Less Yelling

Already there are angry voices, upraised tempers, red flags flying. I’ve had a single sip of caffeinated savings (saving my brain from?) and I’m trying to deal with it’s my fault and why don’t I and anger anger anger. Why the anger? I don’t know. Because I had an eye doctor appointment instead of time to shop for heels and a dress. Sunday it will be anger because I have to finish grades (my job) and can’t go shopping. I’ve said this to myself so many times in the last 5 years…am I just doing it all wrong? Like there’s an easier path and I didn’t take it because I just didn’t know what were the right actions and the right words? Like I got the wrong life manual when they were handing that shit out, and I took the Tread on the Hot Coals manual for ninja warriors (do they do that?) instead of the suburban mom manual? OK, I’m not a suburban mom, it’s true, but I have a lot of the right ingredients for that. Soccer mom. Conventional job (that kicks my ass at the moment). I have a house and a Subaru and a dog and some cats (OK, I have half a dog…it goes back and forth between two houses). But somewhere in all of that, I couldn’t follow instructions. I couldn’t just do that, and some people do, but I couldn’t.

Is it the artist that screws everything up? Is it the divorce that makes it harder to manage the kids and the financial crap (well, yeah, duh)? Is it my fabric hoarder tendencies? My workaholic bent? What the fuck?

I slept in. There are four days left of school. I’m still tired. I stayed up late grading things (ALL the things actually) and packing up two quilts going up to an LA show opening in two weeks. Girlchild came in and vented. I let her. I listened. That’s all anyone needs when venting is happening…listening. Acknowledging that they’ve been heard. Then it’s out and dispersing and the mind is clear. I get that. So I vent here, quite a lot. You might have noticed.

I love my daughter, but she is hell on wheels sometimes. I’m sure my mom would say I deserved that, as I wasn’t easy either, but as an adult, I realized some of the things about my relationship with my mom that I wanted to try to avoid with the girlchild, so there were things I said I would not do, and for the most part, I have succeeded in that…and yet, I still have this opinionated spitfire (shocking, I know) who wants to kick authority in the nuts. And I GET that. I still have that in me. But I’m not the enemy.

So I’m sitting here crying because I am completely overwhelmed and scared about the future, especially financially, and I’m getting yelled at for not being psychic about food needs in the house and why no one will put dishes in the dishwasher but me. I’m about to go nuclear, I guess.

Deep breaths. Grades are close to done. I have to input everything, so I canceled my book club on Sunday (not done reading it anyway…hard read). I will go to the eye doctor (probably should have scheduled it later in the month), deliver the quilts, go out to lunch with the kids’ uncle from the UK, and then deal with some scary stuff that will hopefully stop being as scary. Then plan for the last four days of school, which are survival incarnate. And hopefully get some peace of mind in all of it.

The quilt sat last night, ignored, wrapped up and over the machine so no cat could besmirch it with their hairy bottom.

I would have liked to have quilted, but the other things were louder and more…not important…but desperate in terms of timing.

Two quilts ready for delivery.

I think I can hang in there this week. I don’t really have a choice, so the thinking part is moot. And that moody beast…hell, she’s going to college in just 10 weeks. I’m sure her stress levels are through the roof, so we will have to come to some uneasy truce about how to survive the summer in the same house. And then there will be less yelling here.

Launching Cat Turds…

Well, the good news is I finished stitching down the bathtub quilt last night, after school and the gym and cooking dinner and washing all the itinerant dishes (you know, the ones that don’t go in the dishwasher, so they just pile up in the sink and on the counter until the world is full of dirty dishes, and even then, teenagers won’t wash them). I started grading all the makeup work, but got kicked off my computer at some point (something about printers but then my color printer sucks because it is literally a million years old and I would replace it but I can’t afford to do that) and then there was a gluestick shortage, so I sincerely and strongly refrained from telling someone in the house (I cannot tell you whom) that leaving your major end-of-year project to the night before and expecting your mom to have all the supplies available at 9:30 PM (when in fact if you had texted her earlier in the day, she did in fact have access to TEN THOUSAND gluesticks, ok, maybe that is an exaggeration, but SERIOUSLY, I am a teacher)…well, that’s really incredibly stupid.

I did not say any of that, although according to my students, I do not need to say a damn word…they know exactly what I’m thinking just by looking at my face.

Oh well.

There are 8 days of school left. There are two days of (teaching) pregnancy left, three days of STDs and HIV, or maybe four…or maybe I just show some stupid movie in there (must go stupid movie shopping, oh WAIT, I have Netflix. I keep forgetting about that.). There’s a field trip in there and a graduation and some other shit that I can’t remember. At some point, none of it will matter any more.

So I finished stitching it down (as I was SAYING…hello brain, it would be nice if you would wake the fuck up)…

It didn’t take long. I didn’t have a lot left. I didn’t start until almost 11 PM though. So I think it took about 4 1/2 hours total.

Then I found a piece of batting (need to buy batting before the next big quilt…might have enough for the next skinny quilt) and cut a backing, and thought about ironing all that and maybe even pinbasting it…

And then I looked at the clock and it was 11:47 and I decided that was crazy. So maybe tonight? Or not. It’s hot, I have 5 science teacher interviews after school, and then back to the whole clean-up-the-kitchen thing even though I didn’t mess it up. Yesterday involved some crazy-ass screaming about cashews and the recycling never got taken out (see above crazy note about last-minute projects). This summer might be a tense one.

Kitten continues to come out and be sociable, which is nice.

She’s not sure she approves of the sex scenes in Sense8, but whatever. She doesn’t need to screen my Netflix.

Midnight was also in here for the sewing activities…

They are tolerating each other, much as I am tolerating the teens. Actually, one is OK…he just needs to get a job. He’ll be working for Grandpa today, but I really need him to get a real job. The other one is still in school for another week, so I won’t kill her until after that…and then when she refuses to do stuff around the house AND demand money for gas etc, then you will hear the yelling from here in East County.

But meanwhile, I’ll be getting another calm and soothing bathtub quilt done. OK, they’re not very calm and soothing, I admit. But maybe that’s where the imagery is aiming…if I sit in a nice warm bathtub for long enough, maybe I will feel less like launching cat turds into the girlchild’s bedroom, just to see if she notices with the disaster mess that’s in there.

OK, in retaliation mode. Gotta get off that. Gotta go continue to terrify students with my stories of pregnancy and labor. Not hard for me…

The Difficult

I wonder sometimes what makes the teen years so difficult for me. I don’t seem able to communicate correctly. Honestly, I’ve spent the last two years feeling like the majority of what comes out of my mouth is just wrong, not allowed, I am misinterpreting everything, and I never say it right. There are about 15 drawings in my head coming out of that…most have tape over the mouth or the mouth is just stitched or stapled shut. I don’t know if it’s worse because I am me, and that me is depressed, or if I am alone in this, and the alone compounds the wrong feeling, or if, as the girlchild says, I am just more sensitive than most. In some conversations, the wrongness seems to swirl around in my head. I wonder what protections others have that seem to keep them whole. I feel like those are missing from my arsenal. My counselor tries to help…but what she tells me to say, the script, it angers the girlchild.

It seems I do it all wrong. I don’t think anything I’ve done in the last two years was right. Except draw…and turn those into quilts.

Is that good enough? Is the art I make good enough? Does it make up for whatever I don’t seem to be able to do right? Ask my children in 5-10 years. They may be able to answer. Maybe they will write my retrospective. My previous writer has been fired from the job for not paying attention, for falling asleep on the job, for not actually listening to what I was saying. Is it so hard to hear me?

It is just a matter of surviving these years I think. But this surviving…it is hard…harder on my own. I asked today for help. I tried to explain the things that set me off…and maybe that conversation went well…hard to say. I feel so ill-equipped for my own existence.

So. The summer: artmaking, house-fixing, room-painting, lesson-planning, sanity-finding (any chance of that?), book-reading, muscle-moving, heart-mending (not sure I believe this is possible).

Parenting is a bitch.

I cut stuff out today. I’m almost there. It’s a good thing. Progress. It’s movement…better than stagnation. I try to keep moving towards something…something healthier than what occupies my brain most of the time. Here’s where I was last night…

I did hike last night, a mere 4.5 miles; it barely felt like a walk. Fine line between what works for me and what hurts my knee. I’ll be testing it further in the next 7 days, for sure. More on that later.

Today was a giant mess of grading and managing things, but fell into this wormhole: Strong Female Protagonist…because I NEED more distractions? Naw, because it let me leave my head for a while…another troubled female trying to make sense of the world, but she can kick the shit out of robots. I bet I’d be less depressed if I could do that.

I was supposed to go to the gym, but I read instead. And I graded stuff. And then input grades. And there was the parenting thing that threw me for a loop. It doesn’t take much.

We have dinner almost every Sunday night at my parents’ house. I keep thinking it will get easier to be there on Sundays, but it is a memory of what I had that apparently I didn’t really have. Trust is an issue for me. Can you tell? I don’t even know how to draw that. Maybe when I figure that out it will get better.

I throw the ball for Calli as long as she puts it in my lap.

She makes this funny face, where part of her lip is up under her tooth. Love this dog. Love all dogs, who am I kidding? We had my parents’ dog, Katie, here this weekend…she was well-behaved but terrified of the cats (as are we all)…it was nice to have another dog here. When the girlchild goes to college, my first expense will probably have to be a dog. I don’t have one of my own and Calli will probably stay with the girlchild’s dad…we’ll see. She goes back and forth with the girlchild at the moment. My grocery bill will go down and so will the dog quotient?

Most of the year, I’m grading while she does this, but during vacations, I sew instead. And I was done grading (well, at least for a while…until all the kids who were absent dump stuff in my lap tomorrow)…so I was stitching. I managed a whopping 5 bullion stitches before I gave up. I am so far behind on this thing that it doesn’t really matter any more.

So then I came home and cut some more…

I really am almost there. And I have a plan for some smaller quilts that might go up on Etsy this summer…maybe. I want something that’s marketable. Well, as much as my stuff ever is. So watch for that. Don’t hold your breath or anything…it might be a few weeks…but I did go down into the garage and hunt around for some of the drawings that might help with that. I don’t need to remake the wheel…just re-trace something and iron it down. And see where that takes me.

Down a rabbit hole. Did I mention I am trying to write an actual novel? It will probably crash and burn, but I am starting. I have an idea…a start…a burning coal. Something might come of that. Strange that a visual artist has always wanted to write a book. Where does that come from? Words v. images. A constant war in my brain.

Yup. And then there’s Babygirl. Speaking of The Difficult. There she be.

The Place You Go…

I’m sitting here (Sunday night) waiting for the laundry to finish so I can put the girlchild’s soccer stuff in the dryer for tomorrow morning. I’m actually kind of wide awake…must have been that 26-minute nap I took this afternoon when I realized I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That’s the problem with hike days…they do kick my ass and I get very little else done, which is why I can’t do them every weekend. I can’t lose a day every weekend.

This is a 3-day weekend, though, so I still have tomorrow (Monday, yes I started this on Sunday night) to play catch up. I had a rough day yesterday. I actually cried on the hike…usually I don’t, but strangely, being in a group that large was isolating for someone like me. I’m not an extrovert at all. I need space, both mental and physical. I felt like some alien creature. It was so loud and raucous and overwhelming…I had to strike out on my own and physically super-challenge my body so my mind wouldn’t freak out. I have an event coming up with a lot more people than that…and I’m worried about my ability to deal. It’s strange…I spend all day with tons of people, but I don’t feel so out of place with my students…they are safe. I can handle interactions with them. Interactions with large groups of strangers? Fuck that. I’d rather stay home. I will be that crazy cat lady who never leaves the house if I’m not careful. The hike was redeemed slightly by the last 30 minutes spent talking to one other person. I can handle interactions like that, but you have to have something in common or at least something you can talk about.

It was a relief to come home after the hike and space out for hours, grade some papers, hang with my kids, cut out some Wonder Under. I appreciate the physical exertion and being out in nature, but hanging out in groups isn’t making me happy. Then again, nothing much is making me happy.

So in the middle of this post, the rant came through and became its own post, and then I went to the gym to try to leave some of my irritation and anger there instead of carrying it around. I’m debating calling the doctor (hemorrhage!), I need to find eye doctor paperwork for the kids, I haven’t prepped for tomorrow, I need to go to school to check for lab supplies, but I can’t get out of my driveway, because they are in fact digging holes in my front yard so my toilets might work properly someday. I’m wondering if I will ever stop grinding my teeth, if my eyelid will ever stop twitching, if I will ever sleep properly again.

The part I was having issues with was people making assumptions about other people based on how they behave or look or are labeled. I’m constantly amazed by how different people are than what they project…my leach-field guy looks like a redneck, talks like a redneck, and then starts talking to me about the Lord of the Rings trilogy and how many times he’s read it and whether Smaug is the coolest dragon around or what. The guy is 64 and you’d never think to look at him that he could have slogged through that series (god knows I haven’t been able to after multiple tries). You cannot make assumptions about people. You have to talk to them and listen to them and turn on the part of your brain that pays attention to someone besides your arrogant self, and only then can you make any decisions about people, and you still have to leave open the possibility that you are completely wrong. Maybe I know that from teaching middle school for so many years. Maybe I’m just that kind of tolerant person. I don’t know. I just know that it’s not OK to hurt other people. And sometimes people think your emotions are hurting them, but it is really their response to your emotions that’s the issue. I had the girlchild full on screaming at me this morning and I realized that she was having the same issue…her emotional reaction to what I had said was hers and hers alone. I was not the cause of the screaming. She was. Granted she’s a teenager and doesn’t modulate her responses well…she’s not Asperger’s, but teens often have this idea that they are the only people on the planet (shocking!) and it can manifest in similar ways. “My way is the only way.” Boychild and I often have discussions about her inability to realize there are other people in the world who might not have the same priorities as she does. In this case, I let her stomp off and slam a door, and then she came back and it was eventually all OK. I wonder what it will be like when they are both gone and I no longer have to tiptoe around those kinds of emotional outbursts. I wonder if her roommates will survive! I wonder if having the girlchild as his sister has helped the boychild navigate emotions any better…god knows they are full on in his face on a regular basis. His sister screams. His mom cries.

Wondering about my own sanity. Wondering after reading someone else’s blog if there is actually always a way out of depression, or if it just becomes something you live with for the rest of your life. After this weekend, I don’t see a way out, I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, I don’t feel like it will ever change. It does not help that my hormones are going ballistic. I could really live without that additional mess in my head…hence the thought to call the doctor…more because of the physical symptoms than the mental…the physical symptoms set off all the alarms on the stupid online symptom checkers. But I already know what they will say, what they will want to do. They’ll use the words ‘abnormal’ and ‘dysfunctional’…ironic because those can apply to my physical symptoms and my mental symptoms. OK, not fully dysfunctional, because I do manage to function fairly normally…I’m just patently aware of how nonfunctional my functioning is.

Anyway. I find the solution to all this angst, short-term as it might be, is that silly thing called art. My brain wandered about a bit, trying to figure out what it felt like doing, until that urge to draw came a banging at the brain door…so I pulled this one out from before, in December sometime (was it really that long ago?)…

I had copied it and taped it to another page, so I found that and started drawing downwards…

Shades of the Celebrating Silver quilt…I still need to put yet another page on the bottom…

because she needs more room. She wants the rest of her body. She told me. She demanded it. I listened. And I need to figure out what else is happening here…maybe more of those crazy birds. Who knows. Draw, Kathy. It gives you some peace. Draw the assholes out. Draw the arrogant jerks out. Draw the emotional reactions and put them on paper. Make someone see what’s in your head. Make someone feel what’s in your head. Make.

I made it to my quilt guild tonight, for the first time in 12 months, I think. Mary Pal was speaking and she and I had seen each other Saturday night at the Coast to Coast opening. I think we might be sisters from another mother…we are in the same shows, feeling some of the same artistic angst. I hope for her sake that she is not feeling the rest of my angst. It was nice to hear her talk, to feel her deep hug again, to feel a connection to a fellow artist who plumbs the depths of her artistic self to make work in the middle of the night, by the skin of her teeth, in the early morning light. To feel a connection that deep to someone you barely know…simply because of the place you go when you work.

Art can be amazing that way.