I Did It

I wrote yesterday that I was going to ignore my fatigue and just do the art that’s been in my head.  And I did.  The actual act of doing the art took even more of my limited energy reserve.   But mentally it gave me a bit more energy.  I’m really proud of how my abstract rainbow turned out.

As far as my body, I was doing slightly better.  And then……  my boss decided to have a summer party for the kids.  Yes, this involved me supervising 30 kids in a room that shouldn’t hold more than 10 kids at a time.  I was running back and forth serving food and making sure nobody was dying.  I didn’t get to sit down until 6:30.  My whole body aches.  And as much as I want to sleep in tomorrow, I think I need to get up and go to PT and maybe get some of the more tender points injected.

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Just Gonna Do It

I’m tired.  Oh lordy I’m tired.  Sometimes it’s the interactive classes that take it out of you.  Sometimes it’s the sloth classes that take it out of you.  Yay, I had both today.  And I have the sloth class again tomorrow.

I have a couple of art pieces in my head.  But I just haven’t had the energy to do them.  Well, damn it.  I’m just going to do them now.

 

On a side note, it’s scary how much these two cats like the kangaroo cat food.  I’m feeding them a brand called “Nature’s Gift” from Australia.  I just shudder at the though of kangaroos being made into cat food.  Maybe I’m weird.  OK.  I am weird.

Title Unknown

I couldn’t come up with a title.  My brain is like mush.

I have ideas for art, but the amount of energy it takes to get my stuff out and set up seems infinite.  The amount of energy I have.  Very little.  I know I need to do things like art so my day doesn’t go get up, go to a doctor, go to work, come home, try to eat, go to bed.

I’m so apathetic about everything right now.

The only thing that made me smile today was the lady that came in with the 1 month old kitten while I was in the vet.  Such a cutie pie.  But it made me sad it was away from its momma.  4 weeks is way to early for kittens to be on their own, even with a good owner.  It was a male orange tabby.

One Day At a Time

I woke up with back spasms.  Not fun.  I took my meds and went back to bed.

I got back up and went to a coffee shop.  I had some (very strong) Korean Lemon tea and finished my stupid phone calls.

I came back home and fell back into bed.  I need some sort of muscle relaxer.

I got up to an email from my boss wanting me to transcribe a video for her church.  “It’s only 6 minutes”…  Do you know how long it takes to transcribe 6 minutes of audio?  About 60.  I was not happy.  Yay vacation.

I set up a redbubble account for my art.  The option is there to buy.  Why anyone would want to…  I put up some of my art therapy stuff and some of my photography.

And now, as my back is still is spasms, I’m going to try to stretch again and go to bed.  One day of vacation left.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Tired and Sore

Yeah.  I had fun in Seoul yesterday.  Today I’m paying the price.  I got up at 9 as usual, and ate some breakfast.  Then, back to bed.  Got up at noon, ate some lunch (actually the same cereal I ate for breakfast).  Got up a few hours later and finally managed to get dressed.  I went grocery shopping and bought the essentials.  Came home and took some pain meds.  Made my rounds of the internet and now it’s time for bed.

Tomorrow I’m going to go for PT, head to the bank and the post office.  I still have my stupid phone calls to make.

Also, I thought I’d add a piece I did while waiting for the train yesterday.  By the way, I figure if I suck at drawing people, I’d make them people like but abstract enough to, well, be my style.

 

Fatigue

New Theme

While I really liked the dark simplicity of my previous theme, I think I’m ready for something more cheerful.  I think this counts as cheerful.  It’s only 5:45 AM, but I’m up.  I woke up wanting to do some art.

Both cats are on the bed staring at me.  I’m not sure what they want.  Probably to eat my brains or something.  What can I say?  Cats are weird.  You just have to accept that.

Speaking of cats being weird, Ivory got herself on top of the wardrobe (how???) and then couldn’t get down.  She ended up using my head as a step to the floor.  Cats.

I did do some art.  It’s early.  I’d like to say I can see the sun rising, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun.  Such is life during monsoon season in Korea.

Sunrise

 

Abstract Sunrise

Art

I’ve been doing some art lately.  I’ve been experimenting with different media.  I splurged on a large set of watercolor pencils.  You can draw with them like colored pencils, but a little water on a brush changes them into watercolors.  Actually it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  I tend toward the abstract end of the scale.  I can’t draw anything beyond a stick figure, and still my students laugh.  I laugh right with them because my drawings are actually pretty funny.  Put they do get their point across.  And that’s the number one goal of my drawings while teaching.

So here are the two watercolor/pencil ones I did today.

Butterfly of Life

Anger and Sadness

 

I hope you enjoy them or they inspire you.

Nighttime

This is a piece, well, that I don’t know how to describe.  I’ve been having pain at night.  And I’ve been having more nightmares.  So I just started putting color on paper.  There is something relaxing about getting your fingers in the chalk (though I do use tissue to blend larger areas).  I guess I need to find some place safe to store these pieces.  I fix the pastels with spay fixative so I’m not so worried about them degrading.  It’s the random cleaning sprees.  I think I threw out all of my other art work when I moved.

Tired

I’m a bit physically tired.  Four classes in a row including a kindergarten class takes it out of you.  Most of all I’m emotionally exhausted.  Dr. P upped the Impiramine and added Lexapro back in.  The Gabapentin is working really well on the pain.  Getting out of bed isn’t a 5 minute painful ordeal.

So I’m going to sign off and watch some TV.  I’ll leave you with a palm tree I did in pastels.  I don’t know if it’s so much that I feel so alone or I want to be alone.

 

It’s Not in My Head

What is with Dr. K?  First he says fibro, then he says psychosomatic, then he says fibro, now we’re back to psychosomatic.  He wants me to see a friend of his, a psychiatrist.  I pointed out that I had one and I’m quite happy with him (for the most part).

I don’t understand how the pain can be in my head if it responds to medication, trigger point injections and physical therapy.  I left his office (after he did the injections) feeling like crap.  This is not in my head.  Stress makes it worse.  The stress level at work now is through the roof.  My so called breaks where I usually do lesson planning and grading were filled with stupid shit like making a transcript out of a YouTube video so Sky Class could do it as a dictation exercise for homework.  Do you know how long it takes to transcribe 6 minutes of video?  Approximately 90 minutes.  I give it to my boss who starts to type it up.  She comes in and says “I think you forgot part of it.”  Uh no E, did you turn the paper over?  I wrote on both sides.  “OHHHHHHHH”.  Yeah.  That was my day Friday.  I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I think the worst part is the brain fog and the fatigue.  When I have a bit of energy, I have to take advantage of it.  Today I got a new desk chair (I was tired of sitting on a card table chair) and a printer/scanner.  Do you think I bought paper?  Nope.  Which, is OK because the few other things I did buy (glue and scissors for my classroom) fit it my backpack.  But here I am lugging two big boxes into a cab.  Then getting them out of the cab.  And then getting them to the second floor.

The chair got put together with a reasonable amount of ease.  Except I put the arms on upside down the first time.  No big deal.

The printer is hooked up, but the scanning software wants to be smarter than me.  Maybe there’s a setting someplace I’m not seeing.  But for the love of God, I want it to scan the entire piece of paper I put in there, not what it thinks I want scanned.  Amazingly, I didn’t curse at the thing.  I just kept on trying different thing.  Speaking of software, who would have figured out that a program named “Seashore” with an icon of a fish would be a basic image editor.  Not me.  I didn’t even think to click the stupid thing until I did a search on image editors for Macs.

Now, speaking of the brain fog, I’m trying to do a python course through LinuxChix.  Units 1 and 2 were fine.  Unit 3 should have been fine, but even copying other students’ answers I still couldn’t get it to work.  So I’ve yet to finish Unit 3 and Unit 4 arrived in my inbox earlier today.  I think I’m going to print out the original emails (when I buy some paper that is) and mark it up.  I don’t do well reading heavy stuff online anymore.  It’s like my brain can’t process it unless I can actively make notes on it.  It’s sad.  I feel like I’m getting dumber and dumber every day.

I started some art therapy today (see saga with scanner and saga with finding an image editor).  I like what I did even if it’s ugly…  and I wanted to post it here.

 

 

There’s no head in my picture, that’s because the pain (represented by red) isn’t in my head.  My head has little to do with it.  Unless you want to get highly technical and then all pain signals and processed in the brain so it really is all in my head.  But the pain in my back and chest and shoulders and neck and elbows and wrists and knees and ankles…  all of it is real.  I’m not making this up.  This isn’t some kind of neurosis or psychosis (not my words, but Dr. K’s or possibly his friend’s words).