FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB

Wow, I haven't been writing near as many blog posts lately as usual, have I? The primary reason is lack of photos to go with them. For one thing, it's not a great time to be taking photos out of doors. Those early arctic snaps turned everything to mush, and there's no beautiful snow-cover to hide it. For another, there's all that cedar pollen floating around in smokey clouds. You really don't want to be out mucking about in it.

My other posting problem has been frequent trips to the dentist of late. Despite being a religious zealot when it comes to brushing and flossing, I have ever been unlucky in teeth.  I had fillings in almost every jaw tooth as a kid, and got my first "overlay" in college. That kept falling off when we  were newlyweds in Indonesia, which meant special trips to Jakarta to have it put back on, so they finally replaced it with a full crown when we came back to the states -- the first of many!

You see, what they don't tell you up front is that when you have more filling than tooth, then eventually the teeth start to fracture, and decay gets in. Then you need more crowns , and occasionally, even a root canal. I HATE root canals! I can't tell you what a relief it was when my dentist back in Plano finally told me that I was pretty much done with crowns, as all my big fillings had been covered. He lied.

You see, what they don't tell you is that crowns only last so long, and if you have had a root canal, you may never know that one is failing, because you feel no pain. Which is why I ended up needing that one implant last year. My new dentist here in Wimberley is a very proactive sort, and warned me that four of my oldest crowns aren't fitting as snugly as they should, and that if we wait too long I could end up with a broken tooth or another implant.

So I let her start on a new crown for the tooth at the top of her hit list last week, and came home with a temporary crown until the new one is ready. Since I don't want that temp to pop off, I've been careful to eat on the other side of my mouth, right? So imagine my distress when I bit into something soft Saturday at dinner, and ended up with a mouth full of metal! Only, guess what? It wasn't the temporary crown that popped off -- it was a permanent crown, from the opposite side of my mouth! And of course, it being Saturday, I had to go around with a super-sensitive stub (just sucking in cool air could set it off) for two days before they could get me in.

Turns out that tooth was number two on her hit list. She re-cemented the original crown temporarily, but told me that as soon as they finished up with crown #1, they would be scheduling me to have an all new crown made for tooth #2.

Guess what popped off again last night?

GAP YEARS FOR BOOMERS

Have you ever heard of someone taking a "gap year"? I don't think it's commonly done here in the U.S., but I've read about it in British and Australian books. It's when young people take a year off, usually right after graduating from high school, to travel, undertake volunteer work overseas, or undertake a working holiday abroad, as a way of expanding their knowledge, independence, leadership skills, and self-sufficiency, thus improving their resumes before going off to college. Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea. How many kids do you know who wasted several years of college (and a butt-load of money) because they didn't yet know who they were, separate from their families, or what they really wanted out of life?

Anyhoo, yesterday I was scanning through a recent newsletter from the Sixty & Me website, when I spotted this article about a new trend where baby boomers are taking gap years! It said "After long years of stress and personal sacrifice, raising families and navigating careers, many older men and women are taking a break in their 50s and 60s. We are rethinking retirement. Rather than retire, in the traditional sense, many women over sixty are taking time away from their usual obligations to reflect on what could be next in their lives." This got me to thinkin', and it suddenly occurred to me that I had, in fact, taken a gap year of my own!

You see, before quitting my job in Houston, and moving up here to Wimberley ahead of my hubby, I'd never even had a room to myself, much less a whole house! I went directly from sharing rooms with my siblings, to sharing dorm rooms on campus, and from there to sharing half of a tiny beach bungalow on a company compound in Indonesia, where I had no say whatsoever over my life, with my hubby. As soon as we returned to the states I began raising children, and they were still in pre-school when my father-in-law started having strokes, then my mother-in-law got cancer, then my dad got leukemia, etc., etc. So, can you even imagine, then, what it felt like to be here on this hill, completely on my own? Kinda scary at first, to tell you the truth. Especially when that wind was ahowlin'. It didn't take long, however, before I learned to savor the thrill of waking up each and every morning, knowing it was completely up to me, how I wanted to spend the precious hours ahead!

A year or so later our daughter moved back from California and stayed with me until she got her feet on the ground. Not long after she left, Dear Hubby had the first of several health crises. But you know what? It didn't really matter then that I was back to planning my life around others. Why? Well, because in that one short year I had managed to find my "voice" through writing and blogging; find my "tribes" via Story Circle Network, the Muses, and The Bountiful Sprout; find my inner chef thanks to all the "real" food I was getting from TBS; establish my sunrise meditation and journaling habit; and best of all, I was getting back in touch with my inner artist, thanks to my funny little to-do lists, and a book called The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. I finally had all the tools I needed, to cope with whatever life sent my way.

Know what's really scary? Thinking about how close I cam to missing out on all of this! If I hadn't got fed up with things at work one day, and griped about it to my sweet hubby, then he wouldn't have told me it was fine with him if I quit my job and moved up to our Wimberley house ahead of him. And if I hadn't already been well established in the house and community when we found out he needed by-pass surgery, and if he hadn't pushed to come up here for his recovery period, instead of giving in to me staying there with him, close to his doctors, I don't think we ever would have had the nerve to walk away from his cardiac team there in Houston and move up here at all. Moving and downsizing and putting in rain tanks and gardens and driveways and remodeling all at once would have just been waaaaay too overwhelming! In which case I might well have ended up just as bitter as my mom, for never having discovered my "authentic self." Scary indeed!

CALL OF THE WILD

I ended up overlapping two on-line classes during the holiday season this year, not getting very far in either one. One was Christy Tomlinson's 13 Artsy Ornaments class, and the project below is my riff on the one taught by Jeanne Oliver. Jeanne had found an image of a little Victorian looking girl with antlers tied onto her head, and painted something similar onto a birch branch slice. I had ordered some of those birch plaques from Christy's website, however they ran out before they got my order filled, so I had to improvise.

Lately, when I have been painting little girls like these, they have started talking to me. This one told me that she is the bane of her mother's existence. She said her mama was a very stern and proper woman, who insisted that she learn all the rules of etiquette and practice the piano every day, when all she really wanted to do was run off to play in the woods with her brothers. I could tell by the lift of her dimpled chin that she had quite the stubborn streak in her, and I'm sure her poor mother despaired of her ever becoming a fashionable young lady.

The other class I was taking at this same time was Junelle Jacobsen's Art of Holiday Goodness class. The first class I ever took from Junelle was The Art of Wild Abandonment, which spawned not only a whole series of Wild Art classes, but also a wonderful group of Wild Art gal pals, and the Wild Art Circle Journal project that I have been participating in. So, the fact that I was doing projects in both classes at once just might have had something to do with these words that somehow popped onto the page, before I realized what was happening.

Sometimes a girl just has to follow that call.

IT'S GETTIN' REAL!

Well, the wedding invitations have gone out for the first of our two engaged kiddos, and I'm really loving how they turned out.

This is just the upper portion, without the details.

They were designed by my niece Megan and her hubby Ben, who are both into graphic design, and this was their wedding gift to Lex and Nate. They did a fantastic job of evoking the 1920's theme of their wedding, did they not?

The flipside of the invitation, which directs you to their website.

Within a couple of days of mailing them out, Lex was seeing action on their event website (RSVPs, favorite dance song selections, gift registry, etc.), and she shot me a note saying "This all got very real all of a sudden. I am so excited I can hardly sit still!"

Is there anything more wonderful than seeing one's children this happy?

BEGINNING THE YEAR WITH AN ART RESOLUTION

Remember my Simple Abundance journal?  I just love the cover I painted on it -- one of my favorite projects ever, and it puts a huge grin on my face every time I see it.

In fact, the few projects that I've done inside the journal are some of my favorites as well, but therein lies the problem -- how few there actually are.

 

You see, I let myself get caught up in the reading of Sarah Ban Breathnach's little daily essays, yet again, and ended up moving it out to my dining porch nest where I watch the sun come up each day. Once it left the art table, well, that was pretty much it.

The other problem was that I never got around to preparing it properly for life as a journal -- the somewhat tedious process of alternately gessoing a few pages together, for added strength, then cutting a few pages out, to reduce bulk -- which caused the bulky front section to begin pulling away from the spine.

Sooooo, now that I've spent the entire last year re-reading it, cover to cover, I think it's time to "resolve" this matter, don't you?  Therefore, my New Year's resolution is to move this baby back to the art table, and get it ready for some serious art play!

MARVELOUS MAMAS

I just realized I forgot to show you something! Remember when I told you about going to see my baby take part in the annual Merry Tuba Christmas festivities on the steps of the Texas State Capitol building in nearby Austin? Well, that was great fun as always, but not what I wanted to show you.

You can't tell from this photo, but they had 189 tubas participating this year!

No, what I really wanted to show you was these guys, who probably had more fun that anyone else there.

Now, how smart is a mama who thinks to toss a big piece of cardboard in the car, for when the kids lose interest in staring at the rear ends of a horde of tall adults?
 

ANOTHER WINTER "TO-DO"