9 Moons Ago

Although it may be to my family’s horror, I’ve drawn one of the creepy crawlies that we sometimes discover in the house. I’m quite used to them now..Cam and I have a rule: anything spidery that is inside is fair game. No use trying to take them outside..there are plenty of them out there already. So today Cam killed this one with hot water and noticed it was still intact after it had died. He thoughtfully brought it in on a piece of wood for me to draw, and after I got over the initial creepiness of it, I happily sketched it and colored it in photoshop:

And over the past couple of days I’ve been working on my painting. It may take another form or colour over the next few days or weeks or however long it takes me to complete it. Not sure where it’s headed, but it’s just out of my head. I don’t often let myself draw from imagination, so I’m interested in seeing where this one goes:

Lately I’ve been thinking of old memories of childhood and also more recent events and how I might want to put them into writing, but they are so amorphous and slippery..kind of dream-like, so I’m just going to keep that on the back burner for awhile and mull over it from time to time.

Something that has been on my mind is memories of Tammy. Had a few good crying sessions this past week. It’s been almost 7 months since her death and I know I’m still going to have some times of grief. I think I was kind of in shock over it at first..it didn’t really hit me hard until a couple of months ago. But I’ve also had good memories crop up which made me smile and even laugh. I treasure her letters and photos, and keep her self portrait in my studio.

In a couple of weeks we’re having Faye and Wayne over to stay overnight. Good motivation for us to finish cleaning up the place. We worked on the library and studio yesterday and today. There was a lot of junk in the library from when I was ill and had moved stuff all over the house. Clothing, scraps of paper with weird notes written on them, jewelry boxes and trinkets, magazines and other odds & ends. We both got a lot done and will keep at it till it’s finished. It’s not that we create much clutter these days, it’s just getting rid of the stuff that had been building up over time and then seemed to explode when I got sick. I’m ready for more clarity in my life and keeping up with housework will be that much easier when we get rid of what we don’t need or love. Now the trick is not to replace the old stuff with new stuff. But we do want to get some more lamps and I am going to do some paintings to help brighten up the walls. We’re also going to repaint the mudbrick walls this summer and have a working bee with friends to take care of the bigger tasks, such as fixing a stove pipe. Good to look forward to a cleaner, brighter house.

Well, off to make dinner on this Saturday night…we’re having a really late one again..had a late lunch. I like having late meals in the summer..last year was nice..we’d eat around 8 or 9 when it was hot and I’d do the dishes listening to jazz on the radio. It was a nice routine. Ever since I’ve been back Cam’s been making just about every dinner and doing dishes to boot. But tonight I’ll be making dinner and doing dishes..so we’ll see if I can’t find some good radio music …yay!

I’ll try to be better at this Art Everyday Month..sheesh, I’m so good at wriggling out of commitments. Well, even if it hasn’t been every day, it has been quite a lot compared to some earlier months. And so I’ll see if I can do even better this week!

I went back to the subject matter from last week and had another go at it:

Then a bit more tiredly, I did a quick sketch of the bedroom stove:

Yeah..it’s a little hard to see. Won’t leave the drawing till so late in the evening next time!

Not much new going on around here. Job search, immigration paperwork, library runs, cleaning up the place, blah blah blah… anything new going on in your world? Let’s get some excitement back in here..I’ll try harder next entry!! That’s another promise!

P.S. Kaffy, I got your package today ..yay!! Thank you so much!

Well, I’ve been totally avoiding the art…don’t really know why, as it was going pretty well just over a week ago. So I’ve slacked off, and now I’m going to work on some immigration papers that need to be done today, but after that I’m going to make sure I do something artisitic and post it here!