I Had Cement for Her…*

I cannot find my head. It’s lost in a book somewhere, or under a pile of things to be filed, or perhaps I left it in Google Docs where I’m apparently writing a story of my own (best to wish you aren’t in it). It could be on a soccer field with the girlchild’s flipflops or in the hotel room in Corona where I left my nail scissors (dammit). It’s not here, though. It’s not engaged in anything. It’s performing tasks as told, based on a list. I guess the list is logical: Keep working on getting the living room done. Keep working on getting the big quilt done (and then moving on to the next logical step in the quiltmaking process). Keep checking things off that are supposed to get done. Keep reading, just take up the next book in the pile or the one that’s due back to the library next or the one that has to be read before the next book club meeting.

I’m stressed. I know that. There are many things that I am juggling and I don’t feel good about it. There is no relief when one is done, when it is retired from the juggling horde. It seems every time I get rid of one, two take its place.

Where is the part of my life where I lie by the pool with a drink and birds chirping and a nice book in hand? Having an intelligent conversation with someone I enjoy? Feeling at peace with the world, content, happy with my lot in life?

Fuck me. I really suck at this.

I think I need to find more time for exercise, meditation, and drawing. Funny that. It’s vacation. I should have plenty of time. I know I don’t have any peace…not much at the moment. Even ironing tonight gave me fits…

So I didn’t do a lot of it. I’m hoping to do more tomorrow. Hopefully I will feel less tired and more successful at crossing things off my lists. This is part of a leg…a sorta crazy chaotic leg. It will make more sense when the stitching outlines the appropriate bits.

I think what I really need is a new life. Still. All year I’ve needed that. I keep trying to make one, but it just doesn’t work out. I think it’s because I’d just rather stay home and draw or read a book or make another quilt. Even those don’t make me feel good, though. It’s escapism. People are just not in my current life formula.

Escaping your own existence. Seems like a bad TV mini-series. I don’t have the clothes or makeup for that.

Girlchild tells me every time she sees the sign at the grocery store for the shingles vaccine, she reads it as “singles vaccine” and is confused. “Dammit,” I say…”I forgot to get that when I was younger. That’s the source of all my problems right there.” She tells me to shut up, but laughs as well. She doesn’t like it when depressed mom comes out, even when she comes out making jokes about herself…which honestly, is probably the best way to be at the moment. Sure it would be great to just magically slough off the depression, but failing that (and that does fail, by the way, don’t wiggle your pretty little nose at me and tell me how if I just SMILE, everything will be fucking perfect), this is better than the alternatives. Really. It is.

So. Today was the last day of the soccer showcase, driving up to Pomona yet again…

Girlchild stepped on a bee. Because she was barefoot. Because she left her flipflops way the freak over THERE and mom had to go get them. After the bee incident. And then there were tears.

Today was the day I finished two of these guys…

I think that means 11 out of 30 are done. Not great, considering these are from last year. Whatever.

I listened to 10 parents talk about their kids’ college plans. Poor girls. So much pressure. I try to minimize that. I gave birth to a stress monkey, so I tell her I know she will get in somewhere decent and she will be happy wherever she goes, and she freaks out about it, because her brother got into an Ivy and that means that’s what she wants. I don’t know if that will make her happy. I don’t think it would have made ME happy. Then again, I have such a vague memory of that emotion…when it touches me, that feeling, a reminder of that feeling, because I don’t have it now, it just hurts and I cry. I know a college wouldn’t have gotten me there. Hard to tell that to a teenager though. They basically don’t listen to a word you say.

I worked on these guys…

They are closer to done than they were. In fact, a couple of them are almost done.

I also finished this book…

in fact, if I had read less, I would have gotten those damn birds done, but my brain, it was in that bad place (spending three days dealing with soccer games, parents, and girlchild’s related moods will do that to you, unless you have a magical outlet, a rejuvenating place that brings you back to normal)…so I read instead. I’ve always been a Stephen King fan. He messes with his characters like no one else, and this detective story is good, although somewhat formulaic…King-style, though. I still really enjoyed it (and read it really fucking fast, so there).

I’m not sure reading horror is the best treatment for depression, but neither are rom-coms or YA books half the time either. Or 90% of what’s on the telly. I seem to do best with fantasy/sci fi, but even that’s a stretch sometimes. No books that remind me that at one time I had something approximating a life and now, well, now I don’t know what I have. It’s not really there, ethereal and sad, but insubstantial, feather-light in the hands. Whisks away before you can close your fingers on it. It’s not even real.

Cat puke. Laundry. Bills. Mold. Those are real.

Today’s blog title is brought to you by my favorite poet, writer, thinker ever…e.e. cummings…

Seriously. Reading him is the closest to happy I get at the moment.

Not Resolving Anything…

So. New Year. I hiked…geocached actually…for the first time. More about that later…but it was supposed to be for a few hours and turned into the whole day…something about getting lost, an impromptu climbing of a mountain, some bushwhacking, and a much longer hike than we expected…but all good in the long run. The pro of long hikes like that is that they mostly occupy my brain, especially one that required some higher levels of thinking (well, sort of)…the con is that I’m not getting any art or other life crap done when I’m out there. It’s a balancing act. I have stuff I need to get done. But my brain needs the space. I haven’t figured out the balance yet. Ever? I think I will never find the balance. The other con after a long hike like that is pure exhaustion…I couldn’t get my brain to deal with ironing until really late in the day…um, night actually…so I didn’t get much done. I will have to be better tomorrow.

Worth it for that tree alone…

And these…

And for long stretches of this…the mood was definitely improved today. It’s not a mistake that I drag myself outside on these hikes so much…it clears the webby dark bits of the brain. Meditation helps with that too…I had to come up with a question for today. I cycled through a bunch, couldn’t get the wording right, finally settled on “Why are you still sad?” because the counselor had asked me that too and I couldn’t answer, and today on the way back from the hike, my brain was doing weird shit with hope and crap, and I kept thinking to myself, saying to that PART of my brain actually, “What the FUCK are you thinking? Why does that seem like something GOOD to you? Are you a fucking idiot?” Um. Well. Since it’s my brain, I guess the answer is yes, I’m an idiot. Great. Still got some work to do (no duh…anyone who spends any time with me at all knows that).

Yeah. Well, tomorrow the boychild turns 18. I really shouldn’t call him the boychild any more, but manchild seems weird. I guess he will always be my boychild. Erg. That was sickly sweet. Anyway, presents and cake for the boy…and Mexican food (it’s what he wants). He finished all but one college application today, with the last one not due until January 9. That’s a relief…presumably for him as well. Now we wait. Sigh. And hope. I guess I can’t make him do yardwork tomorrow. He’s used the apps as his excuse for days (really?)…so I’ll give him one more day. Friday he can be Chore Man.

The question of the last 24 hours, everywhere I’ve gone, has been, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” Um. Yeah. Not going there. Not picking an inspirational word for the year either, and I’m not setting any more goals than the ones I’ve been carrying around in my head for the last 6 months. I’ve graduated beyond “survive” to something more like “live,” with some codicils. “Happy” might be next on the list, but I need instructions for that.

Part of my problem with getting to the ironing tonight was that I had only a little bit of this book to go, Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep…

Good book…not horror…more fantasy…a nice sequel to the Shining story, and well-written. The man can toy with your emotions. So I finished reading it first.

I’m still working my way through all the library holds that came in during the last two weeks…I’m staying caught up with all the due dates for now, but I have 4 more books that have to be finished in the next three weeks (some I only have 10 days left on the reserve). Then I can start to read some of the books I got for Christmas. Hopefully. Luckily, I enjoy reading.

After I finished, I finally started ironing at about 10 at night…I started on the Maiden…

She went together fairly quickly…

I’m not sure if she has fewer pieces than the Mother (I think so)…

I’m about 6 1/2 hours in, 670 pieces ironed. Another 6 hours to go? Something like that. I’ve been remarkably inefficient this vacation in terms of getting art done. Oh well. It will get done somehow.

There. I resolve to get this quilt done. Soon. In time for the deadline. Easy peasy. Then I’ll do the next one. And the next one. And in between, I’ll go on hikes. Or to the gym. Does not sound hard. For now? I resolve to go to sleep…

Reading as an Escape

I love summer for the time to read. I read fast and I read a lot. The best books are big hulking tomes over 800 pages. I read a fairly wide variety of stuff, although rarely nonfiction. Going through this summer, I think the only thing that has calmed my brain’s overactivity has been reading (and even then, sometimes the book failed). This is the last three weeks of books (I’m also on Goodreads, which I think posts to the right sidebar, although on mobile devices you won’t see that). These have been a real escape for me. When my brain goes on overload, I read. When I can’t fall asleep, I read. I read at the gym. I read as I’m eating yet another meal alone. When school starts, I have less time to read, but I will still do it…

First there was Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art by Christopher Moore.

I had checked this book out months ago, but then didn’t have time to read it (my job!). I loved this book, but I have a big art background and I think that helps. It’s a little out there, but I was highly amused and entertained by it.

Then I read Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

I also loved this book, about climate change and the Monarch butterflies. Then again, I love all her books.

I picked this book up at Powell’s Books in Portland last month, but hadn’t read it yet. This is Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne.

I chose it for the cover, obviously, but I realized as I was reading that I had seen this movie a while ago. The book was OK…it got a little annoying at parts, but so do teenagers, and that’s what it was about. There seemed to be way more words than were needed to tell the story.

On the same trip, I picked up Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay by Stephen King.

This was interesting because it was actually a screenplay with directions and everything. The story itself was OK…considering it was meant to be a miniseries and never existed as a book, it was OK.

Then I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Yes, I know it’s a movie too, but I haven’t seen it. I almost didn’t read this one, because I knew it would have sad parts, and maybe that’s not such a good idea at the moment, but it was a good story and I liked it.

Then I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

You may start to think that I like everything. I liked this, and there’s a 2nd book coming out about the same characters. It’s kind of more of a kids’ book (even though it’s marketed to adults)…it’s a little quirky, for sure.

My dad hiked the whole Pacific Crest Trail some years back, and I’ve hiked short bits of it, so I wanted to read Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, about her crazy-ass trip on the PCT.

It was an interesting book. She’s kind of a whiner and not particularly smart (at least about trails and hiking), but she does survive it (and she’s writing this about it years later). This was the only nonfiction book of the bunch.

Then I realized the second book in the Ashfall series was out, Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin.

I really really liked Ashfall. I only liked Ashen Winter. There were some unbelievable things (I know, when you look at what I read, there are LOTS of unbelievable things, but this was really over the top) and a little too much drama, but I think this is a YA book, so that’s pretty standard. I suspect there will be a third book, but maybe not.

I haven’t stopped reading…I just thought I should catch up on all these, because I hadn’t been posting about them when I finished, like I normally do. Maybe I’ll get back into the habit now.