Merimask Goes On And On

I'm baking Mom's birthday cake.  It smells awesome and it's making me hungry!

So, thank you to everyone who was very clever and sweet and gave me exactly what I wanted in my Xmas stocking...(seriously, moonphased, I would LOVE a Celestial Brush because I'd just run around painting sunny skies and "blooming" everything in sight!  Everything is cold and grey here, now.).  The funniest, though, came from my brother John, who gave me "eye-safe perfume".

Hmm.  I had a pleasant Saturday evening date with my husband.  I was informed that we'd do anything that I wanted.    That meant seafood at The Dock At The Bay, movie rental (because I didn't feel like fighting the crowds on a rainy night ), and a slice of cake from The Dessert Deli (they made our wedding cake.   They totally own Amherst...half the town was in that place on a Saturday night paying 5 bucks for a slice of cake and LOVING it).

So we watched Silent Hill (meh  *shrug*  It ain't art, I'll say that much.  Probably would have liked it better if I'd ever played the game), ate cake, got cozy, napped...  All very pleasant.  

Then I wake up because the wind is howling and the rain is falling in buckets, and I decide to check up with my eBay auctions online...and I find e-mail from some friends, informing me that someone we all know died this morning.

She was my age and she was a strange bird prone to bouts of crazy...but she introduced me to anime and she made really great cocoa and even though we clashed sometimes, I always admired her.  She had lovely long red hair and she was a very good fencer.  She bought her first house at 24...quite a feat for a single girl...and lived in it quite nicely, all alone.  She was very smart and very independent...she had great art on the walls.

I knew she was sick...she's had breast cancer for three years, but I didn't know how ill she'd become.  I was going to give her a call and see how she was doing.  

...  I have nothing much more to say.  I'm not exactly devastated or anything...I'm just saddened and feeling my mortality.  She was my age and she's gone, and isn't the world a capricious place?  Lightning strikes or it doesn't.  The lump is just a cyst or maybe a malignant tumor.  There's no telling which way it'll go.   Usually I'm fine with that.  Tonight, I'm hearing the storm at my window and it sounds...close.

I'm back.  Back from the edge.  It's goofy, out there on the edge.

...

Seriously it was nice to hook up with friends again.  I know some really neat, wonderful people and they totally satisfied my craving for entertaining adult companionship.  Also, many of them are artists so I had the conversations about creativity and "the muse" and inspiration and the problems with being an artist and also a business person...it was very stimulating!  

Also enlightening, since I've come to a realization about myself and my goals and my work.




AND!  The Cherry Blossom Dragon kicked ass.  :-)  Everyone loved her.  She's a she, by the way.  Those floopy loopy bits on her face and legs and tail?  Those represent feathers!  Feathers for girl dragons, lightening bolts for boys.  So she was a girl.  Which seems just right to me.  I got an order for another dragon because of her, and I have an idea for a new design as well.  Cherry blossoms = Spring, but waves = Summer!  Who knew?  So I drew an idea for a Summer dragon in Japanese-looking waves.  Natsu-no-nami.  I'll scan it soon and show you what I mean.  It's going to be stunning.

Oh man...I have SO many orders to fill and I'm going to be just as busy as I was before I went away.  Still it's good to be home.

Busy busy!  First of all, I've been working tonight on the fish-mask idea golden_meliades gave me *pats self on back for not having to look up exact spelling of "meliades"*, which it turns out is a VERY GOOD and fun idea!  I have two designs; one with koi and one with male betta (Siamese fighting fish).  The bettas were easy because I have some of those.  No shortage of models there.  :-)  The koi though...those were something I wanted to research.  As an artist I find that it's one thing to think you know what something looks like, and an entirely different thing to know  what it looks like.  



*pouts*



Yeah!  Aside from stupid tv and various Middle East woes,  not much else penetrates my shell of indifference these days.  I took a lovely ride along the banks of the Niagara River with Char yesterday.  Really, a VERY neat bike trail that we have hardly ever used (largely because one has to cross the border...which these days involves showing a passport and getting quizzed by sceptical-looking border agents...yuk).  We'll have to start making that a regular trip though, because PRETTY.  Everything's just greener and lovelier and nicer-looking from the Canadian shore.

Back to work!  When in doubt, make stuff.  That's MY motto.
 

*takes a bow*  Yes, I'm all growed up.  I finally have a paid account.  Do you like it?  Is it shiny?  does it float your collective boats?

I'm going to be farting around in here, figuring out how to set things up, post pictures, etc...  I chose the "moron" setting, as far as customizing goes.  I assume I can always go back and change it, if I'm feeling more confident some time in the distant future.  For now, I'm wanting to find a way to customize the link for "comments down there... *points down there*.  I'm thinking something fun, like "all skate!"  or "put on your boogie shoes!" or just plain "get funky".  

These are the ponderables I'm pondering today.

And hey, as long as I'm in a good mood,  I think I'll share some of my hard-earned wisdom.  


You can all thank me later.

Well, it's wanting to storm but instead the air is just growing thick with unshed rain, and I can't sleep.  Tonight for some perverse reason I'm unable to stop thinking of my dear departed pets, my old buddies.  They were the family I bought for myself as my life began to spiral out of control.  They presided over the beginning of my adulthood, my first marriage, my first house, my daughter's birth, my pain, my divorce, and my new life.  They were my constant friends, the one common denominator in a sea of change.  I miss them so much, sometimes.