X-Files – Kathy Nida

I’m up at holy shit in the morning because boychild leaves for college today. I’m not taking him. It would be really hard to take the second and third days of school off without there being major issues, so his dad is taking him out there. It’ll be good for his dad to see Cornell anyway, and I would just annoy the crap out of him at the moment because I’m all girl-like and hey let’s get set up and fill out your I-9 so you can get a job and say HI to people and stuff. You know. Like a mom. Plus I probably wouldn’t stop crying, and that’s never cool when you’re a freshman in college, mom sobbing away in a ball of saltwater on your dorm room floor.

He has missing teeth in that picture. And girlchild, what is UP with the barrettes? Sheesh. (2004…ages 7 and 8)

I’m actually too tired to be emotional right now.

So I send him off this morning. Yesterday afternoon I got home from my first (LONG) day of school…OK, it’s only long because I haven’t talked that much without stopping since, um, the LAST day of school…OK, not even that…since the last day I taught something I had to talk a lot about (sexually transmitted diseases, to be specific, probably AIDS), and the boychild has dumped all his clothes on the couch and folded about 5 shirts. So I start folding and putting in logical piles and tell him to go find everything he wants to bring and he eventually brings more stuff (dude. where’s your jacket. seriously.). I realize I can ship some of the warmer stuff if I need to, because I don’t think New York is going to go to freezing before mid-September (we Southern Californians are not great with actual seasons, so I don’t actually know if this is true, but I do have a weather app that claims there’s a 54% chance he will be hit by lightning in the next two weeks), but it would be nice not to have to ship anything.

So we count underwear and he’s a little short. You have to understand that I asked him back in early July about his underwear (oh my god, mother, do we have to talk about underwear?) and suggested a two-week minimum. Because I went to college. And laundry is not fun. And you have to fight for machines, even if you’re a night owl like me. In fact, I do not even remember doing laundry the first two years. Maybe I didn’t. I remember doing it in Britain, because there were three buildings all attached to each other and you had to go to the very bottom floor (I was on the 4th or 5th floor?) of the furthest one away and it was like going to Siberia, it was so far away and no elevators, just up and down stairs, and a total pain in the ass. I asked about socks too. So it was no shocker to me that he only had 11 pairs of underwear (why is underwear a PAIR? a PAIR of what?) and 8.5 pairs of socks. One with holes in them. Where the hell is his sock stash? We never did find it.

You might be saying to yourself, Kathy, why did you not get him to pack earlier? Do you think I didn’t try? Do you think I haven’t been telling him to pack for the last WEEK? Or MORE? Yup. This is why I meditate. And drink alcohol. At the same time. In the morning.

So after my first day of school, at 5:00 at night, we got in the car and went to Target for underwear and socks. Sigh. Yes, I know he can buy stuff there, but…I wanted to at least attempt to send him off outfitted with those, because he’s got no cold-weather clothing or shoes and he’s going to have to figure all that out on his own. And I’m his MOM, dammit.

Then I get the big suitcase packed and it’s 3,000 pounds. Not gonna fly. Literally. Send boychild over to grandparents’ house to get smaller second suitcase that will fit inside big one on the trip back (his dad is bringing those back; we’re leaving him a duffel bag…it’s all he wanted) while I start making dinner. Girlchild is still mostly out of food commission because of chipmunk cheeks from wisdom-teeth removal. I did go to the store for her already and purchase soup and bread and ice cream and something else. I did not make her risotto like she wanted. She’s the cook. Yes, I did all that after school too.

Second suitcase shows up and I reapportion the load. We’re under the max weight on both of them now. Good job. Unfortunately, he wants to add stuff this morning, so I don’t actually know if it’s under or not. You know what? It is no longer my problem. He’s on dadwatch now.

My mom is driving them to the airport, because I can’t guarantee I’ll be back in time for school, and honestly, it was easier to have him do the dorky I’m not gonna look you in the eye OR hug you thing here. Boys. Asperger boys. Sigh. So yeah. He’s gone. I’ve already booked his flights for Winter Break. I looked at flights for Thanksgiving for me…he doesn’t get the whole week off, but I do. Not sure what I’m going to do about that. It’s not cheap. Girlchild wants to go too. But I will have to pay for all those college applications and test scores at the same time. So. Yeah. I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I’ve had about 4.5 hours of sleep and I’m teaching in two hours…and possibly two more cups of tea. Eyes. Open.

I did do quilt stuff last night. I stitched down all five bird quilt tops…

And then I started sandwiching and pin-basting.

None of them take very long to do, luckily.

I think I started after 10 PM. Can’t remember what I was doing before. I’m sure it was something very important. Yes, normal people go to bed at 10 PM. I know that.

Seriously. I’m not awake. Maybe I should go back to bed for an hour and set the alarm, except my hair’s wet now from the shower and it will look goofy as hell if I do that. Goofier than normal. And it should be obvious by now that I don’t go to bed at a normal hour.

I have quilt class tonight, assuming girlchild doesn’t need me at her soccer practice to yell at parents. She is having a hard time with a couple who don’t respect her knowledge base. Sure, it’s hard to think that a 17-year-old can coach 9-year-olds in soccer, but she’s been playing since she was 5 and helping her dad coach for like the last 5 years. I think she’s probably better than about half the parents I’ve seen out there.

Oh yeah, and I saw the final episode of X Files last night. I started rewatching the series back in January, because I liked it then and I didn’t remember most of it. I realized that I hadn’t seen the last season at all, which isn’t surprising, because it aired in 2001-2002, so I had a 4- and 5-year-old at home while working and going to school to get my teaching credential online. I finished my masters in May or June of 2002, I think. And then I got divorced that fall…well, separated anyway. It’s possible that TV was not a priority. The series wasn’t the same without Mulder, of course, although I love Doggett and Reyes NOW. The last episode tried to explain everything, which is kinda lame, but I did enjoy rewatching it. I guess I’ll have to start watching something else now…something that doesn’t have any major triggers and keeps me entertained but allows my art brain to pick fabrics or iron without too much distraction (yes, I have to distract my own brain in order to get stuff done).

Anyway, all this distracts me from the boychild’s departure, which is probably a good thing at the moment. Keep the brain over THERE. It’s also probably good that the girlchild is with me for the next 5 days, because her dad is gone, although she has three social events planned and at least two soccer practices. I might be in trouble with her because I didn’t wake her up to say goodbye to her brother, but we kinda ran out of time, because he kept handing me stuff to shove into his luggage. At the last minute. Because yeah. Probably he didn’t want to think too hard about leaving either.

Last night, he says, “Hey, if you clean my room, don’t throw anything out.” And I’m looking at his room, which is usually pretty neat. And it’s not. Sigh. OK. I’ll be cleaning his room, I guess. Only so it’s easier to clean up the cat puke. And find his secret stash of nudie magazines. OK. That’s not happening. Pre-internet, right? And it’s more likely to be sci fi/fantasy graphic novels…which I’ve already read.

The sriracha sauce will sit in the fridge unused for months now. And wait until Babygirl realizes he’s gone (I had to promise to comb her regularly last night…must find comb). OK. Have to go render young minds.

I get to milestones and they don’t register. Or they don’t register correctly. You finished a step in making a quilt! Cool! Yup. Not feeling it. It’s almost worse getting a step done…because then I think, wow, you don’t feel any better, any different. You are still sad, depressed, slogging through the days, taking the next step and the next one, waiting for something to make a difference, to make your heart show up, to make the feelings get out of the sad realm. But they don’t. It’s just the same.

I ironed today.

Every tree needs lightning bolts.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter that I ironed today. I also helped the boychild with his college apps; we got through the worst of it (well, he still has to write essays and ask for recommendations, so that might be the worst of it, and I have to pay for all of it, which also could be painful). I cleaned a bathroom. I grocery-shopped. I wrote a quilt statement. I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing. I worked out. I added a new bunch of exercises to my regimen, because if I’m going to be an antisocial, lonely old lady, I might as well be a strong, buff, antisocial, lonely old lady who does not have osteoporosis. None of that really mattered. I don’t know what matters.

I found the eyelid, after I had cut another one. That whole pile is pieces that I’ve found after I cut another one, or pieces I had cut out twice, or pieces that were totally the wrong color. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems mean to throw them out simply because I fucked up when I cut them out.

I’ve found that most TV shows right now rub me the wrong way. People are so shitty to each other in relationships that I can’t handle it; it makes me feel sick. So I’m watching X-Files. Mulder is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he’s well-meaning. I can handle shows from the 90s. Great. And Masterpiece Theater Mystery. That’s about it.

I didn’t start ironing until after 9, I think. I don’t know where the day went. It just went.

Once I got it all ironed together, I pulled it off the ironing sheets and rolled it up while I got the background ready to go, ironed it flat and laid it out on the floor.

I laid out the base first…the tree is easier to put down once the main section is ironed flat.

That’s most of it…missing two toenails, a fingernail, some drops of blood, a question mark, some dots over i’s, and a plug. I did get those on too, but didn’t manage a photo of that. You’ll see it again, once it’s stitched down. I’m hoping to do that tomorrow. It’s about 40″ wide x 50″ high. Something like that. She’s not happy, is she. I drew this back in June…before my life fell into a crack in the earth. I guess she knew what was coming. But she’s not crying…

I have to admit to a new emotion that’s showing up in meditation. Why do I have to admit to it? Because it’s scary. Admitting to it will hopefully make it less so. What emotion? Fear. Straight up. I’m scared of my future (or lack thereof), I’m scared of not feeling safe and comfortable…like…almost…ever. I’m just plain scared. I thought I had the future figured out. I knew shit would happen…it always does…but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t know then that everything that made me feel safe would just be gone. Without any input from me, without any chance to have a say or work on things…just gone. And I know that’s what happens when you put trust in other people, which we have to do to be in this world. OK, some people don’t…it’s true…but I don’t want to be one of those people…I’m already a bit of a hermit, and I know I could go further along that road, and I may very well wander down there for a good long time. It’s quiet, there are very few people, and I don’t have to deal with other people’s stupid shit affecting me.

But I don’t like being scared. No one does. We rush around when we’re anxious and scared and we try to control everything so we feel better, safer, and it doesn’t really work. It’s inside us and we have to work on the part inside us that reacts to things; that’s what causes the fear. It’s not the other people, the things…it’s us. So if I see scared in meditation and I feel scared in meditation (and elsewhere), I just have to face it and figure out how to make it feel safer INSIDE me. Because that’s where it lives.

Tonight’s meditation kept talking about my mental state…and I kept thinking, “like California?” A state as in a physical place with a flag and a state flower and state bird and state motto, “In nothing we trust,” and a state tree. A state of mind. A state of being. A state of matter. And then Mr. Meditation started talking about the blue sky, and that’s when I lost it…my state? The theory is that the blue sky is always there. It may be obstructed by clouds, sometimes light and feathery and easy to push through, and sometimes big and black and dark and thick…but if you just push through, you can see the blue sky. I don’t know how thick the layer of big black clouds is, but I can’t see the sky. I know it’s there, though, and that makes me sad…knowing it exists and I can’t see it, I can’t figure out how to get high enough to see the blue. It’s there though.

So yeah, that makes me cry. I’m fucking hopeless some days.

And during the 20 seconds when we’re meant to let the brain just do what it needs to do, and we sit back and observe and “note”…it’s screaming…full on screaming its head off…and I’m crying. That’s not stepping back. That’s not noting. That’s responding. That’s watching the movie and feeling it in your gut, your heart, where your heart used to be but where there’s a giant sucking hole now. That place.

Boychild sent me this link to the DSM-5 reviewed as a dystopian novel. It’s actually fairly amusing, especially when you know you’re experiencing a few of the things in there. I should just think of my life as a fucked-up dystopian novel, write it as a book, and make a couple million (someone’s debut novel just made them that amount…seriously? What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. I’m not writing a book.).

I realized today that I had meant to ink the Earth Stories quilt, but then I forgot. Or something. My brain not being itself and all. So it’s photographed for the catalog already, but I didn’t ink it. So I was thinking…should I ink or should I not? It doesn’t ship until March or April of next year. I have time. How the fuck did I forget the inking? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. My brain, it wanders off and does things without telling me, and I don’t find out for days or weeks after. I could just leave it alone (the quilt, not my brain…my brain needs me to pay attention to it). Fuck. I don’t know. Does it matter if it’s different than the catalog? It probably won’t be hugely noticeable? I don’t know. I will have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I could think about that instead of all the angst my brain currently dwells upon.

Wishful thinking.

Tag: X-Files

Oh Lonely Sriracha

Wishful Thinking