and life goes on . . .

it's been a really good day even if i did get my cart of goodies to checkout and realize my wallet was still at home on the bed from a little on-line shopping in which i had indulged this morning.  sigh.  i ran the milk back to the fridge, returned the perishables to their respective shelves, asked the girl to watch the rest of my cart, drove home, grabbed the wallet, backtracked, once again, snagged my spoilables, paid the bill and went home again.  this is my life.

but wait.  wait.  it's a very good day.  designer digitals, my favorite source for all things digi had a surprise 30% off sale on everything in the store so i moved my wish list to the cart and slapped the magic "buy" button with vigor!!!!  oh happiness.

yesterday, the mail lady delivered a surprise from sue:

thank you, thank you, thank you sue for the avid encouragement, the monthly mailed art and the friendship.

Zentangles . . . be still my heart.  these are two i did from a tutorial:

and then there was this one.  not sure if i prefer the before or after.  oh so calming when in motion:

 i'm liking the stippling:

the cats like to play in the mess that is now my bed, scattered with pens, a pencil, several thousand pounds of erasure dust, card blocks, and brushes.  sweet.  sweet.  sweet.

and then the UPS man decided to visit with some books i had ordered.  happy.  happy.  happy.

and i started off the day just floating around in the pool under the warmth of the 9 o'clock sun, yakking with joanie and absorbing friendship.  my life is blessed.  thank you all.

om . . .

i found an on-line tut for a celtic knot.  while it looked easy, it seems my brain was not up to the under over, under over mentality required to create this little goodie.  there is a major boo boo.

not to be deterred, i decided if i messed with it, i could hide the aforementioned botch job and no one would be the wiser.  in theory, i am certain that works.  in my world, it just creates a larger opportunity to blunder and blunder i did.  so i tried to fix it with white out.  epic fail. 

but here's the thing about zentangles.  they aren't about perfection or passing/failing.  they're about the inner peace that comes from the repetition and letting the creative juices flow.  they are my new go to for easing out of the day and slipping into sleep.  yoga for the brain.  marinate in the goodness, folks.  marinate in the goodness.

i'm a slow learner . . .

when i say it takes me a while to get up to speed, i'm not talking minutes or seconds, i'm talking years.  light years.  eons.

an example you ask?  my 1988 honda was nine years old before i discovered the coin change holder while looking for the fuse box.  and it's not like i hadn't missed it.  i could never understand why the car didn't have one. 

another?  kidlet used to do her homework on the dining room table.  to me, the lighting from the chandelier was good but not great.  it was also a pain in the ass to dust.  all those little globes facing upwards catching every dust mote that happened to waft by.  she never seemed to mind the lack of direct lighting but one day, doing close work, she reached up and flicked a little here before never noticed  switch and a little light came on flooding the area with a right proper beam.  how could i have missed it?

but i am catching on.  remember my newly purchased red bedspread.  i was bemoaning that fact that it was actually too ample in size.  first time i have ever complained about that!!!  so as joanie and i were doing our early morning meanderings, i groused and she suggested i turn it one quarter turn on the bed.  now i'm not saying i would never have figured that out by myself but it probably would have been the week before it died of old age.

but now we come to the corker.  my bathroom vanity, not having been updated since the house was built in 1988, has a set of six round light bulbs above the mirror.  being blinder than a bat, i buy the highest watt bulbs i can find.  starting last week, i noticed that after standing at the sink for more than a minutes or two, a light would flicker and it would all of a sudden become noticeably brighter.  it kept happening and i kept trying to remind myself to check it out and replace the faulty bulb.  today, i remembered.  it wasn't a bulb.  it was the fluorescent recessed lighting in the soffit.  say what?  in the seventeen years we have had the house, i never notice it and apparently they have never needed to be changed in all of those seventeen years.  go figure.

i'm waiting for the day i wander around the house and discover kidlet has a brother that i failed to notice.

doodle-o . . .

i'm still here folks.  at least i think so.  been doodling away the time until the return of kidlet:

keeps me off the streets and out of the traffic.

nothing else much has been going on.  baby steps.  baby steps.  baby steps.

doodle day four . . .

and yes, i missed a day.  today's prompt was to doodle and find the faces.  here we go in black and white:

 and then in color:

the background is still white.   my cell takes not so wonderful shots. 

fun to play with.

day 2 doodling . . .

so this a doodle camp but my idea of camping doesn't have bugs, sweat or rocks under my spine.  india ink, cold press paper yes, roaming bears, no.

here's day 2:

what's it really look like?

except the brown pillows are moving elsewhere.  oh, and it took the cats three long hours of hunkering around the bed before they decided the new bedspread didn't bite.  pippy wouldn't even sleep with me last night.  silly beasties.

busy. busy. busy.

week two of kidlet being mia.  i am keeping myself busy.  eating.  well, that too.  i am a stress eater.  no surprise there.

back in may, i signed up for doodle camp.  yep, an on-line, back to grade school, doodle all over your paper bag book covers, camp.  so glad to see tinka, marg and jana along for the ride.  class started monday. 

here is my bound doodle book.  please do not ask how many times i stuck myself with the needle or had to pull out the knots from the waxed thread.  the instructor said to measure out about two and half arm lengths of twine.  i must have monkey arms.  i had way too much left over. 

and my first doodle.  ever wondered what goes on in my brain?

wonder no more.

this morning i finally made the white eyelet pillow shams to match the white eyelet dust ruffle that goes with the red spread for my bed.  after a year and a half of sleeping with non-washable poly and imagining hundreds of little cat butt prints, i tossed the old set in favor of all things washable. 

i'd show you a picture but i'm getting up the nerve to try and change the dust ruffle on my king-sized tempur-pedic mattress by my lonely.  last time i attempted it, it crashed down on me and nailed me like a slice of baloney between two slabs of wonder bread.  this time i will at least have my cell phone with me.

and to keep myself occupied at night, i gather up a nice glass of cab and a book.  just finished #47 for the year.  books, that is, not bottles of wine.