I took some photos over the last few days and I wanted to share them.  I had a nice weekend with a few friends and I never miss an opportunity to snap some photos to remember the moments.  So here we go!

I spent Sunday painting, once again experimenting and just letting the process take me where it will.  I’m pleasantly pleased with this one!  Done with acrylic paints, it’s a bit psychedelic and that makes me happy.  I’m going to continue on and create and see how things evolve.  With each painting I feel myself learning and realizing new things about the process of art.  It’s a wonderful feeling.  Its as if as the brush strokes the canvas the wheels in my brain begin to turn and I discover new techniques and experience ‘happy accidents’ which are a good thing!  Check back, there will be more paintings in the near future.  I’m going to make art a habit.

*Last Friday I woke up to the harsh realization that my refrigerator had bought the farm.  The compressor was broken, and it died during the unlucky 13th year of its ‘life’.  I had to go out on Saturday with my son and get a new one and haul it home…what fun.  Although it cost some money I didn’t really have, it is nice to have a shiny new fridge.  (I love it).

*This week my dryer also stopped working.  I have yet to call in my appliance repair guy to have it fixed.  I think appliance catastrophes are like death-they come in threes.  My garage door opener bit the dust about 10 days ago.

*I started and finished a painting of a dove-which I love.

*This all happened very fast, but I spontaneously applied for a job last week, got interviewed and hired  and started the job in what was like 4 days. It was not a glamorous job at all.  It was a minimum wage gig  that involved phone work for a market research company.  I tried it for one day and realized it wasn’t for me. My husband tried to warn me it wasn’t something I should take, but I didn’t listen. Thank goodness I don’t desperately need a job.  I would have hated to be stuck with this job because I had to get a job quick.  I  feel so sorry for people who are working at jobs they absolutely dread going to.

*In that one day of working as a phone solicitor, I realized

1.How lucky I am to be able to stay home and take care of my family.

2. That I really need to write my resume and get my self out there in the art world.  I need to find a ‘creative’ job.  I have a college degree, for goodness sakes.

3.  I think I would rather do without things than go to work at a job I hate just to be able to afford them.

*Had to perform a mercy killing on a mortally injured mourning dove my cat Charlie had ambushed and attacked in our willow tree.  He brought it to our front porch and raced inside with it in his mouth.  I was just terribly saddened by the sorry state the poor thing was in.  Charlie had bitten its tail feather’s and butt completely off and it’s insides were exposed.  I knew it was going to die, and I could only imagine the horrific pain it was in, poor sweet bird.  I had to put it out of its misery.  It took everything I had inside me to end it’s life.  I cried for 2 hours.

* Ironically, after I took care of the bird, I got to thinking about my dove painting. Somehow it made the painting more meaningful, as if I had memorialized the bird before it had even died.  Later that evening I  watched several reruns of The Office to get my mind off the bird and to laugh a little. Oh my goodness, what episode comes on…the one where Michael Scott and the rest of the office have a funeral outside by the parking lot for a bird that flew into the window and died.  That was all I needed. 😦  It’s weird how the universe creates coincidences that tie in together and seem so relevant.

*I tend to get turned on to tv shows long after they’ve been airing and most of the time after they have ended. Just this week my kids introduced my husband and I to The Office.   I seriously can’t get enough-I’m so addicted to this hilarious show.  Luckily, we have several seasons so we can have mini marathons every evening.  Just a little simple pleasure that lightens my spirit.

*I drove downtown today (Chicago) to meet with an adviser at UIC where my daughter wants to transfer.  I realize just how much I miss living in the city. Typical for me, I immediately started daydreaming about living in a little flat in the heart of the south loop where I can have access to all the cool stuff going on like museums, festivals and just people in general.

*Tomorrow I will paint again.  Finding time to be creative is at the top of my priority list these days.

I created this for the Women’s Retreat I attend in October.  The ladies asked me to create a painting based on the theme of the retreat.  I am very pleased with how it turned out.

I was very enlightened by this blog post over at Magpie Speak.  Seems like a Monkey Mind is what I’ve been suffering from all these years.  I know it is….the Buddhist definition of Monkey Mind intrigues me and definately fits.  I used to blame my flittery flowery thoughts on creativity-funny to think it’s a pseudo monkey up there who’s responsible for it. This concept definately explains my fanciful thoughts, my inability to settle on what it is I want to do in my life, my ‘flightiness'(my mother’s favorite term for me), and my multitudes of creative distractions.  It might seem like adult ADD, but I love the idea of calling it having a monkey mind because it’s cuter.

The Author of Magpie Speaks, Rachelle Mee-Chapman says:

“Now, I’m about as far from Buddhist as they come. I could use some more Buddhism in my life – seeing as I rarely live in the Now and spend most of my time dreaming into the Future, or picking apart my Past. But every time I read a book about Buddhism I want to throw it at someone’s head. It’s so damn Zen and I am so damn not.” 

I absolutely agree with her.  I’ve also dipped my toe in books written about the Zen life, striving for enlightenment, meditating and all that Buddhist stuff.  I find myself rolling my eyes, and sighing with exasperation because I just can’t buy it.  It is like me trying to fit my size 11w feet in a shoe I desperately want that only comes in a size 8.  I really want that dang shoe-(it’s gonna make me look so sexy,) and yes, I can crunch and shove my poor feet in them and hobble around getting nowhere fast; but we all know the shoes really don’t fit, and just trying to be someone I’m not can be downright painful.  Maybe Rachelle’s right, the monkey mind doesn’t want to be ‘Zen’ because that would inevitably bring a stillness to the monkey and who really can successfully cage a wild beast?  It’s very liberating to me when someone like Rachelle can say something like this that makes so much sense and is so practical-it causes a light to go on in the darkness, and I can stop fooling myself into thinking I can become something I’m not.  Some things just aren’t for everyone. I’m not a Zen chick. That’s it. I’m taking my books back to the library and giving away the ones I purchased. That will make the monkey very happy.

I got to thinking in the shower today about why I can’t figure out the path to take for the second half of my life.  Then I realized-maybe that path isn’t determined yet.  Maybe all this ‘monkey mindness’ is equivalent to that funny blipping you hear when you talk to a computerized phone and it’s trying to identify you.  My mind is in the process of blipping, taking in all the info I’m gathering from life, new experiences,  all the dreams I have tucked away and is processing them.  The answer just hasn’t come yet.  Maybe it would help to just sit back and let the bleeping continue and then one day, just like it did in the shower  the answer will come-and suddenly the path to the future will be visible and easy to navigate.  Until then, it’s as if a great fog has settled and I can’t see a direction to take because it’s murkey and unsure.  I felt great relief when this thought popped in my head…almost like a prayer was suddenly answered.

Here is something very powerful I read on another artist’s blog-a relatively successful artist.  I felt I was being spoon fed wisdom after I read it and digested it.

Fight Your Way Through…

NOBODY tells this to people who are beginners.
I wish someone had told me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have
good taste.

But there is a gap. For the first couple years you make stuff,
it’s just not that good.

It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But
your taste, the thing that got

you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your
work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most
poeple I know who do

interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know
our work doesn’t

have the SPECIAL THING that we want it to have. We all go
through this. And

if you are just starting our or you are still in this phase,
you gotta know that it’s

normal and the most important thing you can do is DO A LOT OF
WORK. Put

yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one
piece. It’s only by going

through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and
your work will be as good

as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do
this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just
gotta fight your way

through.     by Ira Glass

I hope some of this helps you.  Let me know your thoughts on any of what I’ve written.

We’re All a Little Colorific 

*I just love this idea for artsy fun hair  After finding this, I’m inspired to grow my hair longer just so I can do this! I’ve never added color to my hair and never really liked the idea of radical color in the hair, but this way of adding streaks just speaks to me.  It’s soft and pretty, and I have the blond tresses which are perfect for this look.  I even showed it to my husband and he thought it was pretty. The beautiful thing about this, is when you get tired of having those colors in your hair, all you have to do is snip it off and your hair is back to normal.  Sounds like a plan!

—————-

Here’s a little about me, using the feelings of colors as a guide.  Feel free to copy and paste these questions and do your own little rainbow meme on your  blog. 

 Angry Red

1. Are you currently mad at someone?  Not currently…thank goodness.  I’m reducing my stress level  Being angry doesn’t help.

I’ve come to realize just this week more than ever that if you have your health you truly do have EVERYTHING. While I was at my doctor’s getting my annual pap I mentioned I had been  having heart palpatations on a fairly regular basis, so she suggested I have some tests done to rule out any problems.  She ordered a chest X-ray and an echocardiogram to check my heart and I  also scheduled my annual mammogram for that same day.

When it comes to my health, I am a bit of a hypochondriac-I imagine these irrational scenarios of getting a bad test result and finding out I have a fatal illness, and more.  It’s just the way I am.  I never take my health for granted.  So for the entire week as I waited for my results I stressed over the slim chance of getting abnormal x-ray results back-my big fear is lung cancer. I validate my fears from the fact that I had two pack a day smoking parents, only to grow up and get married to a man who chain smokes pipes and a few cigars a day.  Not to mention, I watched helplessly as my father died of lung cancer at the young age of 52.  No wonder my fears got the best of me.  I prayed often, and asked friends to pray for me too, hoping that I’d be healthy and normal and that all would be okay.  I must drive God absolutely crazy with my worry and requests for something I tend to not be aware I already have.  I did get my results back and all was normal and fine except palpatations were picked up on the echo-which I knew I had anyway, but there isn’t any other heart abnormalities that should suggest I worry.  I believe the palpatations are caused by a combination of perimenopause setting in full time  with an over stimulated heart from too much coffee.  The remedy-limit my caffeine and stress and palpatations will subside.  They already have.  The worry of that week caused my heart to palpatate more, and funny enough after the doctor called with the thumbs up, all was well and returned to normal.  Whew, what a relief!

In the week of imagining having a pseudo illness, I thought about how incredible it feels to be given a clean bill of health. I really believe if you have your health you have everything.  The way I see it, being healthy is more important than having lots of money or taking nice vacations and living in a nice house.  Simply put,  if you aren’t healthy none of that stuff is going to do you any good.  If you have your health, your house can fall apart around you and you can stand triumphant in the aftermath knowing you can survive it and anything else that comes along because you are all good on the inside.

Now that I’m getting older I’m really becomming health conscious-making an effort to work at keeping my body healthy for as long as humanly possible.  My plan-eat antioxidant rich foods like blueberries and broccoli, exercise regularily but not too intensly and work full time getting my weight down.  I don’t ever want to get a bad diagnosis if there’s something I can do to prevent it.

Do you tend to be a hypochondriac like me and what do you do to talk yourself out of it?  What kinds of things do you do to keep your health alive?

I love this project as a beautiful, artistic way to  remember children lost in the Holocaust.  You just might want to make one, too.

Last night I had a meaningful sitdown with my hubby and discussed my stress and how I need to carve a little time out each day to create, paint and in general be artful.  He now understands and is encouraging me to do what I need to find that slice of joy that makes me happy.  Today I did just that-I set up an imprompteau art studio in the sun on my patio and I went out there for a couple of hours and painted and listened to music and enjoyed myself.   After all, that’s what Sunday’s are for, right?

While going through my pictures looking for photos I can transform into fun Instagram shots, I found some really good ones from my October trip to New York City.  My favorite is this one.  It was taken Uptown at the corner of 72nd St. and Central Park West.  The Dakota is on the left-that is where John Lennon lived when he was gunned down and it was also the setting for Rosemary’s Baby.  Supposedly, Mia Farrow’s character lived there.

After I finished painting in the backyard, I took off my apron and headed to Target to pick up some groceries.  While browsing the produce section, I spotted these irresistable bags of celery hearts.  Don’t you just love the bunny?  I had to buy a package.

And just a little ways from the celery I found these beautiful flowers.

I always knew this but now it’s confirmed:  My dog is an angel.  Can you see his wings?

How is your Sunday going?