Me Day

Today was a compensatory "me" day (to balance out yesterday's "Mama Day"). I got up lateish and spent a few hours moving my paints, old canvases and easel and setting them up in the garage (while also running my laundry, since I'm queen of multi-tasking). I'm ready to paint again now, so the next opening I get, I have no excuse not to, and every reason in the world to start again (especially given that I have an upcoming deadline for a painting I owe to a friend to illustrate his short story for a book that's coming out next year). I feel really rusty but definitely excited to be so close to picking up the ol' brayer again. I haven't painted in over 2 years...what the hell happened? Crafting words is all very well, and was certainly my first artistic love, but the visceral, sensual experience of pushing paint around, laying down texture and color, is something I really do miss. God I wish I was independently wealthy and could spend (at least part of) every day making art. But one small step at a time is the way it has to be, and it's better than nothing--I have to keep reminding myself that there's no "shoulds" to live up to here. Every moment with the muse is bonus icing on the cupcake of a busy 21st century working mama life.

So anyway after that, I went out to Berkeley for a long-planned visit with my buddies Linda and Michelene for some delightful chatter chat catch-up time, fancy lunch, shopping and scrapping. We don't get to do this very often but what a fabulous pleasure it is--every girly pleasure you could want except maybe shopping for shoes. ;) After a nice leisurely afternoon, I got home around 5ish and even had time to do more digiphoto processing before Josh and Eli got home from the birthday party they'd been to (it was a very social weekend for Eli). Then some nice family dinner making and hangout time, and more fooling around with digiphotos after the kid was in bed. (I guess I'm just in a reflective/nostalgic mode these days with all the photo processing and scrapbooking and all that...I wish I had a couple weeks off with nothing else going on to just catch up on all this family memory-making stuff. Sigh...so many projects, so little time...)

So all in all it's been a very good weekend, with enough time and energy to do much of what I wanted to do, some good creative time, and some good family time. I feel like I'm heading into the work week with good spirits--of course don't hold me to that or anything...there's never a dull moment and I'm sure "something" will come along to mix things up shortly.