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.

Throwing Peas

When I’m tired, it hurts more. On a long day like today, what I need is to know I’m going home to a sympathetic ear and maybe a back rub. What I have are two know-it-all teenagers and a drop off and pick up at soccer practice, plus I need to make dinner. I need someone to tell me it will be OK and to sit next to me on the couch and make me feel OK. Someone to help. Maybe they got my text that I’m finally coming home, and they have a cup of tea waiting for me when I get home.

Or not. I wonder when that will stop hurting. The not having.

Girlchild needs back surgery. I know she’s sad and scared and depressed, but she’s been screaming at me since I walked in the door. Teenaged anger, reminding me that I don’t have exclusive rights to sadness. She apologized later. So I leaned over and rubbed the dog’s belly and dripped tears into her fur. She doesn’t care…she just loves the attention. The dog. Maybe the teenager too. I can’t handle that level of demand at the moment.

I feel so disconnected. Like I can’t actually connect…it’s not even a choice. I think that’s why all those “You Can Choose to Be Happy” articles drive me nuts…really? I can? I just wake up in the morning and the hole in my chest and my gut, they’ll just be gone? The ache will be gone? My brain will just give up on filling in the blanks, writing stories? Having hope? Not having hope? Realizing that I was wrong about everything? That I believed and trusted in something that didn’t exist? I wish there were an easy way to work past all that. There isn’t. No happy pill. No forgetfulness drink…unless you were never paying attention in the first place. Then it must all be very easy. I think the people who write those Choose Happiness articles are smoking crack. Or maybe I have a gene, some weird wiring in my brain that doesn’t let me be that perky-ass person. Choose Happiness. Choose My Ass.

Days with too much free space for thinking, but not enough sleep. Or recharging. The two are related, I think.

I choose art. I choose creativity. I choose a visual experience that few others can achieve. I choose Me. I have lived with Me for a long time. Me is not a bad person. She’s conflicted and messed up and emotional and doesn’t see things the way you do. If that’s a problem for you, I don’t know what to say. Me is also pretty truthful with you. She often makes decisions that benefit you at her expense, because she cares about you. Me does not always make the best choices for herself because she is looking out for other people. This might be why Me is doing the hermit thing at the moment, because if she doesn’t take care of herself for a while, there will be no Me of which to speak. It’s easier to take care of Me when everyone else is gone.

I had professional development all day and then a union meeting, so I was at the District Office for entirely too many hours…with almost no caffeine (mistake) and food I shouldn’t have eaten. Not a good combo. My brain had too much time to wander.

I came home briefly and had to shuttle girlchild to soccer. Yes. She needs back surgery and she’s still playing. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. Pain is an interesting beast. She can’t actually make the injury worse. So we’ll see how much of the high-school season she gets through as we wait for them to schedule the surgery. I’m the mom. I have to be the strong one. I have to manage her freakouts and not have any of my own. She is going to be depressed. Soccer is a huge part of her life. Not having it, even knowing that she WILL have it in the future, puts her in a deep hole. I know that hole. So I have to try to hold her up, out of the hole, from within the hole where I have been for over 4 months now. Hard job. Need stronger muscles.

Dinner happened between drop off and pick up and then exercise and meditation. The days have some routine to them…maybe too much routine. I don’t know. Is it better to have a routine I can depend on and that doesn’t challenge my limited emotional capabilities at the moment, or is it better to shake it up? This weekend has some opportunities to shake it up. I don’t know if I have the energy, mentally, physically, or emotionally. In meditation, he talked about how emotions change quickly, how you can go from one to the other, and we usually only notice the actual change. I change from sad to really sad to painfully sad. Sigh. Deepening sadness. Tinges of sad. Sadness followed by a grief chaser. There isn’t a lot of relief from sad.

Choose to be happy, my ass. I just keep going. Someday I’ll get somewhere.

I had a little Wonder Under cutting time…

Not a lot. It’s slow going…lots of teensy weensy pieces with really annoying and complicated shapes. Stupid designer. This is going to take me a lot longer than the other quilt.

I’m still a total klutz…I mean, I’ve never been a particularly graceful person. I’m the queen of spilling things. But it’s been worse in the last few months…this was a good one. Making dinner, had the strainer full of peas, draining water, and went to put it in the bowl with the pasta and somehow (SOMEHOW) hit the cupboard door (which is at head height…no, I don’t know how I did it).

The dog was very excited. Apparently she likes peas.

Am I depressed? Yes. Did I cry today? Fuck yeah. Multiple times. Did I laugh heartily (or maybe just like a crazy person) when I threw peas all over the kitchen? Damn straight.

Bring on the Happy, Dammit…

First of all, I am moving on to the next step on the Celebrating Silver quilt. I might pinbaste the other quilt this week, like on a night when I get home before 9 PM maybe. I will be quilting it over the Tday weekend, so it’s not a rush. I do need to get started on Silver though…ideally getting some fabric cut out before that week as well. Cutting out Wonder Under is relatively boring. I watch TV while I’m doing it, but it’s also nitpicky and fussy, especially with all the tiny little pieces, so it’s hard to start when you’re already tired, because it often feels like work.

But I did it anyway, because I’m persistent (and crazy) like that…

I didn’t do a lot, 45 minutes, but it’s a start. I got one yard cut out, but it was a yard with lots of long big dirt pieces in it. If I work on it every night, it won’t take very long, and then I can start picking fabrics for that one as well, which means I need a background fabric, which means I have to make a decision about the color of the background fabric, which means I have to start coloring that sucker in my head. No problem. Especially if I have another insomniac night when I wake up like three times for no apparent reason and can’t go back to sleep. Meditative breathing got a real workout today, starting about about 1 AM. At least I’m using what I learn in meditation practice, eh? I’m hoping that between the lack of sleep two nights running and the bitchy workout I did at the gym that I can sleep through tonight…because little sleep makes Kathy really sad and unhappy and that’s not good.

I read an article today about 10 simple things you can do today that will make you happier (backed up by science)…the article is here. Is it OK to get irritated by articles like this? I was angry at first, because they make it sound so easy and it’s not that easy for me at the moment, but when I read it the second time (no, I’m not obsessive, shut up), I realized I do most of this stuff already…

I do exercise a lot. I’m revising HOW I exercise, but I don’t think adding 7 minutes/day is going to make a difference…I’m already over 9 hours/week. Wow. That is a lot.

I don’t sleep enough, but hell, it’s not for lack of TRYING. My biology is fucking with me. How do I deal with that? I can’t force myself to sleep more. My brain wakes me up, completely wired, and refuses to go back to sleep (last night truly sucked, and I’m convinced a lot of it is hormonal).

My commute is 2.47 miles. I could walk to work if I didn’t have to carry all that teacher stuff.

I do hang with a small number of friends and family. I could improve on this…but is it quantity or quality? I vote for the latter. It’s on my mind and I’m taking steps.

I could go outside more…although teachers do spend more time outdoors than a lot of office drones. I get to stand outside between each class and walk back and forth outside regularly. I could add to that…not sure how, but working on adding some hiking to my exercise repertoire (more hours!).

Help others, 100 hours/year. Now, does being a teacher count for that? Because I feel like all I do is help others some days, when some days maybe I should spend more time helping myself. I get all helped out. The article talks about spending money on others (being a teacher definitely qualifies for that). So I spent a ton of money on my students and about 6 hours a day for 183 days a year. Seems like a lot.

Practice smiling. Despite the depression, I do smile and laugh every day. Sometimes it’s some dorky kid thing (whether it’s a student or my own children); sometimes it’s something someone wrote (Tanya, Sion, and Monique are good at making me smile). Sometimes it’s that dorky video of cats. Or dogs. You know what I mean.

Plan a trip but don’t take one. OK. That’s just depressing. BUT…that said…I realized yesterday that there were some places I wanted to go, and yes, money is incredibly tight, but at some point in my future, the kids will be gone and on their own, and I could travel, and I am no longer limited by…um…well…certain factors that limited me, shall we say. I talked to my SIL years ago about going to India together…

because neither of our significant others wanted anything to do with that trip. I want to go to Antarctica…

the Galapagos Islands (can you say science teacher? Iguanas that swim!)…

Hawaii for the volcanoes and that park you have to walk into…

I found a friend’s picture of Machu Picchu from when she went a few years ago (at least, I think this is her picture)…

All those places…the Mayan temples, the Egyptian pyramids, all the places I’ve seen in pictures and read about, minus the tour guides and that crap. I just want to go. So I guess I can plan for that, even if it’s 10+ years in the future and I don’t get everywhere I think I want to go. Even if I’m going by myself. There was some animal reserve on the West coast of Chile where only a certain number of people were allowed per year. There. I want to go there. So. I guess that’s a plan. Of sorts.

Meditate: yup. doing that. every day. So there, brain. Take that.

Practice gratitude: I talked about this yesterday and how it goes against my nature. But if you look back at my years of blogging, I do show gratitude…for good books, good movies, good art, being able to make art, pets, kids, donuts, stupid shit, beautiful landscapes. I do it all the time. I just don’t use the words “I am thankful for…”. Maybe it’s just the triteness of those words being trotted out every year in November that I object to…the being thankful for the stuff that keeps me sane and here on the planet? I can do that. I do it all the time. I just don’t label it properly (much like the water faucets in my shower, says my plumber…I blame Dad for switching them around). Tonight? Tonight I am thankful for apples and a decent cup of tea. In a minute, I’m going to be thankful for a warm bed and a Kitten. I’m hoping to be thankful for a reasonable amount of sleep. Did I cry today? Oh yeah. But I still did the stuff I needed to do and even some stuff I wanted to do. I’m thankful for Brussels sprouts, however weird that is.

So that’s it. I’m doing all the things that should be making me happier. I need to sleep more and go outside more. OK. I’ll do that. Bring on the happy, dammit.

It’s Complicated. It’s Messy. It’s Me.

While tracing the crone tonight, I feel the brain anxiously scrabbling at me, trying to draw me in to its worry and pain, but I focus on each piece, drawing it as accurately as possible. I wonder how I would have drawn the crone if I had drawn her before all the bad happened. Would she look so worn, so world-weary? Would I have made her eyes so bagged and wrinkled? Would the cracks in her exterior have shown up? Is she a better piece of art (in progress), a more accurate depiction because of my own recent suffering?

I hate believing that artists have to suffer to make good art. I would like to think that our suffering often draws us (or drags us, as someone recently wrote me) toward creative endeavors as a way of dealing with…processing the pain. Then again, there must be artists who never suffer, right? I don’t know the answer to that.

I am close to the end. I am on piece 1145. There are 80 more pieces to trace. Then it will be on to a different type of meditative act, that of cutting all those pieces apart. I might need to divert some time and energy to the cutting out of fabric pieces for the other piece, the one that needs to be done by the beginning of January, which is drawing closer. The time of year that I hate so much is also drawing closer, the holidays. No break from that this year.

Speaking of breaks, I realized I had been avoiding staying home on Saturday nights…that I had spent over 9 years going out every Saturday night, although usually just to movies and dinner, but money is tight and I spent my weekly budgeted allotment for entertainment on Thursday night, plus I have a lot going on this weekend, lots of stuff that has to get done, and I was feeling overwhelmed, especially since I didn’t do any real art stuff two nights running. And then I was trapped here for 4-plus hours because the oven has been seriously malfunctioning (again) and I was waiting for the fixit guy to show up…luckily, it was the same goofy guy from two years ago who put in the last known thermostat for my oven in the entire world (seriously), and he took it upon himself to MacGyver a solution…

Yup. He didn’t have the right type of screwdriver to adjust the thermostat (long skinny tube with a tiny adjustable screw at the end of it), so he borrowed a wire coathanger from me and made one. Seriously. In my kitchen. And then he tutored me on how to use it and left it with me, and didn’t charge me for labor (I provided the metal). Worst-case, this will be a short-term fix and we’ll have to find some other ghetto option (he wanted to make sure I understood the after-market options would make my kitchen look ghetto…really? More ghetto than it already does?). Because the alternative is $1800-3000 that I don’t have to get a new one in that space. Or just build a fire in there, but that will upset the girlchild, and we don’t want that. Her dad’s oven is also on the fritz and he won’t get his fixed, so she can’t cook anywhere at the moment.

I did the grocery shopping on a Saturday night, like a loser. Yeah! I bought radishes. Exciting. I mailed my nephew’s birthday present, finally. I found incentive stickers for my classroom. These were all things that had been on my list. Tomorrow is my quarterly California Fibers’ meeting, as well as two soccer games, both of which I will miss due to the meeting. I have to plan for school and find my way to the gym.

So I decided when I got back from the grocery store that the best thing I could do for myself tonight was to just slowly experience the evening…do things I wanted to do, and maybe some I needed to (I wrapped all the UK Xmas gifts while he was calibrating the oven…they need to ship out soon)…

I knew I needed to prep the last three month’s of Sue Spargo’s birds to take with me on the trip to Houston (lots of hours on planes). I kind of stopped working on them when I almost burnt the house down with the August package. Whoops. But I need to get going on them. I don’t really NEED to. It would just make me feel better, and they’re easy to work on when traveling, unlike some of the stuff I’m working on at the moment. So I took a few minutes and did that…

I ate. I made dessert. I didn’t eat enough today, so it was OK to eat dessert (I ate real food too, don’t panic). I exercised (I cried during that because of the book I’m reading while on the bike). I meditated (cried during that too, but that’s OK and normal). It’s been a sad day, week…full of loss and realizations and things that are just hard to process…like a bad British pub meal sitting heavy in your gut. Either direction it goes, it’s going to hurt. Cry it out. That’s all I do. Once you’ve cried it all out, though, there’s a quiet sense of peace. It’s not happy, it’s not joyful…it’s just quiet. And some of the sadness is just gone for a while. It’s not overwhelming any more.

I also spent a lot of time petting cats (and dog) today.

That one sat on my lap for a while and I spent some concerted effort smoothing its fur and scratching its head. It was very appreciative.

That one asked for attention, rubbing around my ankles until I petted it…coming up near me while I was tracing and head-butting me until I paid her attention. Kitten is waiting for me to come to bed so she can curl up next to me and vigorously clean her nether regions, and then wake me up at my school-alarm-clock time, which is too early for a weekend wakeup, not that she cares. Close attention paid to the fur-creatures seems to soothe me for a moment. Plus they don’t care if I’m crying. Midnight will even help by cleaning my face for me. She often sits by me while I’m meditating, if I’m in the living room. She cleans herself to the sound of the meditative guy on my app. If I’m in my office, it’s Babygirl who’s listening, perched on the back of my chair, behind my neck.

I wonder what they think about my meditation. Or my crying. The food giver is sad. We love the food giver. She pets us. We must sit close to the food giver and purr on her (shades of Margaret Atwood’s Crakers). Then she will give us more pets and more food. And it will be good.

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good} read!! I {definitely|certainly|absolutely} {enjoyed|loved} every {little bit
of|bit of} it. {I have|I’ve got|I have got} you {bookmarked|book marked|book-marked|saved as a favorite} {to check out|to look
at} new {stuff you|things you} post…|

Like I could choose the words I really wanted to read and come up with my own message. I was amused. It’s almost like poetry. Love poetry of a sort. OK. Not.

I read this blog from start to finish…I think she liked one of my posts and I read one of hers, and then I read the rest. It’s not a lot, but it’s an interesting read. Things like that always make me question my OWN depression though…we always wonder if we have the right to be depressed, doesn’t someone else have it worse? I know people who have actually SAID that to me (not this time around), but I write them off pretty quickly. There’s a lack of understanding there. I think most people around me are trying to be understanding and supportive, and I don’t give many guidelines on how to do that, because I honestly don’t know…and yes, dear counselor, I’m pushing people the fuck away because it’s people that hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt. Everything I do is self-protective and based on years of practice in protecting myself, but there hasn’t been a lot of experience I’ve had with not needing that protection. It’s not my self-protective behaviors that caused this. They certainly didn’t help, but they weren’t the source of the problem. The source was not in me. My issues…well, I’ll get to them. When I can handle everything else, then I will get to them, and I will peel off the armor again, maybe, a little, and honestly…if you want to see the fucking armor peeled off, look at my art. There it is. It’s all hanging out and in the open…this is probably why I find it so hard to STAND next to my art and explain it. Because that IS the deep core, the inside, the painful emotional part. And you want me to own it? (I do own it…I just don’t want to explain it to you. You look at it. You get something out of it. You react to it. I put it out there. Don’t make me explain it.).

One of the things I like about the Fifty2Letters blog is that she posts art, really interesting art, as part of every post. And she writes well. And her story is compelling.

Reading other people’s stories…ideally it helps us suss out our own? My story…it’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s me.

Pushing Back the Swamp

I seem to have pushed back at least a little of the swamp from yesterday. It’s still there, pokes its ugly head up, makes my guts clench, makes me feel nauseous, gives me this headache, and then leaves me alone for a while. I’m exhausted…didn’t sleep well last night. Waking up with chills and then night sweats. I’m not sick. My body did this early on…for the first three weeks on and off. I just figured it was psychological. I’ve had a few since then…problem is, I’m used to the night sweats. Had them for years. They actually seemed better in the last two months, but these chills, they’re awful. I’m so cold I can’t get warm. I pile all the blankets on me, including the down comforter, and then I wake up an hour later sweating to death, and then I get the chills again. Don’t Google it…it’s just freaky. Quite honestly, it could be anything from stress to low blood sugar to something to do with my current meds, which are probably all out of whack with the massive weight loss. So I’ll wait until I go to the doctor next month and bug her about it…try to document when and if there are any triggers…nothing much else to be done.

I’m tense today. Body is tight and about to jump out of its skin. And tired. Not a good mix. But better than yesterday. Yesterday sucked. Really really bad. There will be more days of suckitude. I know my triggers and I try to deal, but there’s only so much talking the logical brain can do until the emotional brain just shuts it outside and turns the music up loud.

I went to a school meeting today about teachers and technology and the law. It was helpful in some ways, but remarkably vague in others, because quite honestly, the law hasn’t caught up with reality. It’s amazing though what teachers are held to that the rest of the world doesn’t need to care about…we live in a culture where a high-ranking government official can be sending pictures of his penis to random women, and teachers are supposed to still be living in the Dark Ages of morality. My art has always been an issue…if someone complains, there will be an investigation. The question I had was is the password I use necessary? I instituted the password about 4 years ago because a parent complained about my website anonymously (hence, no investigation) to the superintendent. I freaked out (like you do) and put the password on there. That said, if you Google me nowadays, my images are all over the web. They’re published in books that you can buy at the local bookstore. If someone is going to come after me for my art, the password on the website isn’t going to protect me. Nothing will.

That said, the lawyer I talked to suggested that art is not the same as my posting nude pictures of myself (wow, wouldn’t that be scary), that art had certain protections…and when it came down to it, if there was discipline against me, I was probably talking to the guy who would handle it. He did advise caution, but I get so many complaints that people can’t get into the site because of the password that I’d rather just get rid of it…and he basically said I could. That I was in so deep with the art at this point that it wouldn’t matter.

So did I come home and remove the passwords from every post? Heck no. First of all, I’m still thinking about it…paranoid daughter of a lawyer here. Second, it would take hours to remove all the password protection, from what I remember from the last time I did it. I could just not use a password from here on out.

I’m still thinking. I already know which of you will urge caution and which will squeal hallelujah.

So it was a long day, nonetheless, but I eventually made it to the tracing table…

I’m about 1015 pieces in (although there are 10 missing? Maybe? I certainly can’t find pieces 986-995), 9 1/2 hours in…about 200 pieces left…nearing the finish line…at least on this step. I think I’m up to 7 yards of Wonder Under…not sure. Too tired to check. Need to take my headache to bed.

We’re getting new teacher computers at school next week, after 4 years of using that ancient beast…it won’t really matter to me, because I usually leave it at school anyway. I have three computers in the house…it seems like enough, although now I’m totally paranoid that something is going to go wrong that I can’t fix (or that the boychild can’t figure out). I hate being vulnerable. Did I tell you that? I need an Ironman suit that also is capable of dealing with everything breaking and going bad and falling down and shooting water into the sky and trees falling down and cars breaking down and all that shit. I’m so tired of being the only one dealing with it all and not having anyone else you can depend on for help with getting it done or packing it up or cleaning it up or any of that. It just gets old.

The wonder of being a single mom. If I weren’t such a mental mess, I’m sure I would be able to get them to tidy up a bit more, but I just don’t have the energy.

Tomorrow…tomorrow is going to be interesting. I don’t know if it will be good or not, but that’s the thing…you never do know. Taking the sad person to sleep. I’ll tell you, if one more person says you just have to CHOOSE to be happy and it magically fucking happens, I may have to launch myself at them. I’m sure that’s possible if you aren’t carrying around biochemical markers for depression, but right now, happiness is not something I can just magically choose, and if I did, I would be faking it. You have to get through the grief and make sure that what was cracked is at least mending, that whatever caused all the issues in the first place is actually gone or going or at least well understood. Otherwise you’re just going to be doing it again at some point in the future, and if you’re lucky like me, you’ll do all the healing and mending and then you’ll get to do it all again because someone ELSE didn’t do it and you get to pay for their dumbass maneuvers.

Yeah. So hopefully none of THAT angst will wake me up in the middle of the night. I need my rest.

Protected: All Hail, DNA…

Protected: Dear Brain:

Protected: Earth Stories Final Chapter…

Protected: If You Can’t Go Up or Down an Escalator…