Athena Dreams Design

15 Weeks In

 

• The flu made a surprise appearance at our house, week before last, and we are still recovering. I think that covers that topic.

• My mum came for a visit, and that means working in the garden–because that's one of her favourite things ever–and she lives in Massachusetts where gardening isn't happening quite yet. We finished clearing out the front garden, and the side garden, and got them planted.

• The rain made a return appearance, just in time to get the new plants settled into their beds.

• My cat likes to wake me up in the morning when she's bored (or wanting breakfast). This week she sat on the table beside my bed, and tapped my face with her paw, with just a soupçon of claw, to really wake me up. She's so sweet like that.

• Almost all my journals have sold, and I'm having an awesomely fun time making more. It's kind of like recess, or a play date with myself.

• I'm thinking about cutting my hair. Or maybe going for some fringy bangs. I'm just going to let that sink in to to my psyche.

• I rearranged my design studio space and am so much happier with the way it feels. I love rearranging furniture to make a room feel the way it's meant to be.

• More fun projects and more dreaming into the future with the inimitable Jen Lee coming later this month!

• Weeeeek 15, over and out!

8 Weeks In

• I've been painting just about everyday, and have several ideas for several series. I wake up with such a different kind of purpose when I'm painting. It's like purpose and joy. Pur-joy? Joy-pose? Yeah, no. Purpose and joy.

• 2 smallish earthquakes were centered just a few miles from my house last wednesday and thursday, and they were the kind that made it feel like someone smacked the side of your house. Not ever to be confused with the rolling, more merry kind of earthquakes.

• There have been earthquake alerts all over the place. I realised, for sure, that I would rather not know. It just makes me worry.

• Does this happen to anyone else? You do like, 5 loads of laundry, you bring all the clean clothes up to the bedroom, you fold and put everything away and then you pick up the clothes that have been deposited on the floor since you started the laundry and the basket's full again. {sigh}

• PG&E shut off our power saturday night, they were doing work on the lines, and I lit all the candles and read by flashlight on the couch with a pile of quilts and a cat sitting on top of me. It was Sweet.

• Having the power shut off at 8pm, encouraged me to go to bed really early. There's only so much to do with a flashlight in your hand, no electricity, and a very dark and chilly house. 

• Does anyone know how to re-grout bathroom tile? We need some serious help with that old grout. So far I've googled and come up with a lot of information that I need an interpreter to help me with, and I've stood in the bathroom and stared at the old tiles and grout, hoping they'll send a message.

• The dog that lives 2 houses over figured out how to get under his fence and into the vacant lot next door to us, his presence there sends my cat running into the house with tail 5X bigger than usual and a lot of cat talk. He's still separated from her by a fence, but I guess a 2 fence separation is more comfortable for her than 1.

• Oh, and just so you have some perspective: the dog might be just a tiny bit bigger than her, and I'm talking a tiny bit. She could so take him.

34 Weeks In

 

• I keep reading things where people are saying "Summer is almost over . . " and we here in the Bay Area have just had the 3rd hot-ish day of the summer. Seriously.

• Maybe I'm a freak, (does it make you nervous to read a sentence that starts like that) anyway, BUT, I have not missed a hot summer, one little bit. I got a taste of hot in NH in July, and that's all I really needed. 75 degrees and sunny, give me that every summer and I am Happy.

• On a walk the other evening, I saw some kids with that big fat chalk, drawing on their driveway. It was one of those "damn I wish I had my camera" moments, but I have saved the image in my head. 5 kids. Laying on their bellies on the driveway, each engrossed in their own chalk drawing. Sunset. Golden light on their heads and backs. Pure child concentration energy. Can you see it?

• Thoughts This Week: Social Media. I can't decide. 75% of the time I am "eehhh". Perhaps that means I really am decided.

• I realised this week - for real sure - that I don't like being told what I have to do. There's still enough of the adolescent or the rebel or the realist (maybe a mix of all of those) in me, that I bristle when told things like: This is the way it's done, so you have to do it this way too. (another thought on social media)

• When the new and the fun and the innovative become the norm, then the innovation and the indy depart for other destinations and it's just another establishment (yet another thought on social media - and life).

• My cat just brought me a present, and it's alive and squirming.

25 Weeks In

 

• We are just about at the end of Peony season, and I want to ask the flower growers this: why not longer? Where do all those roses come from all year long? You have to be forcing them to bloom all the damn time. What about Peonies for at least 3 months?

• The peach tree in front of our house has the starts of some fabulous soon to be summer peaches.

• In our garage are shelves with tools and stuff, and also a huge forest green rug and a couch. The couch won't fit in our house, and so it sits out there, with the rug that won't fit either. The weather has turned HOT, and now my cat asks to be let into the garage oh around about noon, and she sleeps in the garage, on the couch all the hot afternoon. My husband has taken to calling the garage "Her Boudoir". 

• Why is that the price of airline tickets has more (and I do mean more) than doubled since last summer, and we, the overcharged, are not more outraged? Is it fatigue, retiscence or ennui? Now do I just sound like Andy Rooney?

• I finished 2 (count 'em) 2 new paintings last week... that my friends might be a happy, happy record.

• Have you all heard about Link with Love?

• Have you all heard about Seek Your Course?

• OK, it's a tuesday in week 25. I think that means we are a week away from half way through. I'm going to do it with as much grace and good vibes as I possibly can!

21 Weeks In

• I had an impromptu conversation with a client/friend today: he came over to pick up something I had designed for him, and when I asked him how he was he said "too much to do". Is this not the resounding cry going around the world? Too much! Everything is out there and we want to say Yes, Yes and Yes. And then it's too much. Say No, to one thing this week. Dare you.

• I cozied up a little closer to my "real" and authentic writing voice this past weekend. It felt like me in the words. I could almost see myself standing amongst the letters.

• Rain happened yesterday. In very late May. It was kind of a dreamy day. Sweaters back on. Socks. Big gray clouds and more water from the sky before the rain season ends.

• I really and truly GOT that when I am feeling irritated, it's because I've taken on too much and a) things are out of balance or b) I was handed more than I signed up for and need to speak up, speak up, speak up. I mean, I really really got it. Whew. That's such a relief, after all these years.

• And have you checked out all the books that are coming out all over the place the past few months?
  
  • Carmen Torbus' The Artist Unique
  • Sarah Ahearn Bellemare's Painted Pages
  • Misty Mawn's Unfurling
  • Jenn Lee's The Right Brain Business Plan
  • Lisa Occhipinti's The Repurposed Library
  • Mary Beth Shaw's Flavor for Mixed Media
  • Darlene McElroy's Surface Treatment Workshop
  • Did I forget anything/anyone?

• My cat is in love with my husband's pheremones. Right at this moment she has thrown herself onto his sweaty backpack and is rolling all over it rubbing her face on it. She's wrapped both of her front legs through the shoulder straps, and is rolling, rolling, rolling. She makes me laugh SO hard when she does this.

• If I could feel as comfortable with my canvases in that messy ugly stage as I seem to do with the state of our house (messy all the time) I might be much more prolific.

• Oh, and I finally accepted my invitation to Pinterest, and everyone, it's lovely. Not a time suck (at least not so far) just moments here and there over the course of the week, to mark the things that I am in love with, and that I want to remember for later.

• Something I learned this week: you really can take metaphor too far.

• Peonies, even when long past their beauty date, smell so very lovely, and hold a totally different kind of beauty.

17 Weeks In

• Just because my trusty iMac has been zipping a long with no problems for 7 years doesn't mean it won't need to be retired at some point. Planning for a computer to be replaced is a better way to go than one morning during week 17 starting the day saying: "oh crap, I think my hard drive is dead".

• Writing makes me want to write more. It's kind of like painting that way.

• I hit moments of doubt about my work. This week I realised that I have started to recognise that doubt moment just as it makes its way around the corner behind me, casting it's long dark shadow under my feet. Now I have to practice turning around quickly, and facing it down. Giving it the stink eye.

• This past week, I was at Gypsy Girls Guide talking about my favourite time of day and at Scoutie Girl talking with some people about jumping (in a good way).

• I've been thinking a lot about focus and how and when and why I lose mine. I started making a list of the things that I notice I lose my focus around. Wow, that's all I'm gonna say. Wow.

• I saw Heirloom Tomoatoes at the Farmer's Market. Oh summer, can you be far behind?

• First workshop is happening this weekend at the newly opened Teahouse Studio. Talk about making something happen, those girls know how to ride with a dream.

• Buzzy. Gotta love Buzzy.

11 Weeks In

• Our cat had never been outside until she came to live with us, she is now an indoor/outdoor cat. She, like many cats, hates the rain. Today she tried to go out, and a raindrop splatted in her face. Her response? Hiss at the raindrop and run back inside. I am right with her on this.

• The house we used to live in leaked. Leaked a lot. Leaked in many rooms. Many things were damaged. I worried every time it rained. And then we moved into the house we're in now and the FIRST thing I had checked out was the roof. Was it going to leak? Answer: No. But I still worried in the back of my head. And 2 years into living here the roof does not leak, BUT the window in my painting studio? Yeah, it leaks. This goes under the heading of be careful what you worry about, it might end up coming true.

• The more I go into my studio to paint, the more energy and excitement I have about painting. Funny (and not so funny) how that works.

• Wisdom thought today: Don't go to sleep and fall back into old patterns, you might miss an opportunity to see things differently.

• When on a spending budget, don't go looking at the new spring shoes from Keen. It's temptation. It won't end well.

• Inspiration begets inspiration.

• Talking about the things that excite, inspire and remind us why we do what we do are lifelines to further inspiration. Details? Go here, and here.

• I have some great wind in my sails right now. I write this to remind myself the next time I hit the doldrums that the wind always picks up again. Always. (see below)

• My grandfather used to tell me that the only thing we could count in this world is change. (see above)

8 Weeks In

• Ever since I read that Vincent Van Gogh considered orange to be the colour of insanity, I have felt a little uneasy around it. How to use a colour that might be insane? But when paired with pink and purple and lavendar, it's kind of lovely I think. Orange has started to grow on me, and I figure it's made me uneasy long enough, why not be friends.

• My design studio is in the midst of being reorganised and it's an utter and total and collosal mess! I am not berating myself about how long it is taking ( a new thing), I am merely plowing through the mess and divesting myself of things that I no longer need or want.

• Things are calm and peaceful inside my head when the worry monster is away, and he's been away for a while now. I am hoping that Stan found another place to live and won't be back. Don't get me wrong, I do not wish him on some nice unsuspecting person, hopefully he found a lovely hollow tree, on the side of a hill, and he watches the sun go down into the ocean every evening. That's what I hope for him.

• When I am super busy, making lists is very calming.

• When I am super busy, staring out a window and watching the trees or the birds is very calming.

• When the worry monster is away, there is so much room to think and plan!

• I think I have discovered my maximum book reading capacity: 3 non-fiction, 1 business, 1 novel and a book of poetry. That's all I can read simultaneously. Hmmm perhaps that isn't the right word, I don't mean to imply that I am reading them all at the same moment, but in the same sphere of time. 3. 1. 1. 1. Six, yeah, that might be it.

• I was thinking about the threads of my life the other day. Some are tangled, some are dangling, some have not yet been used and many many more are woven and lovely and integrated and holding the warp in place, and it got me to thinking about the tapestry of a life. What would your life look like if it was woven into a tapestry, to hang on the wall of your home?

• Did I mention that things are so much easier when the worry monster is gone. Yeah. I know I did. It is just such a revelation that apparently I needed to mention it 3 times here.

• OK last thought for week 8: snow is being predicted for the Bay Area, get this, AT sea level on Thursday or maybe Friday this week. Think it's really going to happen? I'm going to keep my camera ready.