Exhausted these days. Pulled in a thousand different directions as I search for my footing on this spinning globe we call life. Remember, those of us at a certain age, the old Calgon take me away commercials? I get it now. I could use a little take me away time. Freedom from the demands that a business or three make, freedom from household duties, civic responsibilities, all of it. I am not whining. I am not bemoaning my life or what I have made of it. I love what I do. I just feel like I need a quiet afternoon at the movies, or a cup of tea in a quiet far away place with sun and digging birds and couples walking arm in arm. I will find it on the interior side of my soul and there seek refuge in my artwork. A safety net exists there that makes me dream and live in my own little world.

Just look at this sweet child! Almost twenty one now and I miss the little boy he was.

Maia and me. One so young and beautiful and one getting so old and gray.
Generations of women. I see it now in my own life with my own granddaughter.

David's yard with the little doe hidden under the side yard tree.

A GIFT FROM MY PERSONAL Easter Bunny.

So this being a semi sunny Easter Sunday, I decided to visit one of my oldest friends here in PT, David North. We have been friends for decades, way before we ever thought about being the old people we are now. We were wild young adults, full of artistic inspiration and dreams and energy. We had our own language, our own ways, our own fun. Even today, we still had the tiniest touch of wildness about us, laying about like an ember waiting to erupt. Oh, he would be laughing if he were to read this! Anyhow, he declared himself Doctor Dave and said my knee would heal, to use it and then he gifted us with six colored hardboiled Easter eggs; asking me which colors I wanted. Pink, I said. We brought him a ham hock for his split pea soup. How we have become funny and sedate these last few years! Still there is love there. Humor. Friendship. How does the North wind blow? Only we know, David. Only we know.

I had a couple of days away! I spent them with three friends just an hour from home and we played, created, sang, ate in restaurants, shopped and did a wee bit of cooking and even had a little party! How wonderful is that? Time away from the shops, home and responsibilities that keep me from making things. Amazingly refreshing. As soon as my phone comes back to me from its wandering; I will even post pictures. Until then I will sign off as a happy woman wishing next year to make this time with friends l sat even longer!

Sometimes I wonder when I disappeared. Gone from advertisements, gone from beauty, gone from children. Am I irrelevant, an archaic version of my long ago youth? Do the dreams I have now matter as much as the dreams that followed me through my school years? As I approach my sunetting years, I want to feel the explosion of creativity in me. I want to still have the  inability to contain the excitement a new painting or technique brings. I want to vanish forever the doubt, low self worth, that my journey began with as I wandered into my adult years. Moonlight becomes me. Dreams bare me. Experience is me. Do not turn away but look into the direction I am heading now. No longer a wanderer.

I am working more in my shop these days like six days a week more so when I have time to be in the studio, I find I am working in short blasts of creative energies. Painting, now jewelry, now embroidery, now sawing, gluing, fusing... Then onto the office for ordering, calling, making more order from paperwork chaos and the less time I have? The more intense the creative bursts. Maybe the longer light in my days is contributing to this. Maybe a day without gloom. Maybe the teeny bit of caffeine that has crept into my drinks. I am not sure but I am thanking the heavens!