Two For The Road
It's already been quite an eventful year in Linda-Land just four months in. Chock-a-block full of ups, downs, and ins and outs. I just reached my 60th year with mixed feelings so I thought a look back might help me make a little sense of it all.
I'd set a few goals for myself in 2014, one being that I didn't want to enter my 60's overweight so I set about to loosing around forty pounds, and fortunately did it. Everything feels better now, although I'd like to have ten more pounds gone by mid-summer. Small goal, but a goal nonetheless.
Another goal, and you might think me silly for having this, was, along with the weight loss I wanted to be able to fit into a pair of jeans that had belonged to my dad, by the anniversary of his death on Jan. 26th. Eleven years ago I was back in Indiana helping to care for him when he was dying. I hadn't packed many clothes because I wasn't sure how long I would be there. I flew in Xmas eve,stayed until the first week in Feb. and had gotten really tired of wearing the same things everyday, so dad offered a pair of his pants to me. They fit and I got a little change of wardrobe to take my mind off of the saddness. After he died I took them with me and put them away. Due to some side affects from the anti-depressants I took after returning home from this life changing event, I put on some weight...and then ballooned up to a really health damaging weight.
Two somewhat related goals were set and then met. As I said in the title, now what?
A dear friend fell down the stairs and broke her ankle badly Dec. 28th and then four days later on Jan. 1, her husband, another dear friend of mine, died. I've been renting a living/studio space from them since May; after knowing them several years and working on two art books with him, it made perfect sense to me to do my best to help her recover, not only from the physical injury, but from the emotional loss. Doing this has also helped me to deal with my own grief. I've stayed busy enough to stay a few steps ahead of it.
Just recently I got back to making some artwork...little scratchboards, mostly rv's or trailers to satisfy my desire to someday own one and hit the road like a nomad. I'm also revisiting the mixed-media 'little house' series. There are a few examples shown here. I hope to sell a lot of them at the spring version of The Little Craft Show here in Northwest Arkansas. It's May 30, downtown Springdale. One day only. I'll add more information later as the date comes closer. It promises to be a great sale.
Oh yeah, I also got a new car. After almost forty years of owning trucks of one kind or another...I got a little suv. You might say, "what got into you?" Oh hell, who knows? It was a reality check of sorts, I had an older truck with 218,000 miles on it and plenty of expensive future repairs just waiting to happen. The money I'd been saving for an RV was there and willing to be spent. My days of hauling tools and lumber around are pretty much over, so a truck is less important to me than it once was.
So, here I am. Wanting to get through the memorial service for my friend on the 26th, really hoping that all will begin to heal. There's a goal worth having, mentioning, and reaching.
What's next? Art, of course, always. And staying right where I am for a bit until I figure it all out. Keeping the weight off, would be good, of course. Mostly I do a little work and thinking about all of this everyday, so I figure I'll come up with something. If not, at least I've been working and thinking.
One more thing; I need to get some commission work going and so I'm officially declaring April half-off month for pet and people portraits. If you've ever wanted one of my scratchboard interpretations of your pets or people, now's the time to jump in and book them. Normally a 5"x 7" framed scratchboard is $150.00. All of April they are $75.00, including shipping unless you're out of the US and then the shipping is extra. So give me a holler and I'll get started on your custom drawing.
