It's been way too long since I last sat down to write. Summer is rather busy, in a good way. First major thing is that I finished another drawing. These drawings with dots always take me quite a while. My original plan was to draw a pair of okapis for my parents. I would give my mom one on mother's day and then one for dad on father's day. Well, the one I started for my mom I made a big mistake on and there is no going back when it's pen and ink. Besides, I ended up not really liking the pose of the animal anyways. So I figured out another gift for my mom and plodded on with the other okapi. It turned out really good, I was very happy with it. Every time I do a drawing, I have someone in mind. I find that I actually can't produce anything unless I know who it is for. And so they have become acts of love for me. They are so painstaking slow to do, that I spend a great deal of time meditating on the person that it is for. Every dot says "I love you", a million times over. My dad seemed moved, although he didn't say much when he got it. But that's the way my dad has always been-a little mysterious, and I guess that's OK. I thought I would include some pictures of the progress of the drawing, just for fun. I'm not sure what order they are going to appear in...and I still don't know how to remove a picture once I put it up, so here goes:
The finished product!
(My husband helped me out on the pictures. Not very intuitive this blogging thing...)
Speaking of my father, a few months ago he asked me to design a logo for him. He is going on a 40th anniversary bike ride with some friends of his. They took this ride in 1969 together and are doing it again in 2009. He wanted to make a custom jersey for them all to wear. This is what I came up with:
I drew the initial design and my husband scanned it in and went over it with a drawing program. We decided on colors together and he put it all together. Took us longer than we wanted it to, but it ended up being a fun project to work on together. Shared creativity can be fun. :)
Just to follow up on M's glasses and how that is going: He is doing very well with them. I figured we would have weeks of putting them back on every time he took them off. But within a couple of weeks he pretty much left them alone. Now when he is tired or frustrated with something he tends to take them off. But for the most part they stay put. And it's been really neat to see his eyes straighten out. The glasses really do the job. And I feel much better about them too. I'm getting used to seeing them on him, so much so that he looks odd without them. And I'm OK with the fact that he needs them too. I think it helped to realize that many parents deal with things far greater than vision problems in their children. Putting things into perspective was good.
Another big change for the month has been joining Weight Watchers (ww). M is over a year now and I wasn't losing any weight. People told me that the weight would start coming off when I stopped breast-feeding, but that really didn't happen. I tried dieting on my own over and over again. So I decided that there were no more second chances and I wasn't ever going to look back. And that involved spending $40 a month on the program. (I figure I will be eating less and we should save at least that much on groceries...) So far it's been a worthwhile investment. After 3 weeks I have lost 6 pounds, more than I had lost in over a year of working my ass of at the gym (aforementioned ass not coming off at all though...). So, I am quietly proud of myself and the program has been very good so far. They have the best website ever too. I can enter the ingredients for my own recipes and it will spit out points values for what I cook. Just love it! I'm not sure why, but I have not told many people about joining the program. Perhaps a part of me is still afraid that I will fail again and I don't want people to know about it. Perhaps I want to be able to casually say "I lost 30 pounds", and for them to have no idea that I had been working that hard. I like to think it's the latter, because I'm not going to fail at this. :)
Also cut my hair for the first time. Well, I didn't cut it myself, I paid a professional to do it. :) The shortest hair I have ever had. My father always liked long hair, so I never cut it when I was growing up. Then I married a man who also likes long hair, and it has stayed long for my entire life. But this year I wanted to try something new. I've been feeling like my face is very boring. I'm not a make-up person, I hate to wear it. So I wanted some interesting hair, something with a little style. I loved my long hair, but wearing it down was a pain. It always ended up in a ponytail, no bangs. Very boring. Plus, when my hair was down I was super hot, even in the winter. So off it came, enough to donate-which was fun. And I really like it, I'm having fun learning how to do different things with it. And I'm even using product...those of you who know me know that is a big step! :)
New haircut. Looks a little curlier now that I've washed it.
Storytime: I was in my Weight Watchers meeting the other day, listening to people share, etc. In the process of the discussion, someone mentioned that they had walked there. Probably a good 3 miles. So after the meeting I offer to bring her home, she lives not far from me and it's going to be dark soon. She accepts and seems happy about not having to walk. As we are going out to my car she says, "You know, I knew you were going to ask me if I wanted a ride. I just know things before they happen. Does that ever happen to you, that you just know what someone is going to say before they say it or that something is going to happen?" Right then I knew that I had invited a crazy person into my car. Oh joy. She gets in the car and looks behind her and just stares. I decide to fill her in and tell her that I have three small children, thus the carseats. That they are at home with dad. She then launches into a story about someone she knows who has kids and how horrible they are and how being a parent is just the worst thing ever. I didn't have much to say about that, I rather like being a parent and my kids are great. Every once in a while she would look over at me, but it was really strange. She had this 1000 mile gaze, like she was looking right through me and into the cosmos. All of this was not helped by the fact that I had a killer migraine over my right eye-all in all it was kind of a surreal experience.
Well, hopefully I will be better about updating here. I think that's all for now...
