The real me...

A friend sent me this picture he took last year at our gala 20th anniversary of sobriety party. Best shot anyone has taken of the cowwoman in many moons. I like that it is black and white, and kind of fuzzy, always a good thing in these latter days of life. Oooh, it was TWO years ago. My, how time flies when one is over the hill. I don't know about you, but I hope to coast the rest of the way.

The road of happy destiny...

The 9th step promises say we will be relieved of fear of economic insecurity. Notice, that does not promise that economic insecurity will go away. Oh, nonono. Only that we will not quiver at its imminent approach. Well, here it comes again! And I am working on it, really I am. Perhaps this is HP's way of saying I should market my art? Though, I have always thought I needed to frame it before that happened. Maybe just mat it? Don't know. Mulling here. Meanwhile, I just keep painting, like this Monet homage, a copy of a still life he did, very busy and rather muddled, but fun in the end. Oh, hell. I am just going to keep having fun, and trust that the prosperity will land on me like a butterfly. You have to sit still for that to happen, you know.

And wiped the palette off to make this next...

Didn't want to waste any pigment, a holdover from my Scots mother who never wasted a thing in her very long life, so I did this. Really, I love the acrylic on paper. Don't feel like I need to be perfect or eloquent, just no real investment in using up the materials or in the final product. It is what it is, in the precious moment of its creation. Happy Sunday, Big Blue Ball.

Nothing to do today, ho hum...

Really, there was plenty to do. Laundry beckoned. The leaves are in piles and will not get into the yard waste bin by themselves. I could write my morning pages that I didn't do this morning. Instead, I felt truly sorry for myself (tooth is still aching, after all), went to a noon meeting and thought about someone else for a while, sweet newcomer who is braving the raging river of new recovery, offered her a paddle and a prayer, then came home to stare at my computer monitor and some mindless games to take my mind off my aches and miseries. Then said NUTS and painted a couple of mindless little ditties, not particularly interested in any outcome at all, and gee, kind of fun. Now headed for an early night hoping to catch up on some sleep that has been denied me as I try to overcome this blasted infection, and fear of economic insecurity that has raised its ugly head as I contemplate paying for all this horrid dental work. Ah, life on life's terms. Truly sucks sometimes.

Saturday potpourri...

Chaotic little mess I made using up the remainder of a palette from another, more mannered mess. Kind of appropriate for the current situation in the little yellow house. Just as I was hoping to have an easing in the monthly budget, having paid off a large, ancient debt, I made another one yesterday to have major dental work done, an even bigger one, sigh. One more year of eeking along, sigh. Meanwhile, I saw on a PBS channel that I was surfing by the other night that the universe is expanding at just the right rate. Any slower and it would collapse on itself. Any faster, there could be no life. So it actually looks like the whole freaking universe was designed to support and protect us fragile beings crawling on the surface of this pretty blue ball. No wonder scientists become mystics. There is a great and wondrous order to everything. Previous PBS lurking taught me that everything is made of the same stuff. That would be you, me, the stars, the flowers, the rocks, ad infinitum. And that most of everything is nothing, vast empty spaces in the atoms between the nucleus and all those crazy electrons spinning around it in a frenzy. Gee, I think I'll go back to bed with my toothache and contemplate that for a while.

A little circle of sorrow...

I attended the first evening of a four week seminar on grief from pet loss. Six women were there, with Reverend Leslie of the Center for Spiritual Living. I saw that I am in good company here, that the process is much more spiritual than I had thought. Still have a problem looking at photos of Boo, but I did take my sketchbook drawing I made earlier this year. Our workbook has pages where I can make more sketches, too. We had an altar in the center of our circle, where we put pictures and toys. Other dogs did not make the mess of their toys like my Boo did. Perhaps I will bring his bowls, the blue and white ones with little paw prints on them, next week. And his baby picture. Lordy, he was obscenely cute as a baby. Well, he was cute all his life, little teddy bear dog that he was. A couple of the other women in the group were still grieving actively, sobbing. That is not happening to me, and I think it is because of the long, long, long recovery I have practicing letting go. Whatever, I will profit from writing out our story, the Boo and I, and acknowledging the lessons he taught me, like loving with a totally open heart, walking sloooowwwwly because he was always waddling in front of me, confident he knew where I was going, and gratitude for his warm, furry presence, even as I swept drifts of black hair from every corner of the little yellow house. There will never be another Boo.

Brrrr. Turn up the furnace, fall has fallen.

So, here I am, all trussed up in my sweats, several layers of them, resisting turning up the thermostat, because that will raise the PG&E bill, and it is still early in the fall, right? Don't know what has happened to global warming in our little corner of the globe. Here, it has been unseasonably cold for summer, with only a day or two of heat in between. Don't want to know what that has done to our monocultural crop of grapes. Late harvest, for sure. Low sugar, probably. Bitter wine. Couldn't care less, not doing wine any more. Meanwhile, contemplating alerting my local classical station to the ingenuity of my favorite streamed station, RMF Classic, from Krakow, Poland. They don't play those dry-as-dust contemporaries of Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, guys. If they are languishing in obscurity, there is a REASON, guys. Why not pull out some Dvorak or Katchutorian or Sibelius, the lesser known pieces, or Ralph Vaughn Williams? Today I heard an amazing piece by Williams. Couldn't tell you what it was. The crawl was in Polish. Still, there is a wealth of bouncy, perky music out there that is obscure only because these composers have such a bounty of more performed works. Okay, they don't have to stoop to Sting or Harry Connick, Jr., but an occasional TV theme would be nice. Yesterday, RMF Classic played the theme to Dr. Kildare (Richard Chamberlain, Raymond Massey, in the '60s, remember?). I almost wept with the joy of it. Well, that felt good. I will admit, I like romantic music. No longer ashamed of that, either. Everyone should just get over it.

It's raining...

...and not one of those gray days when God kind of just spits on me, but real rainy rain, the kind that will demand an umbrella just to get across the street to get the mail. And the five day forecast says no sunshine till Thursday. And we all know what that means. It's fall. Just like that. So, time to haul all the summer duds to the back closet and the winter stuff to the bedroom. And dig under the bed for the knockoff Uggs and other more waterproof footwear and bury the sandals there for six months. Hell, I am even thinking of turning on the furnace! Well, maybe not right away. Pickle is snoring on the rug. Smart cookie. She knows that 3 PM is a natural circadian trough, and takes a nap. Or maybe this is just an extension of her after lunch nap, which was an addendum to her after breakfast nap. Really smart cookie, the lone Pickle. And here is another of Martha's arrangements in this cut glass vase that I thought I could not paint, and probably didn't, but it works for me now. Strange flowers, probably passion flowers, which I think are from Mars.

With thanks to Martha...

I have been very abundant lately. Since I am in this frenzy of creativity, friends have been gifting me with lots of magazines. One was Martha Stewart Living. Yeah, I really need that. But, gee, here were all these dandy floral arrangements. I got so excited, I literally jumped up out of bed to lay a palette and paint this one. It got pickier than I have been lately, and at the same time, is wonderfully messy and kind of just THERE. Happiness is a mess of acrylics and a Bristol pad. Which I replenished at Riley Street, this weekend, the last of their Back to School sale, where everything was 40 to 50% off. New brushes, even! Rich. I am so very rich here.

The fish and I.

I went in for my annual eye exam this week. This is new behavior. I ignored my eyes for a long time (no insurance, and no prescription, just over the counter readers, tons of them, everywhere), and we all know how that backfired, when, last year, I was diagnosed with narrow angle glaucoma and had to have surgery to save my eyesight. Scary stuff. Well, this time, better news. However, while I was sitting in the enclosed windowless area where they park you while the drops work (dilating drops are much less painful than the constricting ones they used before my surgeries, I can tell you), I got all involved with this one little fish in the aquarium in the middle of the room. He was a silver guy, actually bigger than the average goldfish, with two long feeler thingies that he whipped around like flags. He kept kissing the surface of the water or pushing against the plants. I got all worried that, not only was he lonely in there all by himself, but hungry, too. Geez, is anybody feeding this poor fish? Got all codependent about the damned fish. Then I gave the fish to HP, let go of my worry and went on to get examined. Got a clean bill from my nebbish of an eye doctor. Corneas relatively clear, pressure good, cornea thickness good, macula clear, optic nerve healthy, tiny adjustment to my progressives. Yay! And, when I got home, in honor of that dear fish who so amused me during the boring half hour with all the other geriatric patients, I did a little painting of fish. It's a strange world here in the little yellow house.

Yes, but is it art?

Our little burg has gotten all artsy fartsy, I noticed, on my way down Santa Rosa Avenue, our local hooker drag and auto row. There is an obelisk! Wow! How very sophisticated. Usually, one only sees obelisks in Egypt, or Washington DC, or in front of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Though I am not sure if this is the best artistic expression for this particular location. It appears that this obelisk is fashioned out of old auto parts. I guessed this from the Toyota emblem that was most evident as I passed by. Well, it is ingenius, I guess. Someone thought of something to do with all those bits of metal left over after the crushing machine has done its duty. And, one wonders if anyone in this world, like the Pope and his college of Cardinals, knows the real meaning of an obelisk. I do, because I took comparitive mythology in college, and that was only a couple of years ago, so I still remember what I learned there (shelf life of college classes tends to get staledated pretty fast when you are in your 7th decade of existence on the Big Blue Ball). In the Egyptian pantheon, the sky god was female, the earth god, male. So one can make a fair assumption of the true reason for an obelisk, right? I heard one guy had made the obelisk his Higher Power. Nothing new there.

Another day, another mess...

Never have been into neatness, but it's getting a little out there these days, when I spend long hours being pretty pissed off, and just need an outlet to defray all that energy. Now also need a whole big bunch of paint, and gee, just got an email saying Riley Street, our friendly neighborhood art supply store, is still having their beginning of the semester sale, so, tomorrow, when the new credit union, the one that ate my old credit union, will finally post my pension income, which used to be posted today, one day before the last day of the month, I will head over there to get lots more acrylics, which I thought I would never like or use, and now am madly in love with. Things change. All the time, every day. It's not good or bad. Annoying, maybe.

Screw-it art...

Sometimes, I just get really pissed off. I miss my Boo! I want my dog back! It feels like I have regressed to my two year old self. Not that I could act out then. Oh, nonono. But today, when there is no one in the little yellow house but me and the Pickle, well, who cares if I just stomp around and kick stuff. Those boxed that I threw in a corner were handy targets, but I actually broke them down and put them in the recycling container the other day. So I just did a big nothing with paint and paper, a spiral of grief, with a hot center. That's what it feels like, like I could fall into it and burn myself up. Makes me thirsty to look at it. Off to get a diet root beer. And more paint. Have burned through most of the pigments! I like doing these nothing paintings. No investment in anything, not the expense, not the outcome. Just about process. Perhaps that is always true. You think?

Tuesday stuff...

Waiting for my Artist's Way group to arrive, check in and go forward with this week's tasks. Have been pretty vigilant, done my %#^*% morning pages most days, artist's date every week, and a selection of that week's tasks most of the time, too. Really think I have come along here, as I am producing several pieces a week, some good, some really kind of twitch like this one, not done yet, but gee, I see promise here, as well as some audacity. Just went online to check one of my mentor's websites, and wow, I can leave things just as sketchy as I like, yes! Actually, I am more and more excited by this process, and, perhaps, please HP, I will find my particular bent, the one that identifies ME in every painting or pastel. You think? Or, do I even need that? Ah, questions are good. Actually, better than answers in many ways, because there are so many ways one could go, and an answer is so very structured. Not my style, structure.

Well, THAT"S over...

Sometimes, it's easy. I have been struggling with a recalcitrant mouse for month's now. Cleaned it with alcohol. Got it a new pad. Still, push, pull, drag, ACCCHH! New thing happened. Any screen that scolled leaped about like a whirling dervish. Could not get the cursor to settle on anything in iTunes, or (gulp) online. Oh, no. Looked like something awful (read EXPENSIVE) was wrong. Then it occurred to me, gee, could it be the mouse? Well, that's not difficult, is it. Just mosey over to Best Buy and pick one out of the myriad possibilities. Which I did today, praying all the way home that, smart little cookie that I am, I had hit the nail on the head and I could now read my blessed email. Actually, the only peripheral I ever installed that worked the first time has been the mouse. Super simple little dohickey. But, gee, it was still flickering. Then, I realized I still had the old one plugged in. Duh. Unplugged it, and now, wow, works slick as a whistle. Okay, have used up my daily quota of hackneyed cliches. Now off to do another of these wild little nothings.

The day after the gym after long time no go...

Not my happiest day. Kinda sore around the edges. That's good, right? Gee, I hope so. I realize that I have been way off balance here for the last month. Take away one little 18 lb piece of my life, and the whole puzzle collapsed like a house of cards. Every day I get used to the difference a little more. And feelings, well, they are all over the place. I can feel happy and guilty for feeling happy and worried that I shouldn't be feeling happy all at the same time. Well, I have always been pretty bugnuts. That hasn't changed. And the old question is back. Am I all right here? Please, someone, validate me in my grief process. I actually thought I had that one down. Yes, dear girl, you are all right no matter what is happening or what you are feeling about what is happening, or what you might feel about what is happening, blah, blah, blah. Which is why I did this little messy ditty, called Garden, fast and furiously, without much thought or reason in the process, because I was not thinking at all during the doing, and that is such a blessing, because no think means no feel. Ah, a place to go away. A refuge from the grief. Grace.

Please, no applause, I got to the gym today!

Yes, my muffin tops, my saddle bags, and the new addition, my spare tire, all got worked out today. Hope this is the end of the self-indulgent sloth and awful apathy that came after Boo went to heaven. Grief, it sucks. And it is also wonderfully cathartic, and has reminded me that I am, after all, a spiritual being, one who is not afraid to love deeply. Lots of art came out of this period. It was the only thing that soothed me totally, took me to a sweet place of comfort and joy. Got tired of scraping pastels out from under my fingernails, and took a leaf from a new book. I saw an artist's work on greeting cards on my last artist's date, and realized she was using acrylics on PAPER! Oh, I remember doing that. And, languishing in my studio were a couple of pads of Bristol paper, that didn't work very well with watercolors or pastels, so, voila! Just slapping away merrily here, not worrying very much about anything of any consequence. A whole new series begins. Never a dull moment in the little yellow house.

Sunday, help!

Cannot decide what to do today. I have my artist's date with myself to accomplish before Tuesday morning, so I guess that is on the front burner. I am putting this little pastel away for a while, as I cannot walk past without putting another layer of color on it. I like the puppies, and now pronounce them DONE. Fresh off an art victory, as the little pig got a bid at the silent auction only an hour into the event, which saved me sore feet and much angst waiting to see if someone would love it. And, it was not the minimum bid, either, but $100 over! I could have hung around to see if it turned into a bidding war, and wound up selling for 150% of its value, the BUY IT NOW! price. That is my fantasy, of course, and when that happens, I will formally have arrived. Or not. Perhaps I am already there. It was evident yesterday that one can conceive of any little idea, render it, often sketchily and sometimes not very artfully, hang it on a wall, slap a price on it, and call it ART. I liked a lot of the pieces yesterday, more than I did last year's panoply, and a couple were pretty lame, in my modest opinion. But, hey! Chacun a son gout, folks. Everyone to their own taste. Just happy someone loved Willoughby enough to take him home, where they can look at him everyday on their wall.

Claude really had it goin' on, yesiree.

When in doubt, copy a master. I have been perusing pastel artist online, looking at all the ways folks use this very intriguing medium, and there is this one guy, whose name is forever lost in the sea of artists on that website, but he specializes in copies of the masters. Well, that is one person's vision. And, in many ways, I am free here, because I don't think I have a vision. I don't want to restrict myself to one subject, or even one technique. The only identifying mark on any of my works is my signature, and I don't always even do that. Sometimes I sign paintings on the back, along with the title and the year. So much more modest, you know. I will soon embark for Art for Life, and my wild man artist went to the preview last night, and tells me that Willoughby is prominently displayed, and generated a lot of buzz amongst the artists. My fondest wish is that he become the focus of a bidding war, make lots of artistic waves as well as some cash for Face to Face, the charity we are all artistically supporting, and lots of praise for MOI! Okay, not well yet, but the one thing we all crave, we terribly sensitive persons, is VALIDATION. Like, I am doing well at my chosen craft. Or he could bomb, I could bring him home and adore him in private. It's all good.

The search for serenity...

A long time ago, I took a photo of this waterlily, really a fine image, except that the flower had little specks of dirt on a couple of the petals. Well, my tiny mind said, that is life. Kind of dirty around the edges, even when it looks so very peaceful and perfect. Still, never really liked the photo because of its itty bitty imperfections. Now have done this pastel of the image, and really love that I didn't have to include the flyspecks. I could make it anything I wanted it to be! It turned out fine, I think, and made me really happy and contented as I worked. Probably not serene, though. Not a place that is familiar in this sad time. Just glad that HP put art into my life, so I can spend my time happily slapping away on my kitchen counter, doing something so very interesting and surprising. Never know what is going to happen with it. Well, never know what is going to happen, EVER. Loving the mystery, though.