Almost Spring

       

7j

Five Bullet Points

 Dear Sen./Rep.________,

I would like to know five actions you have taken in the past week to protect your constituents --veterans, educators, healthcare workers, farmers, and all those poor souls reeling under Musk's chainsaw attacks on government.

Has Congress abdicated all responsibility?

Sincerely waiting for a reply,

(Your name here)

This is my most recent letter. The cool medieval rabbit I think I grabbed from another blog. (Barb?)

Tearing My Hair and Whining

 

Arrgh!

The tech woes continue. My laptop wasn't charging and the power cord didn't work. I got a new cord and it worked...for a few days and then it didn't. We decided that the internal connection was the problem and John gave me one of his tablets.

Great,  I can be happy with that. I ordered a keyboard and a card reader so I could download pictures from my camera.

And despite spending a lot of time trying to make these accessory devices work---zilch, nada, niente!

I can take pictures with the tablet --- or with my phone and email them to myself for use on this blog. A stopgap solution.

I'll probably get another laptop if a miracle doesn't happen soon. But I can only futz about with tiny print instructions and frustrating electronics for a few hours before my brain bubbles and shuts down.

All of which is just to say that's why the pictures and format of the blog are not what I want them to be.

Morning and Evening

 

A Book for Calder

 

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My talented friend Louise came over to paint and showed me this charming series picturing her dogs Stokely and Pippi on a rabbit hunt. The book that it will become is to be a gift for her grandson Calder.

 I LOVE these lively images as the dogs encounter all the wild creatures but the rabbit, till finally, scared by a bear, they run home to dream of rabbits.

   

                      

                                                                             

Sunseeker

                     

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Soul Work

     

                                                  

As, one after another, I crank out my amateurish watercolors, I contemplate the joy of doing a thing for its own sake with no thought of 'monetizing' the work. I'm happy to be an amateur, a nonprofessional, not very skilled practioner, but also (taking the word back to its Latin roots) one working for the love of it.

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 I continue to try to paint from life (except for that rose which was an exercise in a work book. I would never have chosen that brown background.)

I happened on this rather appropriate quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

"To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. So do it."

 

Josie's Rainforest Diorama

  

    Josie made the boa and the toucan and painted the scene. The artist's statement is below

 

 

 

Chasing Bubbles

O                                                                    

 I was attempting a picture of Josie from a photo and was reasonably pleased with how the face was coming. I left it unfinished to work on the bubbles and disaster struck. The more I tried to.make them look like bubbles, the more they didn't. 

 So I went online and found a tutorial on watercolor bubbles

 Voila! Evidently I'd been going about it all wrong. So I've been practicing.                                             

 Eventually I'll have another go at a second picture of Josie and the bubbles. Right now, I'm having fun practicing

             

            

 

Shameful!

           

 I am incandescent with rage at the shameful treatment accorded Zelensky during the made for tv tag team/grudge match orchestrated by the White House.   

 For the first time in its history, our country's leaders are openly backing an aggressive, pitiless dictator in his invasion of a sovereign nation. 

 The craven ego of our president demands praise and submission. 

Kudos to Zelensky for not imitating most of the GOP and kissing the big orange ass!

Rabbit Rabbit

                                                                                    

My Window Garden

Breakfast: six-grain toast with mango/jalapeno hummus and a white nectarine.

And what is probably the last bloom of the amaryllis Claui's folks gave us which has been blooming since Christmas.

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

                                                                             

Ethan, my older son suggested this for me. It's a kind of dark comedy with a reliable narrator who constantly breaks the fourth wall to address his readers and tantalize them with clues.

Harking back to Agatha Christie and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the character are marooned at a ski resort --and people keep dying. The author/narrator plays fair--the clues are all there.

It's a fun read, especially for a fan and/or writer of the genre.