Minus Thirty-Eight

It was with the windchill these last couple of days. That is about where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet, so it's irrelevant to add either of those words after the number. My boots:

didn't quite cut it - only good to minus thirty. It seems those eight degrees really do make a difference.

Before I returned my library book on Friday I did some more homework:

as it was too frigid to be fiddling with push pins in my hydro pole. And I'm trying to not take it too personally but yesterday afternoon coming home from the art supply store (with the Queen of Arts no less!) we discovered a van crashed into "my" hydro pole, having neatly taken out my neighbor's Matrix on it's way there. No injuries, I am happy to say except to the metal and fibreglass.

Yes, the Queen of Arts was up in my neck of the woods and she graciously shared some of her time with me. I got to look through her art journal and see, without the blur of the computer screen, the vibrant colors and read the parts of her she chooses to share. We laughed and broke bread, my burned bread, and she looked past the pet hair and toys, not to mention the dreadful state I have let my car decline into. I plied her with wine to blur the edges. And she gifted me with one of these:

because that's the kind of Queen she is.

Friday Haiku, Take 2

Crappy little day

Yesterday I just gave in

Love was hard to find

Friday Haiku

Winter has returned

With a fierce and frigid blast

Must go and shovel

Wordless Wednesday

Day 3

It rained yesterday, enough rain to see a few arks half built in the neighborhood early this morning. But the sight of my now weepy affirmations didn't daunt me. Lookin' good!

That's What You Get

For a long time, a couple of years actually, I have been asking, pleading and begging the Universe for some big change. But the Universe has other ideas for me, one of them being practicing patience, something I am working on but I still have moments of utter impatience. Cutting my hair was one of those moments of utter impatience. Boy, I wanted change and I got it. Control the controllables and let the rest go. So I've come up with my own top ten list, half yin, half yang.

Top Five Reasons Why It Was a Good Idea to Cut My Hair

1- I no longer need a comb (or a brush for that matter)

2- it pretty much takes care of itself in the morning

3- I can wear earrings and they show

4- I feel as if I have cleared a lot of clutter from my personal and physical realm

5- I learned a valuable lesson about control and forcing my hand

Top Five Reasons Why It Wasn't Such a Good Idea to Cut My Hair

1- you can see my turkey neck 24/7 now

2- it's still much colder outside than I realized

3- I feel more "exposed", this daring side of me is out there for more to see

4-my dogs don't recognize me

5- I learned a valuable lesson about control and forcing my hand

So here I am, yuking it up in the mirror. I guess it's time to change my bio photo as I really don't feel like that person anymore.

Day 2

At the suggestion of the lovely and inspiring Queen of Arts, I went back to my hydro pole this afternoon and push-pinned another affirmation.

This just might be getting addictive.

Homework

Everywhere I turn there is synchronicity. One of the homework assignments for Mondo Beyondo this week was to place an affirmation for someone to find (the Queen of Arts would love this). Early yesterday morning I push-pinned this into a hydro pole and it was still there at the end of the day. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing since it meant more people had walked by it and, hopefully, read it. Or if it meant it really didn't resonate with anyone enough to snatch it and take it home. Maybe it was just too d*!@ cold and everyone was walking with their heads down, eyes frosted over. I guess what is most important was my gesture. And maybe, just maybe the one person that needed to see it, did, and left it there as a gesture of his or her own.

Friday Haiku

I got a haircut

Turned out very short indeed

Feel like Samson

(perhaps a photo will follow later...)

Wordless Wednesday

The Smells of Winter

This is something that has been kind of bothering me for a few weeks now. It's the smells of winter. Not the fragrant pine of Christmas trees or the clear, crisp air when it's minus thirty-five degrees. But the smells of outerwear that has been wet too many times, everyday, without being allowed to dry completely before getting wet again. It's a slightly sour, musty smell that won't go away until everything is laundered and hung to dry on the line in the sun. Which means the smells of winter will be with me until - oh - May. Or if I'm lucky, April. The last time I washed my winter coat it took two days to fully dry and that was hanging it in the direct sun in August. Children's coats and snow pants can not be put in the dryer so unless we get a long and very mild spell, I'm out of luck there too. Some mitts are only washable with a damp cloth (WHAT?!) which means they are - gack! - disposable. Don't even get me started on the dogs.

January Thaw

It used to be that when we experienced a couple of mild days in January we would call it the January Thaw. But the last ten or twelve years we have had anything but normal seasonal weather so when today brought our temperature just above the freezing mark, we had to celebrate it in the only way we know how - snowball fights and snowmen! We started off building up the fort:

I was taunted and challenged:

which made me stock-pile these, ready for bombardment:

after which the fort looked like this:

When I was sure I didn't have an ounce of energy left, we got all artsy-fartsy and created this guy. I love the way he looks at the camera:

But our day wouldn't be complete without finding something incongruous, which today turned out to be a pink seashell (I swear I don't make this stuff up) in our backyard:

Weekly Gratitude, Week 2

Continuing the month's theme of "work", my card for Weekly Gratitude front and back:

I am grateful to have the time, the tools and the inspiration to carry out my work.

Friday Haiku

pain and suffering

is difficult to witness

search your heart, send love

Bonus Shot

Another one from our photo shoot the other night:

Explanation

The shot below was taken in the tub last night. We have these mini magnet lights of different colors which Riley likes to play with in the bath. Last night I turned out the overhead light and took a bunch of shots of him playing in the bubbles. So much fun. And yes, they are meant to be submersible.

Wordless Wednesday

Weekly Gratitude

My participation in Weekly Gratitude, week 1, the theme this month is work. If you want to join in, it's never too late. Gratitude is like that.

Originally I was going to do this project with a deck of playing cards, but I soon realized that they were pretty small. Someone in the group suggested children's flash cards and I had a deck of 54, they are 3.25 x 5.25 inches. Bigger than the tags I did last year but a nice size. They have been a bugger to prep though, many layers of gesso and sanding in between as my gesso didn't want to go on smoothly and I started by using the wrong brush. We learn so quickly with our mistakes, don't we? I didn't think the theme of work would be much fodder for me, but that was another mistake I learned quickly from. Reading through Art and Fear last night, all I could see was that very theme. How we work, why we work, why we don't work. Oh boy, more synchronicity that tells me I'm on a fine path despite feeling often lost.

At the end of last year I bought a handful of Derwent's Inktense pencils and used them for the first time here. They are delicious, color intense pencils that work like watercolor pencils only when wet they act more like ink in a stick. I want to run back to the store and buy the B-I-G box with every color in it. I'm following the same pattern as the tag project of art on the front, journaling on the back.

A ladybug, a beetle and a caterpillar walk into a bar

A couple of days ago, iMan found a caterpillar at the door to the basement where his home office is. A while ago I wrote about how Riley found a ladybug in an unexpected place, then how I found a beetle coming out from under a baseboard. January is an unusual time to be finding such bugs in the house. But we are a breeding ground for the unusual. And caterpillar makes three.

This morning I read Karen's (Creative Therapy) post and she was talking about how, with her plans for some travelling, the month of January seems almost over. While she was lamenting the all too quick passage of time, I was hurraying for the passage of January. My calendar says three more full weeks of this month. I wonder, how will I make it? It's cold and dark and unforgiving. With the exception of the bug population, very little of nature is present. In Momma Zen, Karen Miller talks about doing what is in front of you. Some good advice I thought to incorporate into my life as I am guilty for having so many projects that many get half done and I get frustrated seeing them lying around. This week I have been doing what is in front of me for some little things, like opening or dealing with the mail immediately instead of letting it pile up and (as soon as I get off the computer) I will fix the waist in a number of new sweat pants I bought for Riley instead of letting them sit in the bag until he outgrows them. Good advice, but it can lead to not getting some bigger things done. For me, it takes letting the little things go to stay in my studio and do the work I love so much.

But getting back to this big hump I call January, I'm learning that my big challenge right now is learning to live in present time. January is not going anywhere but passing one day at a time. I want to remember it as having been a fruitful, learning, living time and not a snarling, grumpy, Eeyore-ish thirty-one days of something to just get through.

Insight

Last night I finished Karen Maezen Miller's, "Momma Zen". I can't say enough good things about this one, I wouldn't know where to start or finish. But in the spirit of a new year, new goals, I would like to share a quote near the end of the book that spoke to me. "There are many things you can do in life, but the things that you accomplish are those to which you commit."

In the past I have been guilty of over extending myself with childlike enthusiasm. I often sign on and up for more than I can handle. One of my intentions for this year was to be more discerning, to cherry pick things I do want to learn, people I do want to spend time with both cyber-wise and in real time terms. Finding this sentence solidified that desire in me. I do love synchronicity.