Buried in Fiber

It’s OK. I did art stuff tonight. I probably should have gone to bed earlier instead, but…I wonder which will prolong my life more? More sleep or more art? I’m voting for the latter. Trying to balance the two, but really? The art is more calming. Sleep isn’t restful. It’s full of bad dreams and nasty sad. I’d rather be playing with fabric. I started cutting out flower parts…

which is complicated by the fact that there are wool parts of flowers and cotton parts of flowers, so I’m cutting all the wool first, and then I’ll find cotton that works with it, since I have a fairly limited stash of wools and a vast stash of cottons. I made it through almost all the flowers…at least the wool parts…and there’s a squirrel and a bunny in there too.

I need to figure out the banners and all the cotton bits. There’s not a lot left…maybe tomorrow night? Except financial aid is still a mess and school stuff needs to get done too.

I stitched at soccer…

I forgot to take pictures of the girlchild playing. He played her tonight, for real. That’s good. She did well. They won. Another game Thursday. It’s kind of a routine now…two games a week, one Academic League match a week. I keep having to remind myself what day it is…do I bring my stitching to school? Do I bring my Uggs and sweatshirt to school? Will I have time to go home first? Too much thinking. My brain isn’t good at thinking any more. It’s obsessive about the bad stuff, runs over and over it, trying to make sense of it, having conversations with myself. But give it a real task? Yikes. It’s done.

I went to the gym. I meditated. I finished two books…The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon…

who is only 22 years old. This is her debut novel, the first of seven in the series. It’s called a supernatural dystopia, and definitely has sci fi overtones, whatever that means. I liked the idea and most of the book, but kept getting lost in vocabulary and this foreign race, the Rephaim, and some other race, the Emim, which sometimes didn’t make sense. Plus the setup of clairvoyant levels is supremely complicated. But it has promise…I would read another one.

The second book I finished was Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke…

Yes. This is a kids’ graphic novel. A group I’m in has a graphic novel/comics book club, and I have never been to the meetings, but thought I could try to read the books at least, and maybe someday swing one of the meetings. I had a hard time with this book…not because it’s written to a younger audience, but because I got confused by events in the story. Plus I honestly didn’t like Zita much…she’s kind of an annoying squirrel, to use a term I use on some of my students. I don’t know if this book would appeal more to a younger audience, like a late elementary age? Maybe. I do have the second book as well. I did like the giant mouse and the round monster thing, and the spider robots were cool (even though they are evil). It was kind of an eh.

Kind of like my life. Eh. Which means it’s probably time to go to sleep. The later it gets, the sadder I get. I did find another hike for the weekend, I think. I actually found two, signed up for one reluctantly, then found the other one and switched. Seems like with the three-day weekend it would be lame not to go on a long hike…so that’s what I aimed for in my planning.

Ugh. I’m hoping with more regular influxes of art activity the days won’t feel so shitty. We’ll see. I’m tired of the shitty feeling. I keep doing things to improve my mood, trying to think positively about my future. Yeah. Well. The fun thing about depression is that it makes it very hard to think positively about anything, and when past experience is slapping you upside the face, pulling your feet out of the mud long enough to even Stand the Fuck Up and Go Make Art is difficult. I can’t be that depressoid who does nothing but sleep. I can mope and iron fabric at the same time if I have to. There’s some chance of surviving this if I keep my hands buried in fiber.

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.

Emotional Sine Wave

I have another post I have mostly written, but I don’t feel like finishing it tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Today was a numb day. I went to the gym. I managed grocery shopping (sort of a miracle these days…I forgot my reusable bags…again…the world will die because of all the plastic they gave me today). I went to one of my art group meetings (I forgot the quilt I was supposed to deliver for a new show, so I went back for that…didn’t get too far, luckily, and then I forgot the checkbook to pay my dues). Numb apparently equals forgetful.

It really does. I am so forgetful now…hence all the post-its and the calendar reminders…otherwise I’d forget my brain. Some days I don’t even know what day it is. I don’t know what month it is…I wrote a check earlier and dated it October 2013. What the hell? It’s like I’ve had some sort of stroke. My brain doesn’t like to remember stuff at the moment, so it chooses to tune out of everything. Hello, brain…feel free to join us here any time. I don’t think it’s going to get better without your involvement. Really. I know it sucks and all, but this is what we’ve got.

I finished a book, M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans…

It was a gift from my UK family. It’s her first book, about a lighthouse operator in the early 1900s in Australia. It was good; I enjoyed it, even though it was tinged with sadness.

I worked on the third bird of Month 2…

Thought I had finished it, but turns out I was supposed to sew in the moon as well…so I started that but didn’t finish. I sewed in the car on the way up and during the meeting; it was dark on the way back down. I’ll finish it at Tuesday’s soccer game and then start on Month 3’s embellishments. Very exciting stuff. The stitching itself is relaxing. I manage to stop grinding my teeth when I’m stitching mostly. The rest of the time, grind away. I have to consciously make myself stop holding my jaw like the world is ending around me.

Still too many things on the to-do list. Started my taxes because the W-2 finally showed up and I need that for the financial aid, finished the journal for Earth Stories and got it ready to ship, along with a bunch of other stuff I have to mail. Made a new to-do list. Boychild had one college interview today, so I ironed his clothes for him. He commented that men’s button-down shirts are not made for men with long hair. Never thought of that. He has another interview next weekend. I guess it’s good that he made it past the first pass…or maybe they interview everyone. Who knows. It’s all new for him, having to talk to strangers about himself, trying to sell himself, trying not to get annoyed by stupid questions…or at least not to SHOW irritation. I feel for him, but am excited by his having to deal, to manage, to grow up. He’s a good kid…man.

Came home and girlchild had made dinner, which is always nice. She hurricaned the kitchen (yes, that is a verb now) as well, but I needed to catch up on dishwashing anyway, so it was motivation to do so. All these tasks take away from artmaking time, of course. It was pretty late before I started my lesson planning for this week…well, I did most of it last year. I’m not deviating much…can’t handle that on top of everything else. I signed up for two more hikes. I need more outside time…more physical in nature time. More open space with fresh air and sweat and exertion and letting the toxic shit in my head float away into the sky while I stomp along a dirt path.

Two of my quilts are in a California Fibers exhibit at Soka University in Aliso Viejo through May 8…the opening is this Thursday from 5:30-7:45. The weird time is because there is a performance at the university right after that, so this takes advantage of that. I won’t be able to make it up there, unfortunately, but it apparently is a really nice show (that is only open Monday-Friday). I’m hoping to go up during Spring Break, I think. We’ll see. Earth Mother is there…

As is Untied…

Both normally hang in my house.

Then next week, I have one quilt in another California Fibers show in Ojai, California, at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts…Here is hanging there…

ha ha ha. Here is hanging There. That’s funny. OK, not really. It will be there through March 30. There’s word that there may be an artist’s panel with some of us on March 30. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to that, but other artists will be there.

There are three California Fibers’ shows opening in January and February…this was a great group to join to get into shows. All three have been juried, so you still have to have good work that people want, but instead of pulling from 700 people for a show with 40 pieces, they’re pulling from a group of 30. California Fibers is a juried group and the membership call is coming up in April. If you live in Southern California, are willing to commit to 4 meetings a year in Oceanside, and work in anything that qualifies as fibers, you might consider it. Check out the website and contact the membership person.

The other art group I’m a member of is doing a 2-month exhibit in September/October about the border fence. I’m in a subcommittee (I didn’t commit to leading anything…see notes about forgetfulness above) that will be doing some sort of cross-border quilt/fabric construction. This group works completely differently than the other group…but they both are trying to be actively in exhibits and marketing themselves. It’s good, because I feel like my local SAQA group has become less active, even though we had a decent show last month that will be traveling to Georgia in March. We used to meet more down here in San Diego, and now there seem to be very few meetings down here.

If this is my life, if art is my focus, if art is the thing I have right now, then I might as well make it a regular thing. I’ve been looking at life-drawing classes as well, although then I need to balance exercise and hiking and art, because they all seem to want to happen at the same time. But if I can do it once a month, that doesn’t seem like a bad thing. I miss life drawing. Yes, I miss sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench for hours staring at a naked person and trying to make my drawing look like what’s in front of me. Sounds crazy. It’s a different head space though…not a bad one.

Anyway, I didn’t get to start on even thinking about real artmaking until about 10:30 tonight…and then it was a decision of What Next? I could draw, I could clean off the light table and set it up for tracing the next quilt, I could stitch down the smaller quilt that’s hanging in my office. I decided to finish cutting out all the pieces for the Ivy Memorial Quilt…

They’re freezer paper, not Wonder Under…yes, new and different. The quilt is mostly wool fabrics (or will be, since it currently doesn’t exist) with cotton fabric accents, and then there will be embroidery like you see on the bird blocks I’ve been doing. It’s not something I really expect to exhibit…I just want to hang it in the house, like above a doorway, so it’s wide but not high. Ivy died in May 2012 of liver cancer at the age of 6. For some reason, it was significantly more difficult to deal with her death, probably because of her young age and it happened really quickly. I guess I don’t deal well with unexpected bad stuff. Anyway, now that all the pieces are trimmed, I could start picking wool fabrics and ironing freezer paper to them…maybe tomorrow night.

I wonder if these numb forgetful days are an aftershock to the highly emotional days. I think I’m on some sort of emotional sine wave, up and down on some regular rhythm, somehow controlled by hormones or amount of sleep or exercise or something else I don’t understand (or a combination of all of those). It’s super super low and then I hit numbness…I don’t ever really get to the high point, though. It’s just less painful than some other days. Maybe the numb days are when I get enough of some combination of sleep and exercise and interaction with humans who give a shit. It’s hard to say. I have people say to me all the time, Hey, I read your blog, and then I’m like, well then you know I’m not having any fun with all this. I don’t know what to say to that. Well, then you know I’m a giant pile of depression and awful. Well, then, I guess you know that I was crying yesterday, I’ll be crying today, and tomorrow? On the menu is crying. I guess that’s OK. You won’t have particularly high expectations of me then, will you. You’ll know I can make good art but I can’t remember anything and I’m likely to dissolve into a pile of saltwater if you bring up anything that I find troubling…like really anything. Sigh.

Who the hell is googling my age, by the way? I’m 46, people. I’ll be 47 in a couple of months. I don’t know why it’s relevant. Feel free to just ask.

OK, taking the sine wave to bed…maybe I’m still on the way up…

I Need Better Shoes…

If I’m going to hang out at art openings, I will need better shoes. I may need a personality transplant as well, one that smiles and chats at the appropriate times. I also need to be much less judgmental, both of the art and the art wannabes; the fake is strong here.

That said, I did force myself to be among the living…

and had a reasonably intelligent conversation with, of all people, another middle-school teacher who volunteers for the group that was raising money at this function. The group is 1:1 Movement, which is working on educating kids about sustainability and conservation. One of the things they do is give a plastic recyclable bag to each kid in a classroom and ask them to collect everything they would normally throw away for a whole week, and then they come back and look at what’s in the bag. The woman I talked to started saying all these things my students say about losing stuff, papers they got the day before, the pencil they brought to school…I hear you sister. They will come out to our school and talk to the kids…gonna see whether I can pull this off.

It wasn’t what I expected when I went…but I wasn’t really paying attention properly. They invited local artists to paint the recyclable bags they give the kids…

And then they auctioned them off to the highest bidder…

The money went to buy more bags for kids.

I don’t have any money to spare at the moment. So I bid on nothing. I did start to walk out (way too many people that I didn’t know), and then stopped. I bought a jar of wine (drinks came in jars, which meant I spilt), and then went and sat down in sort of the center of things, OK, not the center, but there were still lots of people around me…

And I did actually talk to about three whole people, one about my shitty camera (he had the same one and the same problem with the stupid lens covering…piece of shit!), one about the project itself (she was obviously an extrovert), and one about tamales. I know. I’m not an expert, but I did know where they were (observant tendencies).

Mostly I just sat and listened to other people do artspeak and anti-artspeak and wow, I’m old here, aren’t I? And I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people. Sigh. So I people-watched and checked out shoes and clothes and who was walking around with whom and what they looked at and didn’t look at. But I stayed for at least 45 minutes. And I’m glad I had the conversation with the other teacher, because I will look into bringing them on my campus. I think it would do my students good to think more about what they waste…it frustrates me no end. Breaking pencils so they can throw lead at other students, picking up 5 pieces of white paper instead of 1 because they think they’re entitled to do so (I buy my own paper about half the year), losing assignments they picked up the day before, never having a pencil or lead.

Anyway. I did it. I went. It was OK.

I went to Road to California in the morning and afternoon with Julie and my mom…I will have to find time to write that post. It’s long and complicated.

The morning looked like this…

Actually, it was much prettier than that, but the camera is not being my friend.

I stitched in the car on the way up and back. I always expect to get so much done, but even with about 3 hours in the car, I only finished two of the blocks and got a bit into the third…and the first of the two I finished was really almost done.

I have done a lot of Pekinese stitch in the last few days. The bottom two are done (I could embellish them a lot more, but would never finish at that rate). The top right one will get finished in the car tomorrow (yet another drive for art-related activities).

And then when I got home, I needed to decide how to spend my evening. I needed to find something that would help my mood, rather than make it worse. I’ve had a bunch of drawings wandering my head for weeks, so I sat down and drew…

It’s not done. Yes, it’s a bit disturbing. It will get more so, once I add another page to the left. Such is my brain.

OK, tired, exhausted. Really. That is the second time I’ve drawn a gun. It is the third time I’ve drawn tsunami waves. It’s not done.

Hitting Me Over the Head…

So when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is holy god how can I just go back to sleep and stay there until everything feels better, not because you’re tired or sick but because you just don’t feel like you can negotiate all the interactions of the day or even the noise level, because it’s quiet now in the classroom and dark, but the gates open in maybe 3 minutes and then you have to deal…when that’s how it feels when you wake up, then there is not a lot of hope for the next 7 hours.

And yet. I dealt. Because I have to. Because when it’s hard, you deal. Or you don’t and people around you have to suffer because you don’t deal.

I’m really NOT in a good place tonight. I tried to be. I crossed off like 6 things off my list (my lime-green post-it note from hell). I resized things and signed things and scanned things and dropboxed things (most of those aren’t really verbs, but I don’t fucking care…language is there for me to manipulate it). I signed the girlchild up for her SAT and the boychild and I assigned her 4 colleges…she is looking at veterinarian/zoology and writing, and now he is looking at law, even federal stuff. Wacky. I don’t even know what to think about their futures, except…hell…they are THEIR futures and I am simply here to sign papers and fill in financial aid forms and Paypal them when they need it.

I just want them to be happy. The one thing their mom failed at so far, I want them to have that. I don’t care what they do. I don’t care what their fucking grades are. I just want them to get to happy.

I’d like to get there too, but I hold out less hope for that. I was able to describe to the counselor what happy looked like; yes, I still remember it. She says I don’t think I can be happy again. It’s definitely hard to imagine, especially after tonight’s meditation, which was a giant pile of cry. I don’t know why. I never know why. He says if you can’t find your overriding emotion, then to look for clues. Seriously? My overriding emotion for the last 6+ months? Sad. Grief. Crying. It’s there every fucking day. Sometimes it’s low level and I’m like barely touched by it, barely touched by anything, numb honestly. Then there are days when I am on the verge of tears all fucking day long (today) and finally I just lose it during meditation and cry for 40 minutes straight. Just crying. That just sucks. It just sucks all your energy out and stuffs your damn nose up and makes your head feel like it’s going to float away on a sea of saltwater shit.

Seriously. I could do without that. He asks, Mr. Meditation, is it heavy or light (the visualization)? It’s fucking sad, you asshole. Is it spacious or restricting? It’s just fucking sad. There’s nothing light or spacious about sad. It’s suffocating. It’s heavy. It drags you down into deep sucky mud and makes it so you can’t breathe or stop crying or see straight. Do I feel stillness or restlessness? I don’t even know. Be clear about how you’re feeling without judging it. I’m clear. This is fucking sad. I don’t judge it. It just fucking is. It may never go away. That’s what it feels like tonight, like suckers attached to your chest and they will never fucking let go.

I’m sure that will be better tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or Monday. In 2021. Whatever. Fuck you.

I was listening to NPR before counseling and they were talking to an author, Jennifer Senior, who wrote a book about parenting and children called All Joy and No Fun. The author talked about how women (in general) have a running ticker tape of concerns going through their heads. Men compartmentalize and can put concerns away at work. I don’t know if that’s true. I haven’t been with the parent of my children for long enough that it seems irrelevant to analyze how we deal with the kids…because we aren’t really a team. When the boychild and I were trying to decide if I was a single mom, like the legal definition, well, no I’m not. I have an ex who has joint custody and pays money, but I do almost everything that is kid-related with virtually no support. I can’t imagine having support, having a team supporting the kids. I wanted that, but fuck all, when do I get what I want? I don’t know. I’ll let you know. I do all the SATs and ACTs and college apps and FAFSA and interviews and all this shit. I get very little help. I would have liked to have help. I would have liked to have had a team to deal with all this. I would have liked support, empathy, help.

I must have done something very very wrong to be in this space right now.

Or I just feel that way.

Yes, it’s a bad place. It’s OK. I’m sure it will be better tomorrow. Or the next day. You really just get to this point where you push yourself into bed and sleep and hope when you wake up that it doesn’t feel the way it did yesterday.

And if it does, you do it again. And pick up a pen or a needle or some fabric, and hope to god that it doesn’t ever feel like that again.

I dehaired and packed yet another quilt for a show that’s opening in two weeks in Ojai…

I’m delivering it Sunday. Busy weekend.

The new Sue Spargo BOM? We’re not allowed to post finished or in-process blocks on blogs, because people were copying them instead of buying her patterns, so I guess for the next year-plus all you will see is supreme details and materials…here’s the materials for Month 1.

I am so not ready to even start Month 1. First I have to get the embellishment done on last-year’s quilt Months 2-12. Minor issue. Packed up a bunch of stuff for tomorrow’s drive. Maybe I will get through Month 2…or even start Month 3. Who the fuck cares. It just occupies the part of my brain that likes to move thread around with needles. It’s not the savior to my sanity.

The sleepover got canceled, by the way…thank god, because I was in no sane frame of mind. I decided to keep cutting out the freezer paper pieces for the Ivy Memorial quilt, started last year and abandoned.

This is an interesting quilt in that it is mostly wool with cotton bits and pieces, with plans for lots of thread embellishment, so sort of a clash (clash?) between the Sue Spargo wool world and Kathy’s art world. I have no idea what will actually come of it…but I just wanted something to acknowledge Ivy’s existence on the planet. It’s never easy when things/organisms/people die too early. It just feels wrong and makes you obsess and drags you down.

So maybe this quilt will help me move on to a new dog. Who knows. I can’t afford a new dog.

I listened to this in the morning…

it helped. Maybe. Briefly. Hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer also might help.

Past the Deadlines…(sort of)

I practiced meditation at school again today. In class. While teaching. Well, supervising independent work today. We do that. I also practiced a feminist rant…OK, I didn’t practice it…I just did it. Sometimes I think the kids need to see that…plus the kid saying that men were better at everything than women were kinda got my goat. It’s OK…I kinda did it as a gospel moment; I think I even hallelujahed. The girls appreciated it and some of the boys did too (although most were probably frightened). I don’t just teach science, people…

I taught. I breathed deep (actually not so deep…it’s either the allergies I technically don’t have or something pretending to be sick). I went to the emergency union meeting and took notes. I went to the girlchild’s soccer game where the asshole coach (oops, did I say that out loud) wouldn’t play her (long story…it’s finals week and she chose academics over soccer). I went to the gym and read an entire book (it was a graphic novel…they are a quick read). I prepped tomorrow night’s dinner, which now has to stretch to feed 7 instead of 3 (one of which is a hungry teenaged boy). I cleaned a bit, because apparently now there is a sleepover at my house tomorrow night (I wonder if they will mind my tracing Wonder Under on the giant-ass light table while they watch bad TV and gossip late into the night…yeah, I know. I will probably have to give up my Friday night plans).

I ate dinner super late. I picked TV that I should not be watching in the mood I’m in. As always, I don’t know what governs the moods. Is it being tired? Is it work frustration? Is it a chemical imbalance in my brain? Who the fuck knows.

At the soccer game, I almost finished this guy…

It was dark, though, and I was trying to do Pekinese stitch on top of the blue things and largely failing (I got one done), so I stopped. Some schools have crappy stadium lights.

I am definitely beyond trying to predict how many games it takes to finish any of these. I will have time in cars on Saturday and Sunday, though. I could potentially finish quite a lot. Maybe. It doesn’t really matter. They just are fun to do…the embroidery stitches are interesting. Sometimes even relaxing (minorly).

The book I finished is the graphic-novel adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children…

(real book on the left, graphic adaptation on the right)

I read the book last year and really liked it. The graphic novel was eh. The art didn’t move me. I felt like the story was chopped up by the pictures. I had a better imagination while just reading the words (there are a few photographs in the original book).

Like I said in my review on GoodReads, I need a graphic adaptation (or a movie, for that point) to ADD to the fiction, and they rarely do. Mostly they just mess with the images I had in my head.

I do have a plan for tomorrow night’s artmaking. Actually, I will need to do some more of the crossing-off the post-it-note crap. I crossed off two things today (woo hoo!). I know. It’s amazing. So maybe I can cross a few more off tomorrow. And I do have another quilt top in here that I could work on. In fact, I think there’s another QUILT in here that has been pinbasted for like 3 years. I obviously care a lot about it. So there’s no shortage of stuff to be done. It just feels better to start something new sometimes…to have that sense of excitement (pretty toned down in the current Kathy state) about new. Different. Moving on.

So I numbered the big quilt…

It’s about 350 pieces. That’s tiny. I mean, the quilt itself is good-sized…it just doesn’t have a lot of pieces.

By the way, I got my evaluation back from Road to California…shockingly, the uterus quilt did NOT win an award (I am so shocked…I’m still minorly amazed that it even got in), but the comments were interesting…they said it could use more quilting (I know KPM did not say that…), which is par for the course when you put an art quilt in a semi-traditional show (Road embraces art quilts…but there are still traditional judges), but they did say the imagery was interesting and the storytelling was effective. Nice to know. I guess. It’s been so long since a quilt of mine has been judged like that…they always say not enough quilting. Whatever.

Anyway. I’ll be up there on Saturday to see the ones that DID win awards and have enough quilting. People, if I wanted to quilt the body parts, I would, but then they wouldn’t pop out so much.

Then I thought I should probably pick one of the smaller ones too, and I had a real hard time with that, because nothing was really reaching out and grabbing me, so I just picked the smallest one, which is also breast-related (I’m on a roll), but is only about 10″ square…

It has 150 pieces or so in it. I don’t know when I’ll get back to working on these…it kind of depends on what I end up doing tomorrow night…what I feel like doing. I kinda feel like going with my mood, with whatever makes me feel better, more at peace, is totally the way to go with my art at the moment. I’ve spent the last 6 months really getting through some have-to’s as far as my art is concerned. I had what I originally thought was four pieces that had to be done by deadlines (actually 6, if I count the two small ones), and so it’s been All Deadlines, All the Time for an awfully long time… maybe I should give myself a break for a while. I’m thinking I can work on whatever I want until Spring Break (which is late this year, mid-April), and by then, I should have a drawing for the next invitational quilt that has to be done in November and another big piece for the summer…not as crazy as the Earth Stories one, but one that is impactful and strong and meaningful and will celebrate me, the artist, next summer. I feel like I’m going to need some of that Me Celebration by then. Maybe. Who knows. It will probably still be painful and emotional and full of sturm und drang, but it will be mine.

Wow. That sounded almost hopeful and maybe even a bit I am woman, hear me roar. So much better than the godawful mood I was in earlier. It’s silly that something as mundane as numbering two drawings can be mood-altering…at least minorly. I really should just quit my job and make art full time. (ha. like that’s an option) I should probably finish crossing things off the post-it note list before I abandon all deadlines, though. Yeah. Gotta be a little bit responsible.

Making the Wrinkles…

My eyes are aging. It’s harder to see, but beyond that, the last 6 months have made my eyes LOOK older. I have all these sad wrinkles under my eyes that weren’t there before. I drew them in the Celebrating Silver quilt. I remember not having those wrinkles 6 months ago. Now they are all I see. I don’t really care about wrinkles…some people are very vain about their appearance and I’m really not. But the wrinkles disturbed me. I draw the things that disturb me. You may have noticed. I’ve had three drawings present themselves in my brain in the last three days. I took notes on the images and will maybe draw this week? What a concept. I delivered three quilts to the photographer early this afternoon…he will hopefully call tomorrow about pickup; if not, it will be Wednesday for me. I think. Maybe Tuesday? Can’t remember my schedule. But it’s a good thing.

Then I went to a meeting of one of the art groups I belong to. It took place in a dessert bar next to a gallery space where we will have a performance art/exhibit going on for two months in the fall about the border fence. Being so close to Mexico brings up ideas of crossing borders and what that looks like. I’m having issues visualizing my participation in this project, just because it’s not my normal subject matter and what I do doesn’t necessarily translate to the process they’re suggesting, but I will let me brain run with it for a while. I didn’t volunteer to be a committee leader, because I don’t have the mental energy or the time, but I will be involved somehow. Maybe I will just let someone else tell me what to do instead of having to be in charge.

A high-school friend came to dinner at my parents’ house; girlchild cooked a great meal and we had time to talk. I worked on these at the meeting and before dinner, and finally finished the first month’s squares…

It always takes longer than you think it should. I think they still need eyeball buttons, but that’s it. I did start the embellishment on the second month as well…actually, I had already done the beige background stitching on them. Anyway, there’s only one soccer game this week because the kids have finals, and I’m not even sure I am going to that game…there’s a meeting I think I have to go to…cannot be three places at once…no matter how much I try.

Grades? Well, I worked on them last night for a while and again tonight. I’m actually further ahead than I expected to be at this point, so that’s good. I also worked on the journal I need to finish for Earth Stories…it’s getting closer to done, despite Word’s attempts to mess with me via formatting and whatever crap Google Docs seems to have embedded in the original file. I know this stuff should be easier, but it’s not today.

Tomorrow, I will finish grades (which might take hours honestly), label the quilt that needs to be delivered this week, find and pack up the quilt that needs to be delivered next week, possibly pack up the quilts that need to be shipped and maybe even ship them…can’t ship the notebook with them anyway. Might as well get them out of here. There’s other paperwork I need to get through as well, and then financial aid stuff really does have to get done.

But I don’t want to go from art every day to no art at all. I know how bad that feels and I don’t want to let my mood get any worse…it was bloody awful this morning and it was just stupid stuff that set me off, got me crying in the grocery store and not just a little bit, and then I couldn’t get it under control, and there’s only so long you can stare at the Brussels sprouts with your head down so your hair blocks any view of your eyes, trying to get the tears to stop coming. I don’t get it. It’s like automatic sprinklers. Maybe it’s some sort of mental let down from finishing the quilts, from the stress of trying to get them done. Maybe it’s because the Brussels sprouts were in such bad shape. Who knows.

So I could have kept grading for another hour tonight, but I made myself stop and I started taping the smaller drawings together again…

I have 10 taped together and another 10 or so to do. Yes, that’s a lot. They’re small. It’s kind of crazy, actually, but I wasn’t capable of deciding what to do next when I copied them. I just went through about 3 or 4 of the smaller sketchbooks I’ve used over the last 4 years or so and marked the ones I liked or that I thought were good candidates. The problem is that the smaller drawings seem less serious to me, less about something, less issue-driven. Most of them happened while waiting for a movie to start or sitting in a coffee house or waiting for dinner. They didn’t have a specific purpose, no image came to mind beforehand, they are literally brain vomit. And sometimes it’s related to where I was or what I was doing before or after, but mostly they’re just random. So how do I pick one? I feel like it needs to have meaning. I don’t know why I feel that way. It seems like my life is such a crazy mess that at least my art has to mean something, to have a purpose, to have a message. And I don’t know if any of these small drawings has a good enough message. Plus they’re kind of painful to look at, because they are reminders of a life I don’t have any more. So that kind of sucks.

Sigh. I wanted to do a smaller one (or two) before starting the next big one, but maybe I just need to suck it up and go big again.

I think I’ll tape up the rest of them and then make a decision…probably not until tomorrow night or Tuesday even. I really do need to get grades done first. Damn job. Gets in the way of the art. I should do something about that (like win the lottery and become financially independent so I don’t have to go to work any more? Yeah, like that).

OK. I am really tired. Sleep. Hopefully sleep. Maybe it’s that lack of sleep thing that’s making the wrinkles…

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).

I’m Not Very Magical at the Moment…

Things I said to my sewing machine today (and yes, you’re allowed to say, “Well at least you’re talking to your sewing machine today.” True that.):

1. Why do you have to be such an asshole? Why can’t you just TELL me when you’re going to run out of thread instead of continuing to sew along like a happy jerkwad?

2. Why do you hate me so much?

3. Why can’t you go faster?

I finished stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt top today…it took 5 hours total, with 4 of them done today.

This is what it looked like before it started…Babygirl was not thrilled about my messing with her sunny spot. I started in the morning after I took my car in for what should have been a simple oil change and turned into a brake job…luckily, my parents could pick me up and bring me back home in between. So I stitched until the first kid got home (minimum day),

then sent him off to get the second kid…then she needed a ride somewhere (she thought she could have the other car, but it was now the ONLY car, so she had to give it up to mom)…so I dropped her somewhere, came back, got the boychild, drove to get my car…

(No, Calli, you are NOT helping)…waited for a while…my car guy is nice but very thorough.

Girlchild texted me for her pickup during my wait at the car place, so I told her to call boychild, who then apparently had to drop off three other teenaged girls (so glad it was not me)…

Which he complained about. Because? Anyway, by the time he got back, I was home and stitching again. I stitched until I had to leave to watch the boychild’s Academic League meet…

He’s on the far left…this picture shows the back of their official shirts. It’s true, too…there were two questions on Mamma Mia! of all things. It was the only musical they knew, besides Cats!. Everything has exclamation marks.

I love how little I know when I go to these things. I did get pseudopod right. They are all carefully listening to the question being read…or they are constipated. Hard to tell. The guy in the white sweatshirt never picked up his buzzer. The guy in the gray sweatshirt knew lots of really weird stuff and would answer before they even finished the question. The guy in orange is a freakin’ math genius. Boychild knows current events and literature, and often argues with Genius Boy about math and science.

I stitched bird feet while I was watching. I have finished 10 bird feet…

I have 50 to go. Seriously. But my goal of finishing 3 every 2 soccer games is so completely not happening. It it were, I would have finished the first 6 at last night’s game, and as you can see, I am nowhere near done. I did not calculate her actual playing time. I get more done when she doesn’t play or when it’s dark, because I can’t photograph in the dark. There’s another game tomorrow night…yes, that’s three in a week. Usually it’s two. This week has been a little crazy. I should finish some of the birds tomorrow night, but not enough of them to meet my crazy schedule. Oh well. Technically, they should have been completely done and sewn together, with the borders done, like a week ago. Uh huh. So there we are. Now I have two male parents at soccer games who are bugging me about the birds and quilting or knitting or whatever it is I’m doing. Freaks.

I came home and cooked and then sewed some more.

At some point, my back was really killing me. I stretched a little. I danced a little (this is really good for relaxing back muscles that have been held in the same tense position for too long). I sewed some more. At some point (OK, many points), I wanted to quit. This is like a marathon. You have to psych yourself into finishing.

And I did.

At some point, it’s just easier to finish than to think about doing more tomorrow.

The back is pretty exciting. It’s kind of ironic, because tomorrow I have to pinbaste it (kneeling on tile floor for at least an hour) and then start quilting (more back pain). And quilting will probably be at least 10-15 hours. Actually, the plus with this piece is that there is very little background to quilt…it’s mostly outlining the image, which will take a while but is not as labor intensive as the background stuff is. Or it’s not as boring. Not sure which. Anyway, my plan is to have it done Saturday. HA! No really. Don’t think about the other stuff that needs to get done in that time period. And yes, I still have a binding to finish on the other one, but I am going to call the photographer. I have faith. In something.

So you’d think I’d feel all good and stuff about getting one step closer to finishing. Mr. Meditation calls it fulfillment…yeah, I remember that feeling, sort of. Far away. I just really get a sense of panic, though, that then there will be unfilled time, time that is not focused on getting a project done that has to get done. I don’t like that. Work doesn’t give me a huge sense of fulfillment. Art sort of does at the moment…not really, though. It feels empty, meaningless on most days. My brain is more at peace when I do art stuff than on the days I don’t. I think it’s a better path towards a decent life than the work path. That’s why I’ve been prepping other quilts for the next stages. I need to have stuff in the pipeline so there’s no down time, time where my brain is all wandering and trying to find a purpose and trying to solve problems and be happy. I don’t know how to be happy at the moment. I would have to be better at acceptance, and I’m not. I mean, I do accept what my life is at the moment, but I don’t like it. And the depression just makes it harder to get through the days. It drags me down. Into a hole. I keep looking for art or books or comics or anything that will pull me out, push the depression back down, carry me out. I feel like I’m missing an instruction manual for the next step, like it’s something magical that no one can explain to me. First you do this and then that and then magic happens! And you get to be happy! That’s what it feels like. And I still cry every day. When does that go away? Is that magic too?

I’m not very magical at the moment.

And that was my chair and my sweatshirt. Now she’s actually sitting on my lap. She scratched the crap out of my face last night, blood everywhere (sounds worse than it looks today…puncture wounds…lovely kitty), but today she is my best friend apparently. Old ladies unite. Sigh.

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.