19 Weeks In

• I’ve been working on some illustrations for a couple of different projects and I am remembering that feeling of joy and focus that I love about drawing with ink.
• So many moments this past week I stopped and acknowledged how grateful I was for any number of things: friends, a new refrigerator, work that I love, words on a page, a cool breeze coming through on a hot day.
• While doing a bit of late spring cleaning, I spent some time pulling and cutting hair {eouw} out of the brushes on the vacuum cleaner – which incidentally made the vacuum work so very much better – but it got me thinking about how easily we shed hair and skin. Wouldn’t it be great if we could shed things like: the remembered pain from an experience, or the shame we still feel about that thing we did some time back, or the worry that we didn’t do the right thing in that situation, or the unhealthy patterns we can’t seem to shake.
• Very very occasionally {like 2 or 3 times a year – and one of those times was this week) I’ll find a little piece of poop on the kitchen floor, {from The Bear, aka our cat}. The other day I realised that sometimes when she does her mad rodeo dash from the cat box through the house, she shakes off a little piece of poop. Too gross? An overshare? I thought it was kind of fascinating, and very very funny.
• Letters, as well as letters paired to make words still have the power to occasionally make me feel light headed – they have to be the right letters and words of course, not just any old words laying around.
• I cleaned up the little piece of poop left on the kitchen floor, and washed the floor afterwards – just in case you were wondering.

26 Weeks In

It’s the halfway year mark, week 26 has just about come and gone, and here was my week.

• This week it was hot, and it was cool.
• More peonies were seen around our home, and their season is quickly drawing to a close (which always makes me so melancholy).
• On an early morning walk, a mysterious message was discovered from someone named Nick. I’ll just leave that one right there.
• New jewelery was created. With Initials.
• The Little Bear was photographed in new napping spots.
• And I thought a lot about just what I contribute to the world. More on that to come soon.

Hope your half way week was a great place to be.

15 Weeks In

• The flu made a surprise appearance at our house, week before last, and we are still recovering. I think that covers that topic.

• My mum came for a visit, and that means working in the garden–because that’s one of her favourite things ever–and she lives in Massachusetts where gardening isn’t happening quite yet. We finished clearing out the front garden, and the side garden, and got them planted.

• The rain made a return appearance, just in time to get the new plants settled into their beds.

• My cat likes to wake me up in the morning when she’s bored (or wanting breakfast). This week she sat on the table beside my bed, and tapped my face with her paw, with just a soupçon of claw, to really wake me up. She’s so sweet like that.

• Almost all my journals have sold, and I’m having an awesomely fun time making more. It’s kind of like recess, or a play date with myself.

• I’m thinking about cutting my hair. Or maybe going for some fringy bangs. I’m just going to let that sink in to to my psyche.

• I rearranged my design studio space and am so much happier with the way it feels. I love rearranging furniture to make a room feel the way it’s meant to be.

• More fun projects and more dreaming into the future with the inimitable Jen Lee coming later this month!

• Weeeeek 15, over and out!

8 Weeks In

• I’ve been painting just about everyday, and have several ideas for several series. I wake up with such a different kind of purpose when I’m painting. It’s like purpose and joy. Pur-joy? Joy-pose? Yeah, no. Purpose and joy.

• 2 smallish earthquakes were centered just a few miles from my house last wednesday and thursday, and they were the kind that made it feel like someone smacked the side of your house. Not ever to be confused with the rolling, more merry kind of earthquakes.

• There have been earthquake alerts all over the place. I realised, for sure, that I would rather not know. It just makes me worry.

• Does this happen to anyone else? You do like, 5 loads of laundry, you bring all the clean clothes up to the bedroom, you fold and put everything away and then you pick up the clothes that have been deposited on the floor since you started the laundry and the basket’s full again. {sigh}

• PG&E shut off our power saturday night, they were doing work on the lines, and I lit all the candles and read by flashlight on the couch with a pile of quilts and a cat sitting on top of me. It was Sweet.

• Having the power shut off at 8pm, encouraged me to go to bed really early. There’s only so much to do with a flashlight in your hand, no electricity, and a very dark and chilly house.

• Does anyone know how to re-grout bathroom tile? We need some serious help with that old grout. So far I’ve googled and come up with a lot of information that I need an interpreter to help me with, and I’ve stood in the bathroom and stared at the old tiles and grout, hoping they’ll send a message.

• The dog that lives 2 houses over figured out how to get under his fence and into the vacant lot next door to us, his presence there sends my cat running into the house with tail 5X bigger than usual and a lot of cat talk. He’s still separated from her by a fence, but I guess a 2 fence separation is more comfortable for her than 1.

• Oh, and just so you have some perspective: the dog might be just a tiny bit bigger than her, and I’m talking a tiny bit. She could so take him.

34 Weeks In

 

• I keep reading things where people are saying "Summer is almost over . . " and we here in the Bay Area have just had the 3rd hot-ish day of the summer. Seriously.

• Maybe I'm a freak, (does it make you nervous to read a sentence that starts like that) anyway, BUT, I have not missed a hot summer, one little bit. I got a taste of hot in NH in July, and that's all I really needed. 75 degrees and sunny, give me that every summer and I am Happy.

• On a walk the other evening, I saw some kids with that big fat chalk, drawing on their driveway. It was one of those "damn I wish I had my camera" moments, but I have saved the image in my head. 5 kids. Laying on their bellies on the driveway, each engrossed in their own chalk drawing. Sunset. Golden light on their heads and backs. Pure child concentration energy. Can you see it?

• Thoughts This Week: Social Media. I can't decide. 75% of the time I am "eehhh". Perhaps that means I really am decided.

• I realised this week – for real sure – that I don't like being told what I have to do. There's still enough of the adolescent or the rebel or the realist (maybe a mix of all of those) in me, that I bristle when told things like: This is the way it's done, so you have to do it this way too. (another thought on social media)

• When the new and the fun and the innovative become the norm, then the innovation and the indy depart for other destinations and it's just another establishment (yet another thought on social media – and life).

• My cat just brought me a present, and it's alive and squirming.