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.

Apparently Balanced

My brain is kind of drained at the moment. All the activities of the day have sucked out any relevant thoughts for now. I had plenty of them before. I’m not sure where they went. Maybe they got bored and wandered off.

It was a really busy day. I have duty before and after school for two weeks, which tends to suck up a lot of time and energy (morning duty at the tables? Makes me want to shoot myself. It’s early, I’m not really awake, it was bloody freezing this morning, and it’s all about picking up trash and their high energy vs my incredibly low energy at that hour and temperature…they win). We had a meeting about students, then I had tutorial after school, which is like herding peeing puppies who are constantly yapping and snapping at each other. I did manage to get work out of them today, though. Miraculous. It restores my faith every time they do that…I guess that’s why I can teach, because I constantly believe they can do it if I just work hard enough to persuade them to do it…and many of them DO. Freaky. We have meetings galore in the next two weeks to deal with kids and grades etc…which sucks up a lot of time too.

After school, I booked it to the girlchild’s soccer game. I’m actually glad I was only there for the last 27 minutes, because I almost froze in that short period of time, even though I remembered boots, two sweatshirts, and gloves (two sweatshirts were not enough). Plus I was trying to sew and had to take the gloves off. Mistake.

Home to make dinner…oh no, no you don’t…back to the ex’s house to retrieve Biology book and practice shorts while girlchild tries to get her head (and nauseous stomach) ready for tons of homework. She literally has tons of homework. Realized today that with ex gone for two weeks, I will have to provide dinner EVERY NIGHT. What the fuck? Shit. Not ready for that. Can barely manage what I’m doing now. Would let the girlchild cook, but she is buried in schoolwork. Need Meals on Wheels for busy working mom.

Made dinner, had argument (discussion? is it ever a discussion with two teenagers or is it always an argument?) about sexist portrayals in fiction. Read some examples. Confirmed sexism. Don’t know if I care…the books are good so far. Did grades for a while, then onto the bike for nightly exercise, followed by meditation aka crying and breathing. At the same time. A feat unknown to man? Well sure, but woman is pretty damn good at it. Then finally…49 minutes of cutting out pieces…

I’m only 3 1/2 hours in. I’m not getting much time at night at the moment. Sucks. Not home enough. Anyway, I’m doing it. The green? Lungs. Yup. Aren’t your lungs green with pink flowers? I’m sure mine are. There are some bitchy pieces to cut out in that bin. If I’m tired, I just cut out the easy pieces and leave the hard ones for when I’m more awake. I think I’m hoping cutting fairies will come by and do those. I guess that’s unlikely.

Busy. Tired. Telling the brain to fuck off. Half of my brain says one thing, thinking logically, making plans and decisions, seeing the Big Picture. The other half is a fucked-up mess and is just flailing around in emotional crap so deep it can’t get out. It wants to draw. I almost let it tonight, but then I saw how late it was. Need to sleep. Maybe I will have time to draw tomorrow night…I’ll be minus the tutorial, the soccer game, and the grading…or will I? Huh. But I will add the gym. Another time sucker, but definitely a good cause. Trying to just sit in the emotional half of the brain and let it do what it needs to do. Either I’ll understand it more or the emotions will be less of an issue. Or something. Meditation helps. Even when I sit there thinking about 1-2 1/2 hours spent every night meditating and exercising, I wonder if that’s sustainable…it has to be. If it keeps me sane, keeps me moving, keeps me calmer, it’s worth it. So just do it. My priorities have changed. More art, less school. Less work at home. More exercise. Meditate. Fewer people (that might not be a good thing). Apparently cry…that’s a daily thing. I could do without that one. Wonder if I ever will.

This morning, as I was updating some of the website, I was feeling all cranky about only getting into 7 exhibits in 2013, but then I realized that it was 8 exhibits, and I already have pieces in 4 shows in 2014 and 2014 hasn’t even started yet. So shut up, stupid brain. You’re doing fine. Stop being such a mope about stuff. Make the work. The shows will come. And if they don’t? You will still make the work. That’s the logical half talking to the emotional half. They don’t really get along at the moment. The logic is frustrated with the emotion, and the emotion thinks the logic doesn’t listen…because hey, most of the time it doesn’t.

Here’s a video Luana Rubin of eQuilter did of the SAQA exhibits at IQF Houston, including People and Portraits…

You can decide if that quilt is truly whimsical, or just plain old disturbing. Funny that it’s about being Fully Medicated, but I keep trying to get away from meds, and I keep having to take more. I should do one called Over Medicated, except I’m not. I have this Tshirt that says USDA Organic…which is ironic, because I’m not organic…I’m full of meds that keep my systems apparently balanced because my body doesn’t know how to, even though for half the ailments I have, I was told if I lost the weight, they would all go back to normal. Fucking liars. Well, the meds are supposed to keep everything balanced, but I don’t think I’m there yet…I’m freezing again. Under Medicated also might be fun to draw.

Apparently balanced: despite all the mindfucks that are going on at the moment, I seem to have found a balance between art and work that is somewhat functional: basically do very little grading at home. Do art every night. If there’s a question about how to use my time? Art wins. That’s sustainable. I hope.

The Expiration Date on the Milk Is All That Matters…

I only managed 9 1/2 minutes of ironing tonight…all I really have left is the owl…

I couldn’t get my head around his coloring tonight (I always think of owls as being male…strange, that), so I did the thorny bushes around the Crone’s head instead…

Red thorns…gray twigs. The box is almost full.

But I’m down to just a few pieces left to iron, maybe 25. Then it’s done and I move out of the studio into the living room to cut them all out. This quilt is progressing quickly. That’s because I have no life. Oh well. Actually, tonight, I pretended to have a life. I went to a book club meeting with total strangers. Yup. I did that. I should clarify that this group is for “geeky women” (their term) and so I wasn’t sure I belonged (I am always the alien, no matter the group). Girlchild said that because I spent over an hour worrying about whether I was a geek and googling definitions of geeks and nerds and dorks that I WAS in fact one and I should just shut up and join. Sigh. Anyway, the plus is that it’s a group of women who read A LOT and FAST, and I got about 400 book recommendations just tonight (plus TV and movies) and sat next to a woman who said something about listening to audiobooks while IRONING FABRIC and what are the odds? She does costumes, but where else do I go where that happens? (nowhere)

The book we read, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, was pretty good…it had its flaws, definitely light fiction, but I’ll read the next book in the series…

I still have questions and the character wasn’t horrible…she had issues, sure, but hell, so do I. There are some interesting characters and it’s not often you get urban fantasy AND mystery in one book.

Anyway. I ordered the next book for the January book club from the library system. And yeah? We met in a bar. Books and wine. You cannot go wrong. There was food too, but I didn’t have a lot of money. And good music, which was free.

This week is full of social events…tomorrow night is my favorite stitching people and I don’t want to talk about Friday night. Sigh. It can’t all be good. Sometimes it just has to be.

My right eyelid started twitching yesterday. I googled it (see geek reference above). I don’t know WHY I googled it…I already know what’s causing it: fatigue or stress. You know what’s interesting is that even though I am getting even less sleep than last year at this time, I’m often not tired. Weird. Some brain chemistry thing? You Don’t Really Need All That Sleep. I know that’s not true, but I still think it’s strange.

So yeah, eyelid is stress. I spent 2 1/2 hours at Children’s Hospital this morning with the girlchild and we are now taking the next step towards surgery, a CT scan. We think we can schedule surgery between the high-school soccer season and the beginning of the club season. Yes. That’s crazy. We’re also scheduling between the ACT and SAT. Really crazy. The doctor did answer all our questions and we trust him, though, so I’m hoping this is relatively easy.

At school, we are getting closer to the kids being 1:1 on technology…which is more than a little scary. What does it look like? What is the purpose of the technology? It can’t just be a toy we trot out to make admin happy…it has to serve a purpose within the content. So the thought of flipping how we do stuff in the classroom is sort of mind-boggling at the moment. My head is trying to wrap itself around it. So it was not at all amusing today when the server went down and we were on computers doing research all day, and I had to log in 22 kids in one period on a server they shouldn’t be on (don’t ask) and there were a lot of deep breaths and meditative thinking and seriously deep brain stuff about Is This Really What I Want to Do? This is what using technology is to me in the classroom right now: a management nightmare. I can’t even deal with content issues because the technology issues are so vast and varied and fucking frustrating. You always have to have a backup plan, because inevitably, something won’t work. And the kids may be digital natives, but they give up SO easily when stuff doesn’t work right the first time and they suck at LOOKING for stuff…like a tabbed menu on a website is apparently invisible to them. WHERE does it say CAUSES? I wonder. Key words. If I put them on Facebook, they could find it immediately, but the Mayo Clinic website? Completely incomprehensible. I’m thinking of rewriting the medical websites to LOOK like Facebook with status posts on some beautiful woman who has had a heart attack or has atherosclerosis, just so they will READ them, and then turn a bunch of it into Vines so they’ll watch all SIX seconds, and then only then maybe will we be getting somewhere. Training them to be observant. It can be extremely frustrating. I’ve gotten very good at it, and I kept my cool today (even after spending most of the morning at the hospital, where they were running an hour late). I blame the meditation. I can deal. My eyelid can’t deal, but the rest of me can. I have not found eyelid-specific meditation.

I just found all these Thanksgiving food pictures.

Girlchild cooked almost everything…

We had another family over, friends of ours that we’ve had Thanksgiving with for a million years…

The food was good; we played that silly word game we always play.

Everyone is getting older.

That was Wednesday (of course) and then Thursday, we went to their cabin for a spaghetti dinner (of course)…

Where there was more food (girlchild did desserts this time)…those are not just rice krispies treats…they are brown butter rice krispies treats. They make you want to curl up and die, they are so good. They are gourmet rice krispies treats. She has to really like you to make those. I rate.

And there was more talk and lots of Snapchat (not my generation…the younger).

That’s my mom and the girlchild. And it was relatively good. I still have issues with gatherings just because of my alien status…but these were people I had known for forever. They accept me. They are kind. So I’m working on it, not being a hermit. Coming out and not moping around. Some. It’s hard.

So I’m still distant, numb, probably not a bad place to be this week. I had a good book-related conversation with ten total strangers tonight and an even more focused book/fabric/life conversation with two of the women. I talked to both kids about future stuff and driving and cars and college and soccer and stupid people and whether or not I should let the girlchild take penne a la vodka to school (it does have alcohol in it, per se, although it is cooked off/down/something). I just thought about it and wondered…is this OK? Should I worry? Naw.

I would have liked more time for art, but such is life. Life and art…a balance. I can’t just have one. I need both. The art alone is very isolating, very lonely, very in my head. Sometimes I have to get out of that dark gloomy place and wander outside in the real world. I did cry, though. Still. That doesn’t seem to have wandered off. Strange. It’s still hard to exist in some moments. Lots of them still. I don’t know when that shifts…or perhaps it’s shifting so slowly that I can’t even see it.

To bed, eyelid twitching and all…tomorrow is another one of those days. From the book we read for book club tonight: “All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.” Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire.

Damn, I Wish That Were True…

I managed to go to bed at an almost reasonable hour last night, after a few nights of 1:30-2 AM bedtimes (which really doesn’t work when you have to be up at 6:30)…but then spent the next hour NOT sleeping, but crying instead. I tried meditative breathing…it must have eventually worked (or pure exhaustion did…who knows), but I don’t even really know what set me off…some sense of futility. All’s not right with the world. No real sense of purpose to the days. That plodding feeling. Get through this day? Then there’s another. And another. And another. And they are all largely the same. Getting through. Getting by. Making stuff, but none of it feels that good to make…I can’t iron fabrics for 18 hours a day. And the ironing never made me feel GOOD…it was at the end of the ironing, when you would see what you achieved and THAT would feel good. That only happens once a quilt. It’s not enough.

I don’t know how to BE…be happy with what I have and not want more. I want more but I don’t see it ever happening. I don’t even know what I want more of. I don’t hold out much hope for more. This might be it. It seems a very empty life. There are too many Have-To’s and not enough Want-To’s…mostly because I don’t have many wants any more. And then my brain kicks in and tells me I really should be cleaning house. Fuck you, Brain. If I wanted to clean house, I would. When I am already unhappy, why make me do something that makes me more unhappy?

I say that, but there were two floors today that needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. That’s how my cleaning works. It’s not obsessive. It happens in small spurts…out of necessity.

Today. Back to school. I’m thinking I need to make a voodoo doll. I got to a point with this one school issue where if I didn’t meditate, I would have to kill small furry things (not really, but that’s how it feels). The anger, the work stress, the unhappy…I just needed to focus and get it out of my system, so I used the meditation for that, and again, it asked the one question that upset me so much yesterday, and today I tried to change the answer…my brain tossed in another answer, a perfectly reasonable answer…honestly a BETTER answer, because yesterday’s answer was just plain stupid. And yeah. Crying again, because my brain and I don’t agree.

Who am I if I am not my brain?

Healing is such a fucking slow process. I can’t hurry it. I just have to go with it, move what I can, change what I can, do the things that make the day more bearable.

So I ironed…

I did not make the voodoo doll (or five)…yet. Give me time. Those are heart pieces and arteries. I managed to do those and some fire and a spider and web and a uterus and two tattoos and three thunderbolts…I stopped right before the lungs because I realized that even though I was not in the least bit tired (strange that), it was getting late. That was the problem last night…I went to bed and I wasn’t tired yet. I mean, I was sort of tired, but not tired enough to just fall asleep and not have to work at it. So my brain got itself tied in knots and took me underwater into the murk of melancholia. Fucking stupid brain.

I need more exercise I think. Traveling messed with my exercise plan.

So the stuff in color is what I got done…it’s not much, actually…

An eyeball.

It’s kind of pitiful. Oh well. I’m at 12 hours now…at least one more to go, maybe more.

Part of the evening got tied up with work prep and cooking and picking the girlchild up from soccer…

Pretty skies, every year. I stopped to appreciate the sky. Tomorrow, hopefully I will appreciate the sky from home, because girlchild is supposed to finally get her license (I will believe it when I see it). She’s been in a mood lately…stress from soccer and life and everything…so she snaps at me for just about anything, and I try not to react…because when I react now, it’s usually with tears, and that upsets her. Then again, she needs to learn not to always snap. She needs to see that her mood causes other people pain. Or maybe I am just super sensitive. I am.

One part of the meditation question that makes me cry is the reminder that her brother will be gone in less than a year to college, and she follows the year after. And then there is just me. And this little psycho…

Yup. There she is, on the ironing board. Pulled her off another 4 times tonight.

Then she landed on my lap (three times tonight, once during meditation, claws kneading my thighs the entire time, try concentrating with that going on…I have a mind of steel, really).

And finally she tried the back end approach to the ironing board while I was working…she eventually ended up on the back of the chair with front legs on the purple fabric until I jiggled the board a few too many times and she gave up.

Mr. Meditation wants me to appreciate things, be grateful. I’m grateful to my ex for putting up my Xmas lights, even though we have been divorced for a million years now. He knows it scares the crap out of me, so he just does it. Thanks to my coworker who sent me a tiny, live Christmas tree for my classroom…it even has sparkles. Thanks to the kids who remembered their homework from before break and brought it today…and to those who didn’t and still showed up to detention to serve their time. I appreciated the sky this evening. Thanks to climate change and pollution for that. Oops. I didn’t mean that to be negative…but sometimes the ugly is indeed beautiful. Thanks to the kids for continuing to watch stupid TV series with their mom every night they’re here, connecting with me on some lame level that centers me at night and makes it easier to get through the rest of the day. Thanks to meditation for helping me be calmer about the stupid shit that swirls around me both externally and internally. Thanks to the two girls I had as students a million years ago who still remember my name, even though I’ve forgotten theirs (sigh).

And thanks to the part of my brain that pushes past all the sad and yuck and depression and makes up drawings and colors them in and finds the fabrics. I know it was some sort of genetic mutation that caused that part of my brain to exist…most don’t have that talent…and it was sheer stubbornness and willpower that made it as strong as it is today…and that, people, was all me. That’s mine. May tonight be full of sleep and empty of tears…for enough tears have fallen for today…hell, for this year. I don’t have any left to give.

Damn, I wish that were true.

Fabric Soothes My Soul

I don’t know where to start. I have been all over the map today. It wasn’t good. So I saved myself in the end with fabric. It’s a temporary fix, though…it only works as long as I am tracing, cutting, ironing. It stops as soon as I stop, unless I do it for hours, and then sometimes I can hold on to the feeling of almost-peace. Tonight I earned 41 minutes of almost-peace. I wish I could bank it for later.

I’m apparently anemic. Don’t know why yet. I can interpret blood tests to a certain point and then it just gets confusing…there’s too much data. I’m hoping it’s simple, a lack of iron in my diet…there certainly probably is a lack of iron in my diet. I don’t eat red meat at all any more…well, maybe once a month…and girlchild bogarted the spinach in the freezer for her back. It’s been defrosted and refrozen too many times to eat. I keep meaning to buy more, but it’s not like food is fun for me anyway. I just eat to fuel the body. I don’t eat for pleasure. I don’t know that I do anything for pleasure…hike…read…OK, and draw. Some things. Not pleasure, but peace.

Girlchild made varsity soccer. This is a good thing. Well, except for the back thing. We’ll deal with that. She’s happy. I’m happy she’s happy…it’s a big deal to her to play in her junior and senior years. I realize I have 700 soccer games on cold metal bleachers ahead of me, but I will survive (well, I will be cold…see anemia above). I don’t have a life…I have to be pleased with the lives of my children. Don’t worry…I’m not living through them. I do have a life, I guess. It’s just limited at the moment…probably more by me than by anything else. I don’t want to interact with most of the world, so I don’t. It’s a source of pain. I try to limit my pain.

There were cookie issues this week. I brought home leftovers from a school reward and boychild apparently bogarted all of them in some bizarre logical maneuver. Basically, it comes down to his being a hungry teenaged male who does not necessarily always think about other people before scarfing food. To his credit, he did give her about 13 hours of opportunity before he ate her share, but it would be nice if he would learn to ask. So when the book club was canceled last night, I stopped by the store and bought more cookies on the way home…and then this happened…

I don’t really know how the cookie divisions played out. I don’t like chocolate chip (I’m allergic), so I think she divided them in half and then subtracted the ones he ate the other day, and then I don’t know what happened. I gave up one of my sugar cookies to my ex-husband, who I believe shared it with a very happy Golden Retriever.

Here’s the boychild’s share…

Yeah. She’s a bit vindictive at times. (It says, “who cares?” about how many of what type of cookie he gets…I’m not really sure why each bag has a count on it.)

I was joking last night about the core difference between me and my brother. My mom wants to do a family portrait. I hate them, but it’s her deal…whatever. My brother and sister-in-law do them all the time and they’re nicely done…it’s just not my thing. So we all have to dress in blue jeans and white shirts (you missed my brother’s and my emails to mom about SHADES of blue and SHADES of white and should they be skinny jeans or acid-washed or what?). This means, in my house, that two of us need white shirts (me and boychild own no such thing) and one of us needs jeans (girlchild doesn’t wear jeans…mutant child…although I only got the boychild to wear jeans as of 2 years ago, so…). Girlchild is swearing that she is wearing a dress and putting a jeans skirt on underneath and then flashing the photographer, boychild is going to use spray paint to paint an anarchy sign on his shirt, and I’m thinking that mom didn’t tell me the shirt had to be PLAIN, so what obnoxious thing can I have on the front of it (Tardis? swear words?). Meanwhile, my SIL says that she will just TELL her kids what to wear and they WILL. Hmn. That is the core difference between my brother and I right there. I’m trying to figure out how to fuck with the system and he’s doing what he was asked to do. Not really…he’s a devious beast…he just flies under the radar.

Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all work out fine. I don’t know how anyone will force all of us to be smiling though, because I don’t do that any more. It’s against my religion. Not really.

Meditation tonight was difficult. I battle myself sometimes. Well, actually, I don’t. I succumb to sadness. I don’t really fight it. I watch it. I feel it. I let it wash over me. I try to figure out where it comes from, but I don’t resist it…or do I? I don’t. Yes, it’s unpleasant, but I don’t really know HOW to resist it, which is good, because resisting it is not helpful. To be at ease with my existence, I have to note it, but not run away from it. I don’t usually run away from uncomfortable things. They suck, but they don’t go away if you run. They’re still there. I live with uncomfortable things. I hold them inside me and pet them, like they are porcupines or hedgehogs…only petting in one direction or you will get stuck. And sometimes you just get stuck and you suck it up and deal with it because you don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice. I don’t understand people who run away from their own feelings. You live with one person your whole life…there is one person you have to deal with…you can’t run from that person. So be with that person. Be as strong as you can as that person. Be as honest as you can with that person.

Mr. Meditation asks what I am getting swept away by…and does that cause discomfort? Well, sadness, duh. And yes, it does. But I don’t run from that. I watch it, I let the tears roll down my cheeks, I write about it, I draw it. I don’t criticize myself (usually) for being sad. I have good reason. And even if I didn’t, it’s still my sadness and as long as I’m not purposefully wallowing in it in a stupid way, and I don’t think I am, then this is what it is. Sad. Sad is what it is. Someday hopefully that is not what it will be. Someday it will be something else and so will I. Except I think I will always carry this sadness inside me, like I do the destruction of my marriage, like other things that are such a core part of me that I will never be free of them. I live with them, I pull them into my arms and embrace them…spikes and all. What else can you do?

He says if we’re not aware, then we’re not able to do anything about how we react to situations. I think I am doing better with that, although tonight a work thing raised its ugly head. I reached out and I think it’s under control, at least temporarily. I got support. I think I am just being paranoid (although I have good reason). I think I know how to protect myself better now.

So I went to the gym and freaked out for about 2 hours (seriously…17 texts later)…and then I came home and made beer sausage mac and cheese for tomorrow night’s potluck and real live mashed potatoes for the work potluck (no, I never do those, but two friends are in charge and I want to support their endeavors to take over the shitty climate at work, so I did my deed). And I made dinner at the same time and watched that show about the people who live out in the boonies in Alaska, and thought about how I totally couldn’t do that, but some part of my brain really does just want to run away to a homestead in Alaska and get off the fucking grid, but I couldn’t eat fish or kill bears or live out there for a long time, so that’s just silly escapist crap that doesn’t get me anywhere. Wanting to escape doesn’t mean you can or you should. Wanting to leave the town where there are so many memories…that doesn’t mean you can.

And after all that work and meditation and some shitty moments of crappiness (god, people can really be shitheads, can’t they?), I decided that even though I am tired and run down and sad and depressed and really done with the world, that the only way I would get any clarity or peace tonight was if I played with fabric. I got everything cleaned up and folded and put away that was covering the ironing board and the table (sometimes I do not know where I get the emotional strength to do such crazy things at 10:30 at night), I figured out what threads I needed to buy for quilting, and I took a deep breath and started on choosing fabrics for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

(drawing hung up on the left, Wonder Under laid out on the right; yes, my office/studio is a total disaster)

I didn’t get very far…

(the first 100 pieces laid out in 10s)

Honestly, I didn’t have a whole lot of brain power left and it was fairly strained during the dirt fabric choosing.

A good mix of batik, hand-dyed, and commercial prints.

Yes, that’s all I did. Dirt. So fuck you. What did you do tonight, eh? I mean, look at that hand-dyed fabric…and rejoice in the fact that it will be fucking awesome at the bottom of this quilt.

You’ll be able to see this quilt in Houston next year, assuming my anemia is not caused by some horrible cancer that will slay me before I finish. Not a joke. I know that happens. That’s why I’m so focused on my health. That shit terrifies me. I really really wanted some of my meds to go away (one might, maybe two). I really, I guess I really did want my diabetes numbers to come down and they didn’t, proving again that it’s not weight-related.

But fuck that shit. I got started on the fabric choosing. Hopefully I can get it all done over Thanksgiving Break and move on to the next stage…and then I can make another quilt…and another…and maybe by the time I get 10 or 12 more of them done I will not be this sad crying person any more. See, that’s my discomfort. I am not comfortable being the person who cries all the time, who is always sad. I rarely cried before. This is painful…the crying itself just wears on you. But maybe this is the new me. Who knows? I don’t. I’m just keeping my eyes on the fabric…it soothes my soul.

Wait. So This Is What You Want?

My brain betrayed me this morning. I kept waking up last night…a pattern now. I look at the phone; it tells me how much time is left. Either a sigh of relief or a sigh of suffering for not enough time. There were 30 minutes left. I can sleep for 30 minutes. Apparently, I can hit dream sleep in 30 minutes when I’m really tired. I woke to the alarm in the middle of a dream, the brain betraying me with what it wanted. I wrote this post title two months ago and then couldn’t write the post. I’m still not sure what post I was going to write for that; I just knew that it hurt. Today is a hurt day. Why? Who knows. The dream was what the brain wanted, and it took me a while to wake up enough to realize what it was saying and then again to realize that it wasn’t reality any more…but that it HAD been, but it took me a while to remember that it wasn’t any more. And in that little while, the brain felt happy. Ouch. I tried talking to the brain, reasoning with it, telling it how that wasn’t going to happen any more, listing all the logical reasons for giving up on what it wanted because it wasn’t healthy, and it just turned away, gave me that sad look, then said something about hope. And I stopped. Because that kind of hope? It’s gone. It’s not something that can be achieved any more. I tried to explain that, explain why it didn’t want what it thought it wanted, that the person didn’t really exist, that it had all been a lie, and it shook its head again, sad, crying quietly, and walked out the door, shoulders all hunched up. It wants what it wants. It wants the unicorn, the Yeti, the fire-breathing dragon. It wants magic and Santa Claus and benign ghosts watching over you. It wants love and hope and people who think about someone besides themselves (ironic, working in a middle school). It wants what it can’t have. It wants it to be different. I feel so bad for it…I want to follow it out the door, run after it and explain the world, reality, to it, but I know it’s not listening. Maybe I should just give it a hug. I have two students right now who hug me every day. One boy came to me two periods after he had me, shoelaces loose and all over the place, and said, “I forgot to get my hug.” Another boy had a sign. He had misspelled “desperate” (I don’t remember the whole sign…yes, I hugged him AFTER I told him there was a spelling issue). I can’t tell you how much those hugs save my life some days. It’s sad, so sad, to know that a hug from a 12-year-old is my salvation on a day like today. Some goofy kid needs a hug and writes a sign and that’s why I get out of bed and shower and go to school. And they don’t even know what it means, how screwed up I am, how much importance I place on that simple act of kindness. They don’t even know.

So that’s the sad I woke up with this morning, and the image is still seared on my brain, the one thing it says it wants…like a little kid watching all the pre-Christmas toy commercials and picking out some piece of crap that will break two days later and needs 17 D batteries to run. As adults, we try to persuade the kids that those toys are worthless…we may even decide not to buy any of them, or we may look at a child’s wish list at Christmas, their hope to Santa for whatever goofy thing it is, and we may just fulfill that wish. I know we did with the girlchild many times, because she was always convinced that’s what she wanted, and being divorced parents, there is always a feeling of guilt that you already fucked it all up for them…and you have to make up for that. This year she wants nothing, she says. This year, I can’t even come up with anything big for her. This year, I don’t even think there will be money for a whole lot anyway. My brain is off having its own dreams and hopes and can’t focus on trying to guess the dreams and hopes of two teenagers. My money is paying for college application fees and test-reporting fees. Lots of them. Maybe they are just wishing mom were more present, less sad. I don’t know. They would never say that to me. What do I want? Me, not the brain? Because they’re separate? (betrayed) I just want to get through…through to the other side of whatever sad hell this is…through to another place. Like walking through a wormhole onto a tropical beach, drinks with umbrellas, a quiet but purposeful massage, some music, somewhere to dance and be present with some level of calm happiness. Leaving that part of the brain behind, the part that is so damaged and caught up in all this sad and grief. Just leave it.

Not to be. Must fix.

So as I keep going through this part of the meditation series, which is focused on wanting things to be different than what they are, realizing that’s what triggered this dream (I so rarely dream these days…I used to dream all the time), maybe Mr. Meditation will help me figure out how to persuade my brain to revise its wants to something that makes sense or that might actually be beneficial to both of us. I hope so, because this isn’t good for either of us. Mr. Meditation says it’s not a bad thing to want things to be different. It’s normal (holy god, I’m normal…). He wants me to pay attention to how often that happens (holy shit. Really? Not enough fingers.), so that I can eventually “develop a sense of ease with the way things are.” He’s into a sense of ease. When he puts it that way, I’m OK with it. I need that…to be at ease with my existence, because it’s too painful otherwise. At the end of each meditation, I am more calm and clear, but I am often still very very sad, despite all that. I can’t get out of it. It’s just there. Calm and clear sadness.

I was supposed to go to a new group meeting tonight, a book club. I got all the way to the place, and found out it had been canceled. If I hadn’t been rushing around, trying to get dinner made etc., I might have checked email and known before I left. As it was, I came back, bought the girlchild cookies (day 3 of tryouts, she’s made the first cut to varsity, but her back is an issue…imagine her lying on the kitchen floor crying and you’ll know why I bought her cookies), and listened to her read me Huckleberry Finn (no, I don’t know why she was reading it to me. It doesn’t matter.).

When I left, I almost turned back to get my sketchbook, but she said no, I needed to be sociable. She said I couldn’t take it. I got in the car and realized the sketchbook is my security blanket. I felt unsafe, unprotected. Drawing as protection? I often have it with me, just in case, even though I rarely pull it out…because then I have to deal with people watching me draw or asking me questions. Aargh. Just let me draw. It’s also a stress releaser…I can draw and let some of that nervousness and anxiety go…I don’t like being around new people and trying to figure out where to go and where to sit and how to act and whether I’m allowed to use swear words or not (seriously…I considered that on the hike last weekend). They’ve rescheduled…we’ll see. That week is a bit busier than this one was…actually, this one was supposed to be busy, but everything is moving around. All of a sudden there is space where there wasn’t before.

So I was going to input grades, but then I thought…why? I’m not in the mood. I cried on the way over there, I cried on the way back, my SIL was talking to me and telling me she understood about something I was trying to explain, why hanging out with a bunch of married people right now just hurts, because it’s not that I want to be married…I just don’t want to go through this whole beginning relationship, developing relationship crap again. I don’t have the mental energy. I don’t trust anyone. At all. I don’t want to be a part of that world again. I don’t feel like I will ever fit into that, that I will ever be able to be in a relationship that works.

I know that’s negative thinking. So instead of doing grades, which honestly just shoves me back deep into negative mode, I decided to finish cutting out Wonder Under for the Celebrating Silver quilt. Art dispels some of that negative shit. Do art, not grading. Fabric saves lives.

I thought I had a whole yard left, because it was folded up on itself, but it turned out I didn’t even have a half yard left…

The one on the right is all the trash and leftover pieces. I don’t throw it away until I make sure I didn’t drop some real live pieces in there (because I do). Plus I have some where the web is releasing from the paper, so I might need to redraw/recut those, so I just hold on to that box until they’re all ironed down.

I got the whole thing cut out in about 40 minutes…

totaling 7 hours and 34 minutes for the whole quilt. Not bad. So just to give you an idea, I’m 24 hours into this quilt and I haven’t even touched fabric, unless you include choosing and washing the background fabric.

It’s over 1200 pieces, but it doesn’t look like much in the box from the side.

Then I took just under an hour to sort all the pieces into boxes by hundreds…

I love my light table…it’s so much easier to do this now than it used to be, when I did it on the floor. Can you see the dog? Top left, asleep on the couch. There’s a cat twining herself around my legs in this picture too.

It’ll take me about 12-13 hours to pick fabrics. I might start tomorrow night…if I’m not too tired. Not sure how much time I’ll have over the weekend, and part of next week, I’ll be out of town, so I can’t do fabric then, but I’m hoping to have all the fabrics picked by the end of my Thanksgiving Break…plus have the other quilt done too (which means I need to go thread shopping at some point. It doesn’t sound like much time, but it’s hard to just start and work straight through for that many hours. My brain gets tired. It’s coloring and recoloring the picture in my head, trying out colors up there before pulling them in person. There will be a lot of flesh colors in this quilt…with three bodies. I’ll probably pull those fairly early on, after I do the dirt. Do I really have to go to school tomorrow? I’d rather do this. There’s something almost exciting about starting to work with the fabric…it gets to be almost real now.

I had a ton of blood drawn this morning. I’ve seen the results. Mostly good. I think it’s funny that people ask me if my diabetes will go away now that I’ve lost so much weight. I was first diagnosed about 10 months after the divorce, when I weighed the least I had in years. I was pre-diabetic at 19, so I held it off until age 35. Now I weigh less even than I did at diagnosis, and no, it’s not gone. There’s no magic there. My pancreas is not behaving. Welcome to genetics. The thyroid also tends to be weight-based, but no, it’s not behaving either (hence my consistent chill, with a down comforter on the bed since mid-September, and this is Southern California, not Minnesota). So the diabetes meds get to stay. The thyroid meds too. Bastards. Doesn’t matter what I do. The doc told me the stress of the divorce accelerated the diabetes…but I had hoped my numbers would come down, and they didn’t. Others did, but not the diabetes numbers.

It’s disappointing, but not the end of the world. I’ve spent over 11 years dealing with the diabetes, so I will just keep on…keeping on. With the meds, with my brain, with art, with my life, whatever it looks like. I will keep on trying to make a new life, trying to find something akin to peace, maybe happiness, whatever that looks like, because I don’t remember, and the brain is just damn faulty at this point. What I want? It’s not worth thinking about right now. Less sad. Fewer tears. Health. Occasional sleep. I’m not asking for much.

Making a Stand…Over and Over Again

Today. I don’t know what to think of it. It started badly…I couldn’t stay sleeping…I kept flopping and moving and checking the clock and praying it would say that I had hours of sleeptime left (nope). I have two alarms that go off (yes, I’m paranoid…why do you ask?)…which was good this morning, because I didn’t even hear the first one, and it gets louder over time (I had my pillow over my head again. I should draw that. It happens often enough). I was physically exhausted, but only a little sore from the hike (good!), and mentally wasted. I got myself up and out and cleaned up and functioning, and the morning was still painful, just one of those mornings where you’d probably be OK if you had like 2 more hours of sleep, but you don’t. Have. That. I cried on the way to work. Something set me off. It’s hormones again…they seem to hate me. Want me to drain the tearducts. Make sure I have reddened eyes wherever I go.

I knew I had multiple meetings and calls to deal with today…a long day, one of negotiating with parents and students and making a stand and having to back it up with consequences. I get tired of that sometimes. Even with your own kids, there are times when you just give up on whatever you’ve decided is important and you move on. Pick a new battle. But being a teacher means you have to REALLY do it. Like BIG. This year, we’ve been tough about homework…the thing is, if you slack off on the consequences, they figure it out quickly…there’s no learning from the experience and continuing to DO your homework. They’re always looking for the loophole, the time when I’m too lazy to write down everyone’s name who blew it off. And then taking advantage of that.

So I busted them. You don’t want to know how many of them. We’ll see how that goes. Last time, they did their homework for a while without my bugging them…like maybe three weeks. Grr. So I will do it through until Winter Break, and then I will have to restart the practice after Winter Break, because (a) they will have forgotten that I mean it and (b) Break makes them lazy.

So it was a day of making a stand.

Then I had to deal with groceries (all the stuff the girlchild was too cranky to tell me about yesterday, because she was in a mood) and picking the girlchild up from tryouts and dealing with dinner…plus, because I made a stand, I then had to make sure all the homework was checked in. Yes. I made more work for myself. Or not. I would have had to grade it SOME day…just maybe not today. I really need to learn to use my teachers’ aides…the teacher next door and I now share three of them, but I always forget to use them. Tomorrow? I use their butts. OK. Their minds. And a red pen.

I exercised. I meditated. But more importantly? I sandwiched and pinbasted the damn Love quilt.

It’s not about Love. It doesn’t know what it’s about. Yes it does. It’s about what love might be or might not be and whether certain behaviors show love or just feel like a weight on your shoulders. Sigh. This will be a fun statement to write…knowing that I drew it before all the shit hit the fan, but it’s remarkably psychic.

It’s not a huge quilt. It pinned quickly and easily. My plan is to quilt it during the time we spend at Lake Arrowhead for Thanksgiving. Girlchild cooks, boychild and grandpa read, grandma? Well. We’ll see. I quilt. And read. And hopefully cut out fabric stuff.

Of course, that means I have to finish cutting out all the Wonder Under soon on the Celebrating Silver quilt, and I’m guessing I have another 4 hours, and my Wednesday and Friday nights are already booked, so I don’t know how realistic I’m being. I want to be ironing the pieces down to fabric before we go, so I can take a bunch of that with me. One thing I do know is that if I don’t set goals for myself, I won’t get anything done. I write this blog because it keeps me focused on my goals…my art goals and my personal goals. I try to keep everything progressing…if I spend an hour a school night working on art and then some additional hours during the weekend and a shitload of hours during vacations, I get it done. I’m rocking the art this year…getting lots of it done. YES. It’s filler for a shitty-feeling, often empty-feeling life, but it’s still art and it’s good and it will save my world, even if it doesn’t save anyone else’s. That’s all I can hope for…my own salvation…from myself, honestly.

My meditation has changed its focus slightly, talking about an underlying desire to want things to be different than the way they are. Wow. Read my mind much? It talks about achieving a natural state of ease with the brain instead of always fighting it, of mastery of the brain.Yes. That. Please help. I want that. I’m already so much better with my job, with my brain at work, even though I am constantly fighting depression there, grief, waves of sadness. Frustration, yes, but I don’t carry it home any more.

By the end of the day, I had given myself time to process and create and achieve and meditate and exercise and even read for pleasure, and my brain was thankful. Still a bastard on occasion, certainly not behaving for large swathes of time tonight, having random-ass conversations with itself that do nothing but hurt. But I could look at that quilt pinned together and think…”Yes. That. That will save Kathy’s world. That is the reason. Right there.” And hopefully that will help me sleep better tonight. If not, at least I have one more instance of my ability to get out of bed in the morning and face all the stupid shit without climbing back under the covers or pitching a fit in a Starbucks or losing it in my classroom. And not just getting up, but getting up and making stuff that IS me, SHOWS me, REFLECTS me…which is a lot more than many people can do. (see, I said I was thankful without using that word.) It’s another way of making a stand. Yes, life can fuck me over, people can try to screw me up (or do it without trying, more likely), but I can make a stand and not let their shit throw me completely down…and even if it does, and it feels like it does over and over again, then I just keep getting up, planting my feet, putting my hands on my hips, and making that face, that stubborn face. This is my work. This is who I am. I will keep making art no matter what. It IS me. It SHOWS me. It REFLECTS me. Over and over again.

Friday Wants a Sparkly Tree

Moody bitch, Friday. She wakes up with a hangover, even though she didn’t drink the night before. Her headache takes 5 Motrin and 2 hours to wander off. She cries on the way to work. She’s still crying in the parking lot, and she doesn’t even know why. Sometimes she just needs to cry. I manage to kick her butt eventually, dealing with job stuff, kids. Learning. You know. What teachers are supposed to encourage (we almost got there today…really). She wants a fucking donut and I say no. She doesn’t need the sugar; she’ll get a rush and they’re empty calories. It doesn’t matter how moody she is. She’ll get over it. She gets worse during lunch and one period almost takes her down, but I pull her through…by her hair…because she’s still being a bitch. Friday used to be kinda nice, a relief, because I knew the weekend would be relaxing and maybe even fun. Now it’s mostly work and sad…and Friday doesn’t care how bad she makes me feel…she knows Saturday and Sunday will be worse, so she can be as bad as she likes.

Today she is right there when the girlchild is yelling at me in the parking lot (it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that hormones and teenagedness is part of the problem, I can’t handle being screamed at by the end of the day). Friday watches me cry in the car. She watches the girlchild wander off in Target and she lets me walk to the Christmas section. Why? I have always liked the decorating part of Christmas. I like the tree, the smell, the ornaments. I love the lights. I must have had good times as a kid during Christmas. I like just sitting in the living room with all the lights off except the tree lights. There’s always one that flashes…and no one knows why.

Friday lets me stand and stare at shiny sparkly balls and garlands and cute little fuzzy things. Then she wants to buy a sparkly fake tree (really?) and bitches me out when I say no. It’s fucking pink. Not happening. There’s no money. It’s stupid. I don’t want more stuff. Luckily, there aren’t many people in the Christmas section tonight, so I can cry and no one but Friday will know. Maybe she’ll be nicer to me if she sees me cry. Isn’t that how it works?

Sigh. The Target trip just made me remember all the other errands I’ve been putting off…I made a list on my phone while I was waiting…trying to find the girlchild, who stomped off into the store without her phone. She’s not a bad kid. Really. I do love her. She’s having a rough week.

Windshield wipers. A new casserole dish with a lid. I keep breaking things (by accident). Gym clothes that fit. Fabric for the background of the next quilt. Dog food and cat food. The essentials.

The weekend…I’m trying to be brave about some stuff. We’ll see how that turns out. Julie always tells me to Be Brave. I always listen to Julie. She’s wise…and kind…and a little wacky.

I managed more cutting of the Wonder Under tonight…

Notice how it still looks the same. It’s looked the same every damn night. Seriously. This is the torturous part of Kathy quiltmaking. Why not torture myself? It keeps my brain occupied. Progress is going to look like this for a while. Lots of white stuff with pencil lines on it. Woo hoo. Yippee. My lord. When will I be done?

I’m trying to persuade my brain it’s sleepy. It’s not. It’s in overdrive. It’s drawing things. I don’t have time right now to draw things. I guess I will have to make time. I do actually have a drawing thing I could do tomorrow, like an event, but I’m not sure I want to. We’ll see. I’m trying. I really am. I can’t just be the mope on the couch. Well, I can, but that’s stupid. I’m not stupid.

Babygirl is still here. I don’t know if she’s ever leaving. We seem to have some sort of truce going on most days…

Although boychild is still her favorite (she looks bitchy in this photo…that’s because she IS). She’s kind of a goofball. I think we stretch her sense of herself. She’s a really selfish beast, but we don’t let her get away with it. Boychild’s hair is so long and nice-looking in this photo…especially with the claws embedded in it.

While I was meditating, this was the view (before I closed my eyes)…

What a freakin’ mess. Need to clean. Need kids to help. That means I need to yell and put my foot down. That’s why nothing’s getting clean, because I’m NOT doing that. I don’t have it in me.

At the far end of that view? Midnight…

in the laundry basket where laundry goes to die. Seriously, I don’t think anyone has put laundry away since summer. It just piles up in baskets until I get frustrated and dump it on someone’s bed or the couch. Babygirl is about two feet to my left at this time. Sometimes Midnight is right behind me, on the back of the couch. They growl at each other. While I’m meditating. Like I said, I don’t think Mr. Meditation deals with my shit. He seems like a nice guy. He probably thinks it should be relatively quiet and growl-free during meditation.

Friday has gone to bed. Or maybe she went out dancing. Hard to say. I’ll know tomorrow morning…at some ungodly hour, when I have to get up to deal with soccer. That’s why I really need to get tired and go to sleep.

I’m trying to have a life. I’m trying to ignore that Friday bitch. She’s been around way too many weeks. She needs a Xanax…or a martini. I don’t care which, as long as she stops messing with me. Maybe Fridays are always going to be art days from here on out. I used to grade on Friday nights. I don’t think it’s a good idea at the moment. Remaking all the schedules I used to have. The routines. In counseling, we talked about the things I wanted that I haven’t had for years. We talked about why I didn’t have those things. Apparently it’s not unrealistic for me to want those things. I can actually keep that list in my head now and know that those things are important, and because my kids are getting old enough that I don’t have to worry as much about how it might affect them…they will be leaving soon…I can make those things BE important. I don’t have to referee any more, negotiate between people who can’t figure out how to behave in a mature fashion. No one wants to be in the middle of those kinds of negotiations, between their own children and adults who should know better but don’t.

Anyway. Bad television tonight. Really bad. But it didn’t really matter. I was dealing with Wonder Under anyway. Sleep. Elusive. It will hurt tomorrow.

When the Emotion Ends…

It’s a damn good thing I have a job that allows me so little time to be introspective. I make it through most workdays without having to dwell in the nasty place my brain has dug for itself. That said, meditation seems to be helping. Maybe. Sometimes. Hell, I don’t know. I keep looking at happy, at the word, the definitions, all the silly Pinterest pretty quotes about being happy, choosing happy, waking up happy (do people DO that? Without caffeine? Do they have teenagers? I didn’t think so.).

Dammit. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, changing small things as I can. I’m not going through a midlife crisis here. I don’t want to go out and party until the cows come home, I’m not trying to prove that death is far far away, I’m not trying to change my life into something brand new like that will magically make me a different person. I can’t do most of those things. I don’t want to do most of those things. I don’t want to join a bunch of new groups that have more claims on my time than I already have (seriously, people…I’m still buried in my life…nothing has changed there). I don’t need to be up all night dancing and drinking and hanging out with people…that isn’t going to make me happy, and I think honestly any 40-some-year-old who is doing that on a regular basis has some major growing up to do anyway. There needs to be something you care about in the world…if it’s your job, that’s great. I can see if I were a full-time artist, that would be the case. It’s not, though…realistically it will never be. But I can still make a daily place for art. I don’t want brand new. I don’t want much of anything at the moment…just brief glimpses of contentment, peace, maybe humorous moments (one of my students tried to hook me up with a cop friend of hers today…I tried to explain to her why Ms. Nida and cops aren’t probably the best match, but she wasn’t having it), and anything resembling joy? Well…I will get there. I don’t know when. But I will.

At times, it seems like never. Seriously. It does. But I am resilient. I will get through. To somewhere.

Yes. It was a rough day. Then again, most of them are.

I made it to the gym, though. I’m reading a frustrating book there. It makes it harder to concentrate on the reading. Stupid mindfucks keep creeping in. I have to try to hold on to the person I know I am…the core of me. It’s there. I know. I hear her. She’s pissed. She’s mad as hell. She’s also sad, but she’s mad because of that. I’d watch out for her if I were you. She’s got a sketchbook AND a blog, and she’s not afraid to use either.

Anyway. Meditation talked about trying to keep track of when an emotion ends, because it helps you realize you don’t feel like that anymore…but how do I know when the sad ends? I don’t even know how to define the end of the sad? Even in funny moments when I’m laughing, it’s lurking behind all that. Maybe sad isn’t ending at the moment. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I should give them levels…Sad Level 1, Sad Level 2…or colors…Sad Code Red, Sad Code Yellow. But then I need a rubric and a measuring system (can you see the left brain all over this? I am evenly balanced between the two, if that matters any more). I guess it’s to remember that the emotion is not a permanent state. Logically I know that. Emotionally, I know nothing.

I cut out Wonder Under for a good chunk of time tonight.

Yes, I should have been grading. Instead, I cut out flames and smoke and rocks and skeleton parts (those are the tiny little pieces). It was a giant pain in the ass. Seriously, lots of tiny pieces and then pointy pieces and just fussy cutting for ages. I’ve been cutting for almost three measly hours now and I’ve made it through two yards…only four yards to go (another 6 hours? Seems light…).

The next yard has body parts and feathers…

fewer pointy parts, so hopefully it won’t be as much of a pain to cut out. Not that it really matters. It’s time spent making art. It doesn’t feel like anything at the moment, because this is the boring work part, but the next step, the fabric-choosing part…that might be OK. LONG, but OK. I just need to keep making. The making is important. It’s…it’s how I am fixing me. Still broken, yes, but fixing. I don’t actually know at the moment if I’m fixable. I have to assume I am.

Speaking of fixable, my bulb on my digital projector at school has been dying since school started…it’s getting darker and darker and kids can’t read anything. They won’t replace it (at $300 or so a pop) until it actually DIES…seriously, the fact that kids can’t SEE anything is apparently irrelevant. So now I have this dark brown splotch over the left side and it was awful looking, so I rigged this…

I turn the light off, but shine a bright light on the doc cam base where the paper is…it works pretty well, although I get a shadow on one corner. Yes, I had to MacGyver my classroom…again. So annoying. We have our new computers, too, but the broadcast doesn’t work on them until they do something I don’t understand. AND our broadcast is totally pixelated, which we’re supposed to ignore (it’s very artistic-looking)…an example below.

They tried fixing it yesterday with no luck. AND we’re getting some type of Google tablet for teachers only in the next month so we can figure out Google docs or something (wish someone would tell me WHAT I’m supposed to be figuring out), because we’re doing some wacky grant stuff in the future, along with Common Core collaboration AND new standards AND I don’t even know what else because I can’t keep track of it all.

Meanwhile, when I borrow the computer cart, 15 of the 32 computers have dying batteries. Like because they’re old and need replacing, not because they’re not charged. It’s a fun technical world we live in. Don’t tell anyone, but I let them use their phones as timers the other day during a lab, because they don’t know how to read an analog clock. I know. Next, we’re teaching them cursive.

Anyway. I’m trying not to wallow in the suckitude. I don’t like all the quiet in my life, the lack of conversation, like the kind where you’re sitting next to someone on the couch or at dinner with them and having a long conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of that damn asshole happiness. That said, it’s not like I had the energy or the opportunity to do either of those things tonight…tomorrow night, I will have the kids and we will talk. It’s not ideal, but it’s all I’ve got.

Hard

Today’s blog post is brought to you by R.E.M.

Every time I watch this video, listen to this song, it just kills me. Even if I’m in the best mood in the world, this song makes me cry. For some reason, I’m listening to R.E.M. today. Mood music. Maybe not the best choice…but it’s my choice.

Yeah, I know I’m getting better. It doesn’t feel better really, but I can feel shifting in something. Whatever that something is. That said, today was a throwback. I had an hour or so intermission in the evening with art and food and wine with a good friend, but it was sandwiched by Crying Act I And Crying Acts II and III. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I can pinpoint an event or a thought that warranted all those tears…they just happened.

The art was good, by the way…the new exhibit at Visions Art Museum is recent purchases by Del Thomas, a big collector in the art quilt world, and it is definitely worth seeing. There was a good variety of quilts, some truly beautiful works of art. It’s there through January 19. You can see some of the work on Del’s blog (link above in her name). I enjoyed seeing Charlotte Bird and Cathy Denton’s works about words that start with C as well. The intermission was appreciated.

Mr. Meditation tells me today to step away from the feeling as I identify with it. I step away from some pretty fucking overwhelming sadness and fall into the hole behind me of deep dark weeping. Nice. You could have warned me, man. Seriously. What am I aware of? Did you just ask me that? I’m aware of feeling like shit right now, Mr. Meditation. I’m sure there will be a positive outcome from the meditation in the long run, but today? Not so much. Today it is just sad.

I had goals today…I wanted to get grades done (it’s the end of the Trimester), so I would have the rest of the weekend free. I had to be up at 4:40 AM to take the girlchild somewhere, and when I got home, I went back to sleep. I was going to be all gung ho and go to the gym, but when I realized they weren’t even open, I was much more cavalier about the day. It’s not like I really had to BE anywhere. No one was waiting on me to be done with my stuff and be free. So I went back to sleep and Kitten tried to head butt me awake, but I put the pillow over my head, and then Calli (the dog) was whining, but I didn’t get up until she started farting…because that’s never a good sign.

It took me about 4 hours to get through all the grades, but I did it. Then I finally packed up the two quilts that are going to Poway…which should have been shipped already, but whatever…they’re not late yet.

Dehair, label on one of them, cut a dowel and put in eyescrews, pack it all up, print labels, tape it up. Shipped it before I went to the gym. Then home and showered (the cold-water faucet is stripped…makes showers very exciting at the moment…plumber can’t come until Monday)…and off to VAM. I cried all the way there. Don’t know why. Really don’t. It just happened. I got it under control about 4 times, the last time while walking across the street to go in to the museum. Good thing…I know a lot of people in there.

Babygirl witnessed the grading…

by sitting on the gradebook. It’s either there or she sits behind my neck on the chair, like an overly heavy scarf…with claws. That’s where she is now. It explains the crick in my neck.

When I got home from food and drink, which was a pleasant experience…it was nice…I ironed for a while. I really want this thing stitched down by the end of the weekend.

I don’t know if that’s really possible, but I can try. I don’t have anything else important to do, well, except shopping and lesson planning and dealing with plumbing and pet food and kids and helping the boychild with college apps and probably saving the world if I get around to it. Did I mention housecleaning? No I did not. Someone still owes me a year of housecleaning. This would be a good time to have that. In the above picture, I’m ironing the eye and the face separate from the rest of the body. I actually lost the eyelid. It’s a big piece. Usually I lose small pieces. Who knows where it disappeared to.

Once I had all the pieces ready, I ironed the head onto the body.

This piece is holding together pretty well as a single, large ironed piece, which means I keep having to move it around on the ironing sheets…they’re not big enough for the whole quilt. I finally pulled off the whole body so I could do the top part with the tree and the hair…

Here’s the already-ironed bits (from the back).

They look a bit different. And there it is with the body ironed to the hair and the tree…

With the body hanging off the edge of the ironing board. The roots that belong on the neck are sitting to the left, waiting to be ironed on.

All I have left is everything in the tree…which is about 130 pieces…not too bad, but not getting done tonight. Too tired. I’m almost 5 hours into the ironing. At least a couple of hours to go, if you count ironing down to the background.

It was after the ironing that I hit Crying Part III. That was meditation’s fault. Sigh. Obviously there’s a reason for all of it…I’m just not allowed to know what it is right now, except if you watch this TED video…

TED Talk Ash Beckham

There is no competition for who has it harder. There is just HARD. Coming out of any closet. I guess I’m out of the depression/grief closet. Sort of…because I do close the door again sometimes when I can’t deal any more, keep hiding in the closet. It’s easier to be on here and write about it than to talk about it in person. It’s easier to draw how I feel than to talk about it. I don’t know what that means in the long run, whether it will take me longer to get through the grief than it would someone who shares more than I do in person. I can’t really do anything but what I am doing, though, so it will take as long as it takes…and while it’s taking its time, it will be hard.