This is the latest doodle in what I refer to as my " television sketchbook. " I like to watch television in the evening as a way to unwind from a day of people, activity and noise. Television is like  white noise to me. I hear nothing. It vacates my mind. But I can not just sit in front of the noise machine. I have to keep my hands busy. All winter long, on cold, drafty evenings, I knit and work with wool yarn and felt. Summer, especially now on these hot, hot days I draw. I can not bear to think of wool laying on my lap and sliding through my hands. I make myself work with a limited palette of colors and materials because as much as I would love to have all the studio materials in the house - it is not possible. Not trying to create artwork with a capital A, I can roam freely in my mind and on the paper. I make happy places, I want to go to. I envision places that are peaceful, colorful, happy and inviting.

If I were in charge of the world, there would be no wars or famine, over population or extinction, climate change or horrid storms, no sickness that can not be cured, no love not returned. We would live amongst each other in colorful worlds of peace and harmony. We would live in my drawings, all of us together.

So in the evenings when it is too hot to knit with wool yarns, I draw in a little sketchbook kept on the end table next to my chair in the living room. 

Sometimes a title or theme will come to me but mostly it is mindlessly drawing, an absent brain doodle. It is relaxing and centering for me. A qay to remind myself that I am a painter who happens to craft her days away. G'night.

Normal in Time

It is the night time, as I  first lay down in bed that it comes to me. It with a large capital I. I have a heart problem. I am learning how to deal with it, examine it, let go of the fear. I can not live being afraid. I must trust that either I can handle this or that all will be eventually well. This is not what I expected. I did not plan for this but in all it's great wisdom, the universe has assigned me this challenge to what? Awaken me. Remind me of the short sweetness of life. To teach me patience and acceptance. This journey has begun and the possibility exists that it will be at the very least interesting. I can now say it out loud, I have a heart problem and I am dealing with it. I am loving myself. Being kind to myself. Passing along to myself the words of comfort and love I would extend to anyone else in the same situation. Fear shall not rule me.

Well, after a few frustrating moments trying to yet again remember another password, I have finally signed on to post on my poor unattended blog.

Summer, my least favorite time of the year is in full swing and we have literally suffered through some very hot, un air conditioned days. Not that summer doesn't have a basket full of great things. Some small, some big. I love the wild flowers blooming along the roadside and the daisies enchant me. Seeing the deer munch their way through my back yard makes me gasp in reverence. I think back to the summer of my youth and wish that those days of endless swimming and walking in the Neshaminy creek, hanging out on grandpop's big front porch and stringing horse chestnuts into necklaces, would revisit me. I remember those things all the adults said back then about not being in a rush to grow older, to slow down and enjoy being a kid, ringing ever so true now as I am rushing closer to the big 60. Me. I am the senior that my parents used to be. How did that happen? Who said that one day they would be gone, all the adults of my youth and I would be in their place? Ah, time. If we are lucky, she does not spare us and we get to live and love and learn and play for many summers.

The crazy patterned condensation on my plastic water glass today made me think of a world under the ocean. All cool and liquid green. I dreamed of floating through the water with my mermaid fish tail and finding treasure I would place about in my little octopus garden.

Listening to the music of the Beatles on my IPod in the shop has made me nostalgic for my last year of junior college when the world was all easy going and I floated on a mellow cloud of being no longer a kid yet not really an adult. Still adulthood beckoned to me with an overwhelming calling and I moved forward never really knowing what I was doing but accepting things as they came along. I think I am living that way again. I have just been accepting things as they come to me. The heat of a summer day. The full moon gracing an evening sky. My husband wanting dinner. My teenager getting ready to be 18, no longer my baby. Health issues. Acceptance is key and once again finding the soft, mellow cloud that lets me drift a bit in life taking each day, each single moment - as it comes along.