seem to only do the art and obsessively so. Is it all I am? All I have? I don’t know. It just is at the moment. Everything else is just stupid and lame.

At the End…

My mood is low. It probably isn’t particularly helpful to be reading a huge long book about World War II in London during the Blitz. I keep reading up on depression and tactics for getting the hell out of it. I know I’m doing everything I’m supposed to, mostly, except it’s funny…they recommend getting more sleep and eating right, but admit that two of the significant symptoms of depression are the inability to sleep well (either it’s too much or interrupted or too little) and digestive issues (eating too much or too little, or just differently). So I should fight the symptoms by pretending they aren’t there? And it’s depressing in itself to realize that you are doing everything you’re supposed to be doing, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Am I doing it wrong? Probably.

I just keep doing. It will hopefully eventually work. I’ll wake up one morning with fairy dust sprinkled everywhere and the world will be sparkling and new and everything will be pretty and happy and full of butterflies and nice smells.

Sigh. I’d settle for waking up and not thinking, “Oh God. Another day to get through.”

My ex guilt-tripped me today for not having sent out the kids’ school and soccer photos to his mom before she died. Little does he know that I already felt bad about that, that I had started a letter to her about 5 times and couldn’t manage to write anything about my life and the kids’ lives in the last 6 months. I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t send a Christmas letter this year either. Same deal. How to summarize months of depression and grief? You can’t…not without sounding really fake or whiny or pitiful or pathetic…and maybe I am all of those things, but I didn’t want to put it down on paper (says the woman who blogs about it every night…I can’t say that it makes sense). So I procrastinated. It’s not the only thing I’ve procrastinated about over the last 6 months. Things that are hard…I just can’t summon the energy or motivation to deal with them. I’m trying very hard to stay on track with the financial aid stuff for college, because I have to. Same with school, although I’ve let some things slide with that…nothing crucial. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to work, so it’s hard for me to let anything go, but I talk to myself about what really matters all the time. Just do what really matters. Let the rest go.

So I told my ex, I’ve been suffering from depression (I’m sure he knows this already) and couldn’t deal with it and many other things in the last 6 months, and I already had a mental conversation with his mom about this in my head and she was OK, she understood. I don’t know if she would have understood or not, but I can’t fix not sending the photos. It’s done. I’m carrying enough guilt at the moment. I don’t need more. And he could have sent them himself. I never seem to attach myself to the people who will DO. They just expect me to DO. And if I don’t, if I can’t, because my brain is messing with its serotonin and dopamine levels and not working properly, then they complain about it or they don’t complain about it, they just feel bad that I’m not DOING and that sucks too. So give me a break. I’m doing the best that I can. And then I handed him all of his photos. I usually put the kid’s name, grade, and date on all the photos, but I didn’t. That’s why I hadn’t finished packing them all up. It was too much like hard work to write all that. Sigh.

I still feel bad.

I got up eventually this morning. I actually got one kid up early (the other one got herself up) and then went back to sleep, because I went to sleep way too late last night. Then I took a cat to the vet…Midnight has some infection and the antibiotic pill I was supposed to be giving her, well she was being evil and spitting it out after we thought she had swallowed it, so she’s not getting better as fast as we’d like. Hopefully the shot they gave her today will help, because otherwise there might be something else going on.

Saw this sign near the vet…

Made me think of Game of Thrones.

When I got home, I started going through my stash of batting, looking for something big enough for this quilt. Sigh. NOTHING. I have lots of weird-sized offcuts, but nothing long enough or wide enough. Damn. I should have figured this out earlier this week. Now I have to waste possible quilting time going shopping for batting. I did find one piece of batting big enough actually…

But I have no idea what it is. I usually use Warm and Natural, but this was something with a scrim in it and loose layers on top…

Not sure why I have it. There is a smallish rectangle cut out of it, but I have no idea what I used it for. Sad but true. I was too paranoid to use something that I wasn’t sure of the results on, so I went and bought more, came home and washed and dried it, and ironed the top and backing while I was waiting…

I have two drawers of pieces big enough for backings and backgrounds, but most of them are old sale pieces that weren’t wide enough. I used a batik for the background, so they run wider than the normal print fabrics by about 4 inches…so I needed a batik for the back as well. I could have used the purple I originally purchased for the front, but I think it will work really well for another quilt, so I saved it…why waste it on a background? I’ve had this batik (off the sale rack) for a very very long time. It’s about time it got used.

And because I had even more time, I started cleaning up the office, putting away all the fabric from this last quilt and straightening up all the mess. There was a lot of mess. There’s still more mess, but it’s better.

By the time I got back from picking the girlchild up from school, the batting was dry and I laid the whole mess out on the entryway floor and pinbasted it. Apparently I only took one very blurry picture of this process, probably because I only had 45 minutes before girlchild would stomp through the entryway with muddy soccer cleats, and I wanted the quilt off the floor by then.

Anyway. I did all that and managed to start quilting between dropping her off amid her many complaints of the car shortage in the house (boychild has piano lessons…I offered to let her have my car and ask her dad or grandpa to take me, but apparently she recognized my plan for the guilt trip I really didn’t mean it to be and let me keep my car). She really likes being able to drive herself places.

I didn’t get far on the quilting. I didn’t have much time before her game.

I took lots of crappy blurry pictures during the game until I realized I was on some crappy blurry setting (why do cameras have settings like that?)…

and then it got too dark to photograph anything (they won 3-1), so I sewed instead.

I finished two more bird feet and about a million pink bullion knots. OK. Not a million…

Not even close. I am still revising my finishing plan for these. Going with the uber-positive, hopeful mood I’ve been in all week (cough cough), I have decided that it will take me a decade to finish three birds, and if I am any faster than that, I am an amazing stitching dynamo and should be worshiped from afar for my masterful stitching skills.

At least I know I can achieve that.

I came home, went to the gym, read about 300 pages of depressing wartime novel (sigh…for book club…even the time travel is boring, because IT’S NOT EVEN HAPPENING), ate dinner, and then quilted for a while.

I’m done with flames and smoke and am up in the rocks…

Tomorrow looks ugly, but hopefully I’ll get a few hours in. That’s my goal anyway, but I need to deal with school stuff too. Yuck. Not ready. Never ready.

I did get the postcards for the new California Fibers show, which will open on January 13 at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California (Orange County, for those who don’t recognize the name).

I have two pieces in the show…it’s a wide variety of fiber work, from baskets to weaving to quilting to lace netting and dying and lots of cool work. Unfortunately, it’s only open Monday-Friday, so I probably won’t be able to go up until Spring Break…luckily, it’s open through May 8, so that is an option. The opening is Thursday, January 30, from 5:30-7:45, for those who live in the area. This is one of three California Fibers’ shows in the next two months. I have one piece in the show that will open at the Visions Art Museum next month, and we haven’t heard the jury results on the third show yet, which will be in Ojai, California. Anyway, it means lots of getting work ready for exhibit, but also having to finish and ship for two other major exhibits, so if I’m a little stressed out and feeling overwhelmed, that would be why. At least I have a good excuse.

Anyway, sad day. Whatever. Move on to the next one. At the end of it, I’ll have some quilts done. That’s better than most depressoids do…at least I can do that. Make art. At the end of it…reminds me, we are at the end of Winter Break as well. And I’m almost at the end of two quilts. And hopefully boychild finished the last college app tonight because it was due today…we’re at the end of that (but that signifies the beginning of a lot of scary and expensive future shit).

Being a Sentient Door…

Hip abduction. Hip abduction. If you stare at those two words for long enough, (1) you start wondering why someone would try to abduct a hip, and (2) you manage to stop crying in the gym, because that is not one of the appropriate crying places in the universe. Try it. It works.

When I finally went to bed last night (and one of the benefits of two nights of not really sleeping is that I’m exhausted tonight), I set my alarm thinking that my two teenagers could get their butts out of bed without my help. I’m not sure why I thought that. It really doesn’t make any sense at all. I think I was abdicating my Momly duties, but I didn’t really warn them of that at 2 AM, so it wasn’t really fair. Usually, one of them does wake up without my help, and she probably would have woken the other kid up, but she failed at it yesterday, so you’d think the Mom part of my brain would have kicked in and said, eh…better set your alarm early. Nope. It didn’t. It was a Mom Fail. So I woke up at 6:56, realized no one was up, and that they had to leave in 4 minutes. Yup. Boychild actually made it one minute late…girlchild needed to shower for soccer photos, so she missed 20 minutes, and yes, yes, I lied and called attendance and said she had a doctor’s appointment. I am a horrible mother.

Now, as I’m driving her to school, I’m sitting in my road’s driveway, waiting for the traffic to clear so I can turn, and who drives by? Her dad. My ex. Oops. He waved a hand, but then at the bottom of the hill, gave us a stare…knowing that we were running late. Anyway. So alarm clocks don’t always go off, especially if you roll over on them and put them on permanent snooze. I suggested using her real alarm clock as a backup (that’s what I do), but there were multiple arguments as to why that would indicate the end of the world. Some arguments I just don’t have the strength to commit to because they really aren’t that important and she will figure it out when she goes to college and mom isn’t there to pull her out of bed when her alarm doesn’t go off.

So I didn’t get enough sleep. I was going to go to the gym in the morning, but my brain was completely frazzled and I would have had to leave at 7 and it was already past then, so I just…hell, I don’t know what I did. I had the dentist at 10. Oh, I remember. I cleaned…I have all these clothes that don’t fit me any more, and I can’t even find the clothes that DO fit me…I’m constantly rummaging through piles trying to find something that won’t fall off, so I bagged up all the big fat clothes and put them in the entryway for the thrift shop. I also went through a couple of drawers and tossed stuff that I never wear, so I’d actually have ROOM for the stuff that does fit. I found homes for most of the bed linens…not sure what to do with a really old, beat-up down comforter…don’t feel like I can throw it away…what if the apocalypse happens and it gets really really cold? I’ll wish I had it then.

I know. You can hear packrat (subHoarder) from way over there. I know my issues.

Then I went to the dentist and to pick up meds and then came home and made my dinner for tonight (and 5 other nights). Well, I prepped it anyway. And I washed all the dishes and tried to clean up the kitchen (a never-ending battle of monstrous proportions) and deal with some art-related stuff. (Is the journal done? No, it’s not. Shut up.) One of my groups has three shows opening in the next 30 days, so it’s a little chaotic with announcements etc. at the moment, and since I’m on the publicity committee and in charge of Facebook and the blog, I need to get my act together. I did find all the photos and resized them all. Tomorrow, I’ll write the first post and do something about the Facebook page.

I did distract my depressoid self by looking at art websites for a while. Like an hour (time suck). Sigh. I get in a bad mood with no art. I get in a bad mood with not enough time. I get in a bad mood with too much stress. I get in a bad mood when the dentist makes me fill out a health form and I check off recent weight loss and then the hygienist wants to know what I did to lose the weight. I got depressed. I am having a shitty time of it. I really don’t want to talk about it. No, I don’t recommend my weight-loss method. Now stop talking to me about reality television and clean my teeth. OK. So today was maybe not the best day to interact with the public, I’m thinking.

Meanwhile, no art was happening. None. Nada. Nichts. This sucks. Day 2 of sucks. I think that’s why my mood is sinking faster than a holey submarine. (Holy Holey Submarine, Batman! OK, enough with the Robin exclamations.) I can’t seem to get a moment for anything right now. After I picked the girlchild up from school, I had time to eat lunch and then took her to her soccer game; I graded at the game and I sewed some too. The game itself was pretty boring…

I think the final score was 7-1 for us…the high school is the one most of my former students go to…I don’t recognize the players. They’re too small and too far away. Plus I forget what lots of them look like once they’re gone. Sad but true. Maybe if they weren’t all wearing uniforms with ponytails…I did recognize some of the kids in the audience.

This is what it looks like when girlchild heads the ball.

I wasn’t doing a good job of photography tonight. The sun was in my eyes. But you can tell she headed it because (1) everyone is looking up and (2) her ponytail is flipped up over her head.

Because the game was such an uneven match, the coach played half of them in the first half, and told them they had to make 200 passes. Girlchild’s group made 220 passes; the other half made 207 passes, or something like that. Because that’s really crucial information. As the watching public, we knew something was going on, but we had theories like the girls had to pass it to one of the girls in the back every third pass (because that’s what it looked like they were doing) and that they shouldn’t pass it to the forwards at all. Anyway. Damn boring game.

Thursday’s should be more exciting…they’ll be playing some of her club teammates…plus it’s a better team (not hard). The problem with my former students’ team is that the kids who are the best players usually have the worst grades. We could motivate them to bring their grades up during soccer season so they could play, but when they get to high school, they have to have a decent grade point average, and many of them just can’t do that. Plus the kids who are better students usually go to one of the other high schools we play against.

I spent a lot of time photographing the sky…

It was quite beautiful…and way more interesting than the game.

For some reason, the sky made me sad though. OK, I know some of the reasons. Sometimes I wonder why my brain can’t just move on. What does it think it’s doing? What is the point of all its ruminations? Why doesn’t it just decide to be happy with what it has and stop worrying about everything and missing the things it can’t have and wondering what the hell it did wrong and analyzing front back and center? I need more distractions.

When the game was over, I went to the gym…yes, at 7 PM. Whatever. That’s what I do during school most of the time, so it’s no different. I put dinner in the oven when I got back…neither oven is working properly at the moment, so I just put a thermometer in when I cook now and adjust accordingly.

It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it? It’s chicken, spinach, mushroom pie. Seriously. And girlchild had cooked a piece of chicken for me earlier this week to put in this, and I mixed all the insides up and put them in the pie pan and totally forgot the chicken, so I cut it up with scissors on top of the insides (before I put the crust on), and then just pushed them down into the spinach mixture. It worked. And then I put the crust on top. This is low-cal and easy to eat on those nights when I can’t deal with cooking. I just froze the rest of it. It reheats really well. We’ve been good about using the crockpot on soccer nights too, to make sure dinner isn’t too much of a stretch when we get home.

That said, their dad is going back to the UK next week for his mom’s funeral, and school will be starting for me, plus there’s soccer and Academic League and everything else, so I will have to remember to plan for cooking ALL the nights, instead of just when I think I have the kids. Brain strain. Seriously. At least I don’t have to get anyone up but myself tomorrow morning. And hopefully I will fight for some stitching time tomorrow, so my mood will be less like drowning in sad stinky cherry Jello and more like pained pseudo-acceptance of a dreary life. Sigh. Remember Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? I feel kinda like him today. I like that he could solve all the world’s problems except his own depression…that’s how I feel…except I can’t even solve the world’s problems, so I’m particularly lame.

I think I need to be one of the sentient doors on the Heart of Gold spaceship; they’re so perky and happy about their existence in the universe. Maybe I could get a brain transplant and be a sentient door instead.

Holy Panic Attack, Batman…

I think today needs to be wadded up in a tiny ball and thrown in the garbage disposal. I had a list of things to do, and even finished some of them, but then the day conspired to pick me up and throw me into a blender. As Robin would say, Holy Teeth Grinding…in case you are Batman-deficient, here’s a great compilation of some of Robin’s exclamations of holiness…

My favorites? Holy Sudden Incapacitation and Holy Knit 1 Purl 2. I wonder if Robin knits?

I think stress started in last night, and I’m not sure why, except that there are a lot of deadlines pressing on me at the moment and not enough time. So I couldn’t fall asleep until after 2 AM sometime last night, and then I was awake again at 4. I think I slept a little between then and 7, but not a lot. The kids went back to school today, so maybe that was it…who knows. I vowed to stay in my pajamas (something I really haven’t been able to do all Winter Break) at least until the health coach called. I started stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I really thought I was going to be able to get this done today. Ha! The universe looks down on me, puny and small, and steps on me. Seriously. I got about an hour in. I was hoping the health coach could help with the sleep stuff, but she says I’m already doing everything, although she pointed me towards aromatherapy, which I did once upon a time. I just went and checked the medicine cabinet (which is not actually a cabinet any more, just a hole in the wall between studs because the old cabinet’s glass was slipping out, so I just took the whole mess out before it killed someone, and I’ve never been able to find a replacement that wouldn’t require changing the hole size in one direction or eleven), but there’s nothing. It’s OK. I got a glass of wine instead…because it’s 12:20 AM and I am WIRED. Like I’m going to vibrate out of the room. Not good. Grape aromatherapy.

So at 10:30 or so, everything was still according to plan. I showered (I got to stay in my pjs for a little while…the simple pleasures) and got my list together, and went to the auto-part store (windshield wipers), the hardware store (lightbulbs and replacement keys and extension cords), and the grocery store (boychild has expressed a shampoo preference that is DIFFERENT than his sister’s for the first time in 18.013 years). I came back, changed the wiper blades in 14 seconds flat (it has taken me 46 years of practice to be able to do that), filled up the car with all the oil I had (it’s going in on Wednesday), installed the lightbulb, threw out the stomped-on extension cord, put the keys together for the girlchild (who has been complaining about not having her OWN car keys), and declared the kids’ bathroom a national, no, INTERNATIONAL disaster area (I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with them in the future…and I think I know what they will be doing this weekend, if I have to scream and throw cat turds at them until they do it).

All good. It still wasn’t even lunch time. I was doing well.

Yeah. Then I got an email about the journal for the Earth Stories project. Shit. Dammit. Fuck. I bought the journal two weeks ago. I started trying to find photos for it, but I had stopped filing photos properly last March (normal for me…I usually only clean them out about twice a year, when I have to), and honestly had put off dealing with it because going through photos was just too damn painful. Fuck. Cannot put this off any more. She wants it now. What she wants doesn’t exist. She’s perfectly within her rights to want it now…I said I would do it by early January. It is early January. I did not state which year, but I suspect that doesn’t matter. Unless I can manufacture a deadly illness or necessary surgery right now (not a joking matter), I’m stuck. So I started going through photos…I thought I was going to be able to do this whole Google Docs thing (trying to get used to it for school purposes) and maybe work on it at the soccer game on the iPad, but I’ll write more about all that when I write a good long horrible post about how NOT to make a journal after the fact.

Boychild arrived home, criticized my lunch fare, and I went off to get the girlchild from school and fill the gas tank. While I’m pulling up to the gas station, my cell phone rings from Upland, California. I don’t know anyone in Upland, California (OK, maybe I do, but I don’t KNOW that I know they’re in Upland). I’m going to ignore it (I am driving), but girlchild asks to answer it, and promptly uses goofy voice and tells them, Yes, She IS Kathy Nida. Oops. Then quickly hands the phone to me when she realizes that pretending to be me is a big mistake, because the universe is after me today and I just don’t know it yet.

Thus begins a strange conversation. It’s Road to California, an annual quilt show. They want to know if I’ve shipped my quilt. Um. No? I didn’t get in. Yes you did. I didn’t get an email. It’s in your spam folder. It wasn’t, by the way…I do check all my spam and it never came…now I could have apparently checked online to see if I got in, but it meant logging in to my Road account, not just looking at an online list, and that was early December and apparently it never crossed my mind…I just assumed because they said they would only send emails to accepted artists that I hadn’t been accepted. Luckily, they did call me and were still willing to have me ship the quilt, because it was due back on December 27 (oops). So I’m in Road. Which I guess means I’m going to Road. And they took the naked one! I was shocked. So one of my uteri will be in Ontario (not Upland), California…January 23-26. I’m not going to show you a picture of it, because if you’re at Road, it will be the ONLY quilt with a uterus that is at Road. Seriously. Wanna bet?

So I walked in the door with the girlchild and realized I had no boxes, drove to UPS while girlchild went to her soccer game, then back home, packed up the quilt, had to ship through Fed Ex, drove to Fed Ex and dropped it off, then drove back home because I had forgotten my tea (crucial for surviving January soccer games), then to the soccer game (I was only 11 minutes late). Watched the girlchild play, stitched some feet, no fucking way is my plan of finishing three blocks in two games going to work at all, because I am too slow. Whatever.

Yes, we are playing midgets here (not really…and we’re not supposed to call them that…this young dear thing actually pulled my daughter down later in the game…at least I think it was her…it might have been one of the other midgets).

It was late afternoon…hence the pretty light…but most of my pictures were fuzzy crap due to the declining light. I don’t know why I try.

I especially like how everything is tinged with orange, their team color…probably there was a very pretty sunset going on behind me, but I was too busy freaking out and stitching bird feet. Stitching does actually calm me down. Imagine how messed up I’d be right now if I hadn’t done that. At one point tonight, I sat down with the last of the heart disease comics to grade, opened them up, brain vomited panic and anxiety all over the page, and I put them away again.

Ironic that, because if I don’t get through all the grading soon, there will be a whole ‘nother level of anxiety going on.

I need time, dammit Spock…TIME. Spock seems better for that request than Robin…Robin doesn’t seem capable of helping at all, except to make me laugh. Holy Inappropriate Comment, Batman. Holy Pointy Ears, Batman. I hate being anxious like this. On the other hand, I often am uber-efficient when I’m this stressed. Holy Adrenaline Rush, Batman.

Luckily dinner was in the crockpot (I did that in the morning too) when we got home, and then I spent two or three hours manhandling photos and Google Docs and finally giving up and importing into Word, which was bitchy in a different way. Am I done? Fuck no. Don’t talk to me.

Oh! And I cut up a Christmas tree in the middle of all that, with the boychild’s help. In the dark. With a saw. And tried to fix the oven using the weird MacGyver device the oven guy left me (I failed at this attempt). And exercised, and meditated (in the 20-30 seconds when we are allowed to let our minds wander wherever they like, my brain performed dangerous karate fight moves and beat the crap out of someone. It’s OK…he deserved it…and it made me giggle.). And then I made the mistake of looking at college financial aid stuff, which just makes my head spin, and they want everything done by February 15, and that includes tax forms and statements and all this crap that has to be up-, down-, and side-loaded in 14 different locations. I guess the only people that get financial aid are those who have stamina. I have stamina, dammit. I do.

No more quilt action happened today. I did copy the missing pieces from the drawing I was taping yesterday (Fed Ex is where I copy, so I had the presence of mind to bring the sketchbook with me when I shipped the quilt).

I do wonder if I missed some crucial email from Road? I searched all my folders, including spam and deleted items…I have the confirmation that I entered and the email they sent today, but nothing else. I could have sworn I saw a rejection email, but maybe not. I just don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m going crazy with all this stuff…I can barely keep track of what I need to get done on a minute-by-minute basis, and then this stuff happens…makes me wonder if I’m all there. Where? There. Over THERE.

Anyway. I’m hoping tomorrow is better. I’ve made a to-do list already. It makes me feel better, more organized and calm, to have the list. I have timing issues tomorrow, but if I’m wide awake in the morning, then I will take advantage and do the gym early…I work better on the art stuff at night, and that will free up time for that. Presumably the exercise will get rid of some of this crazy anxiety too. Hell, some of this is probably hormonal (I just realized this…you’d think I would learn that any crazy seesawing from one mood to another is of course that stupid-ass estrogen fucking with my system again). Holy Uterine Involvement, Batman! Anyway, just be glad you don’t live with me at the moment, although it would be nice to have some calm influence who rubbed my feet and back and made me a bubble bath and a cocktail (I don’t actually drink those or sit in those, in either order) and told me everything would be all right…not that I’d believe them…I don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone who says that to me again. Sad but true. But someday. Maybe. Maybe I will be allowed to have that. Fucking universe. Go fuck with someone else. You’ve messed with me enough.

The universe says, Yeah, but you got into a show that you didn’t even know you got into. Isn’t that a good thing? Well, universe, wouldn’t it have been OK to tell me on the normal date and have me be able to plan ahead to ship and all that? Yes, yes it would. And then I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering how crazy I really am.

All right…it’s 1 AM and I’m still wired. Holy Melatonin, Batman (doesn’t work on me), what next? Read a boring book…breathe deep…maybe the quilt fairy will come in the night and finish my stitching, or even better! Maybe the financial aid/tax fairy will come and do all THAT for me. Now that would be a useful fairy. Don’t even ask where the depression was today…front and center…when I write about creating the journal.

Guardian Angel

I’m sitting in the parking structure at Radiology downtown. I have 10 minutes before I need to check in. I cried all the way here. I know the odds of there being something really wrong are extremely low, but it doesn’t stop my brain from being upset. I’m not worried, because I know that whatever it is, it already is…something or nothing…I’m just scared. Not too scared to get out of the car…trying to get my eyes to behave, my tear ducts under control. If I look upset, the nurses will be more solicitous and I can’t handle that now. Better that they’re rude so I can be irritated or angry.

They won’t be rude. They never are.

This is the drawing I did back in late June after a followup mammogram.

In June, I had my normal mammogram, and then they called me at school (strangely, I answered) and wanted a followup, but they couldn’t say why. Way to strike fear into a woman’s heart. My doctor called later that day to explain. Whoops. Timing issues. So I went in for the followup (it’s not the first time) and they did 4 or 5 mammograms and an ultrasound and the doctor came in and said there was this thing, deep behind the nipple, but it had been there for three years without changing…but he was concerned. Not so concerned to biopsy it, but concerned enough to have me back in 6 months. So I did that drawing. Ironically, it’s the wrong breast…but I guess I drew it as facing, on the left side. Anyway. It will be my next big quilt, I think. Maybe.

So I went back in today. I wasn’t worried…I was just scared. Those are different feelings. I do my monthly exams. I have no family history. I breastfed for a good long time.

They did three mammogram views and then she said they would call me, and I said, um. Yeah. Can you just have him look now, because I don’t want to have to come back? So she did. And yeah, he wanted an ultrasound. I pack myself out to the “Women’s Lounge” (a separate room in Radiology, so I don’t feel weird about sitting there double-gowned with my clothes in a pile on my lap). I tell them my time constraints (girlchild had her CT scan for today too). They take me in for the ultrasound, and I watch her, watch the screen, watch what they’re looking for. I don’t know what is good and what is bad. She says, “It’ll just take 5 minutes.” Twenty minutes later and she finally says I can clean up, but she wants the doctor to look. “You can get dressed.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” Yeah. I got dressed, and then she came back with the doctor and I got undressed again. Everything is covered with that ultrasound gel now. I think I stopped breathing normally somewhere in there. I sent a message to the girlchild, told her to meet me at her appointment. We already had a contingency plan in case this happened. Her text back made me tear up. She said good luck.

Doctor comes in. His name? Lumpkin. Seriously? (OK, it might be Lumkin, but still!) She does the ultrasound again. Shows him something. He asks about something else. They stare at my breast, then at the ultrasound. Then he smiles and says, “It’s that same thing, a shadow. It’s been there since 2007. It hasn’t changed. I just want two more views on the mammogram.” Gel off, new gown (old one covered in gel), sit in the ~~waiting room~~ Women’s Lounge (I am still not lounging) again. Back in, another two views, which makes five total. Deep breaths. They do the twisty roll thing this time. I’m laughing. The woman is on her knees on the ground, trying to position all of my parts in the right place. I’m looking up at the machine, and someone has put some sort of scented thing on the machine…lavender…to calm us. I’m calm. I’m in pain, but I’m calm. I’m not breathing right, but I’m calm. Whatever it is, it’s already there. It’s been in me for 6 1/2 years or more. Flashes of Aliens movies.

It’s OK. He says it’s normal tissue. I go back in 6 months to my normal mammogram. As long as it stays the same, I’m good. That foreign shadow is part of me.

As I head out for the girlchild’s CT scan, I wish I had my sketchbook. I haven’t drawn all break. No opportunities, I guess. Other priorities. I haven’t done much of anything, it seems. Not true, but it feels that way. Achievement low. Must fix that in the next week.

So I came home and started ironing again…

Didn’t have much time in the afternoon, because I was wrangling with the FAFSA (financial aid for college). I was supposed to know city and state for every college the boychild applied to (I didn’t).

Damn breast is sore. I got all of the torso ironed to the staff, so I pulled it off the teflon sheet and rolled it up on itself…

That’s how I store it until it’s time to iron it all down to fabric. I wanted to finish today, but ended up needing to think about sleep. I am actually fairly wide awake, even now, but I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, so I can’t stay up until I’m done. I do want to get a different background fabric tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I’ll take some of the pieces with me and toss them down on the floor, thus freaking out everyone in the store. Yay me.

In between all this, girlchild had a game…

I graded for the hour before the game…I bargain with myself about work vs. stuff that’s more fun.

Because taking pictures during the night games is totally pointless. I did more embroidery on these.

I’m working on the first two month’s worth. I’ve done all the embellishment in the background color on all 6 blocks, and now have moved on to eyes and feet on all 6. I originally estimated 2 games to finish 3 blocks, so it would be 4 games to finish 6. I’ve put in 2 games’ worth of time on the 6 blocks, so I should be done at next Wednesday’s game. I might be done with grading by then too, if I’m lucky…or at least the grading I can do while sitting on the bleachers. She played half the game tonight, so that was good, but there was all this stupid coaching politics going on, so who knows. I stitch because it keeps me calm during games. Plus I like to stitch. The one guy who’s been asking me about the birds every game asked me if I was done today. You so funny. I’m never done.

Anyway, we had been smart enough to put dinner in the slow cooker, so it was ready when we got home. I exercised and meditated, and finally started ironing really late, unfortunately.

I’m finally ironing the crone’s face…I got all the hair and the cat done, and then constructed the eyes and complicated bits down below on the pattern, so I could put them on top after…

It’s easier for me to see the pieces that way. I think each eye had about 10 pieces in it. She’s a complicated woman.

And I really like how she turned out. Deep breaths. I think this quilt is going to come together and be what I want it to be. I’ll feel better when I see it all together. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show the whole thing before the exhibit opens. I’ll have to go read the rules. You might have to wait until October. That would suck. I really don’t like rules like that.

Tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get it all together…there’s an owl to do and some thorny bits, and then I need to find a new background and iron the whole thing down. Not sure whether I can do that all tomorrow…and Sunday is a bit busy as well. But I’ll try. I also still have a binding that needs to go on.

I finished this book today…Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

I really liked it in the beginning, like 5 out of 5 liked it, but it really wore on my nerves by the end. He has a way with words, but nothing really happened in this book. It was interesting enough, but also irritating. So yeah…down to a 3 out of 5 by the end. It would have been better if it were shorter? I don’t know. I’m going to read some of his other stuff, because I like the words, but these two that I’ve read are apparently not his best, OR he’s all over the map. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really trust GoodReads reviews unless it’s someone I know who reads books I read. Otherwise, every book has been rated a 1 or a 5 by someone.

I have done a good job of keeping up with all the library holds that came in while I was on vacation…I’m not caught up yet, though. It’s been a good run…I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve also been watching Firefly, the TV series that is a Western in space. The boychild recommended it to me, and I’m almost through all of them. They grew on me. I wasn’t sure about the first two episodes, but the last four have been great. The dialog cracks me up sometimes…”That sounds like science fiction.” “We live on a spaceship, dear.” I’ll miss them when they’re gone…I guess that’s a sign of a good show.

So all the angst of the morning is still sitting in my chest, ironically, around about the same place as that shadowy invader, whatever it is. I’m calling it my guardian angel at the moment. Everyone needs one…she might as well reside in my left breast. But all the ironing helped. Getting the face done helped. It was successful. I need more successful, apparently. Eases the sorrow. The pain. The sad. I have this lockbox, open, inside my chest. It’s waiting for my brain to gather up all the feels associated with this pain and put them in the lockbox, close it up and walk away from it. Move on. Let go, says the counselor. My brain is like a pitbull with a steak in its mouth. The brain won’t do it. It picks up a piece here, a piece there, but as it’s reaching for that piece way over there, it drops one of the others. Goes back for that one and drops another. Comedy of errors, of lame-ass behavior, of not really trying? Who knows. I move on. I don’t, but I do. I move on and my brain stays back and tries to continue picking up pieces. I’ll come back when she’s ready for me.

Keep Driving…

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

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

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

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

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

which may just be about me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I am still cutting things out…

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

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

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

Winter Break So Far…

Winter Break so far: graded two weeks of warmups, sat through three soccer games in less than 24 hours (hence the grading), sewed on 32 tiny blue circles (OK, I don’t actually think it was 32, but I don’t feel like counting, so here…you count)…

I stitched other blue things too…seriously, each game is two 40-minute halves with 10 minutes in between, and you have to be there an hour before, so that tells you how much time I have to grade and sew…AND take photos when she’s actually playing and it’s not dark.

I also checked out over 2000 pages worth of books from the library, because apparently every book I had on hold for the last 6 months arrived this week. Seriously. I have two ebooks that showed up and four actual paper books, and all of them are huge. I’m OK with that, but it’s kind of strange to feel PRESSURE to read. Then I go to the gym and realize I am the only person who is reading at the gym except for that old guy over there on the treadmill…oh wait, that’s my dad. Hmn. The world is full of nonreaders.

I also went to Unsilent Night last night with the kids…it was smaller again this year. I think next year we will get the girlchild to bring all of Key Club or something to fill out the numbers. I still liked it and once I get the videos posted, I’ll put them on here, although watching them is kinda lame compared to the experience. Downtown wasn’t as busy as it has been in the past either…not sure why, since it was a Saturday night…maybe everyone was at work or family parties. We did talk about last year when we did this. Everything I do is full of memory. I managed it though. Lost myself in the sound and lights of the experience and hanging out with my kids. Threatened them with doing this every year when they come back from college. Holy shit. They’re going to college.

In the middle of all that, a giant rock hit my windshield and left a divot, and then the check engine light on my car came back on, which is probably the catalytic converter finally failing, with the worst possible timing in all the world…January will be the Visa bill from hell, I think. What is the next thing that will go wrong with the car? Shouldn’t there be three? College apps plus Christmas plus fixing car. Deep breaths.

I have not been home long enough to make art. Girlchild just said to me that I get stressed and she doesn’t even know why, to calm down and it would all get done. Maybe true. Then again, she’s not doing any of it. She just adds more to what I have to do. At least she can drive now, so I’m not constantly having to take her and drop her off…let’s not think about her ability to get lost.

I didn’t post last night out of pure exhaustion. I’m not sure why I made it to Saturday night and didn’t collapse Friday night, but whatever. I fell asleep in meditation, then got up and went to bed, and then couldn’t freakin’ fall asleep. Lame. Brain goes a mile a minute, can’t shut it down. Need to do the exercise and the art to get it to shut down properly.

The plus is that the soccer situation is better now…

Coach played her in the first game yesterday for an OK amount of time…

Then I saw her club coach and talked to him about the lack of playing time. Not sure if he then talked to the high-school coach, but she played a good chunk of the second game yesterday…

And made a goal. There we go. The picture above is right before she made the goal…kicked it past the goalie on the ground (who was trying to trap it with her legs), jumped over her, and calmly placed the ball in the goal. So I think she’s feeling better about the soccer thing now and hopefully that will mean less drama here. At least for a day or so…the finals are tomorrow and I think we’re in them. More grading time.

I finished this book, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, by Pearl Cleage…

It was OK. A little light…nothing’s that easy in real life. Can’t remember why I read it…recommended somewhere. There are apparently more in the series, but I don’t know if I care that much. Oprah does…if that matters. I liked the characters and the writing…it was just too perfect. If I were less depressed, maybe I would like it more.

My right eyelid is still trying to twitch on and off, but it’s calming down. I feel good about all the grading I got done in the last two days…although there is still a shitload to do. I have to go to school today because I left my room a mess and they are doing the floors, so I have to clean up so they can do that. I also still have Christmas stuff to deal with. I think I will not be getting much art done in the next couple of days, and even after that, the days are pretty full…but maybe after that. So hopefully there will be pictures of that coming soon. People keep trying to add to my Have-To list…like I don’t already have one three miles long.

Right now, I have two cats in the same room that are hissing at each other, my ex’s German Shepherd who believes either that My Toast is His Toast or that he should be allowed to eat the hissing cat who has already bopped him twice, and a Golden Retriever who keeps hopefully coming in with a squished soccer ball, asking me to play.

So I’m going to the gym. With my book. Trying to take control of my own life, even if my brain doesn’t like it.

Wash Down the Drain…

Wow. Boom. Hear that? That’s any sense of ease I had in the last few days. Exploding. It wasn’t really ease…more like resignation? Not even that, because my brain is always trying to find ways around the giant rift valley in the prefrontal cortex. I’m not resigned to anything. I keep getting up and moving, trying to figure out how to get across. Knowing there is something over there that is better than over here, and if I just keep working at it, I will get over there. Hope it’s not a grass-is-greener thing. I’d hate to get across and have it all still suck.

It is what it is.

We kamikazed to a soccer game in San Ysidro today after school, 5 miles from the Mexican border. The sky was beautiful for about 45 minutes before the game…

In all sorts of ways. I feel this incredible sense of peace when looking at the sky lately. It has so many variations, some so bright and clear, others murky and gray, and even more highly colored and vivid these days. The cynic in me blames pollution somewhere…in fact, the red is caused by scattering of light, with more water droplets and dust in the air causing the red wavelengths to scatter more, making that amazing magenta/watermelon in the sky that I’ve seen so often in the last few weeks. Was it always there in December? Did I never notice it? Is it that there is so little good going on in my brain that the skies are making such an impression? There are no good answers. It’s best to just watch the sky and enjoy it when it’s enjoyable. Notice it when it’s noticeable. Wonder why I’m so fascinated by nature and landscapes.

So yeah, there was a soccer game. One down, four to go. These days are such logistical nightmares, they require advance planning and multiple texts for completion. It’s no wonder I’m exhausted when we get home and finally get dinner made and the dishes done. I did exercise and meditate, but I didn’t manage much more than that. I wanted to, but I was too damn tired.

I didn’t grade at soccer. My school-related frustrations were high, and I refuse to let them take over my life, so I have a rule that if I leave school irritated with my job, then I don’t work that night. Yes, this could get ugly, but mostly it’s working. Honestly, will the world end if something is not graded right away? Nope. It hasn’t yet. I always seem to figure it out. I take more help than I used to. I grade less than I used to. I try to be more efficient but also more kind to myself…honestly, the frustration and upset caused by grading when I am already not happy about work is just not worth it. So I don’t make it worse.

Those are usually art nights (OK, mostly every night is art night at the moment, but I think that’s a good thing)…but tonight. Sheesh. Not an option. I did stitch at the soccer game…

I’m almost done stitching everything down on these…I think these are the August blocks, the ones that originally burned up on the stove. I was worried that all those tiny blue dots (and there are lots more of them coming) would be too difficult to stitch while sitting on bleachers, but I was wrong. They were a piece of cake. I almost lost one of the larger blue dots on the bleachers though…found it later.

I got these to this stage over Thanksgiving, I think…or some soccer game after that. Can’t remember now. Big blur…

Of wool and stuff. I actually had two men ask about these…one wanted to know what I was knitting (bang head…); the other asked if I was doing the school logo (which strangely does look kinda like the orange bird body above). People so rarely ask what I’m doing…so that was interesting. I usually sit far away from people, which is how I started out, but then I got surrounded by the male contingent of soccer parents. I don’t understand sunflower-seed-eating people who just leave all their droppings on the bleachers. What do they think will happen to them? Bizarre thought process.

When we finally got home, Jake was here…

Jake is my ex’s dog. He’s here for two weeks. He keeps going to the door, wondering where his dad is. Poor guy. And he’s really not sure about cats…

Cats seem to confuzzle him. They are just a tad bit scary and sharp and loud and hissy. I wonder if he knows the cats kinda feel the same sort of uneasy about him?

Anyway. The sad is back. Was it ever gone? I guess not. I will need to fit art into tomorrow night…it’s much harder when the kids are here full time. I wonder how much art I would be doing now if I had been married all these years? It’s hard to say what life would have been like…it doesn’t really matter, I guess, because it didn’t work out that way. This is why you stop having expectations, I guess, because then the not-happening is so difficult. There is a fine line though between no expectations and no hope. That’s the line I’m walking at the moment.

Back to the art. Set goals. Aim for getting them done. The rest will come. Maybe some of the sad will wash down the drain while I’m doing that.