My Father

Today is my Father's birthday anniversary. He would have been ninety years old. He was a photographer and he photographed our daily lives. Why I look like a gamin (before I grew longer hair) in most of my childhood photographs was because my Father took photographs of us playing in the dirt or wearing clothes tattered from too much tree climbing and running around. On the photo he is shown with his cameras, very rare photograph of him at work. The other man was the President of the Philippines (also the father of the current President of the Philippines).

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Why I love men and why I have great expectations of them and set very high standards for them is because of my Father. He was a loving and protective father, a faithful and loving husband to my Mother. They were inseparable. He really loved her, adored her and we really saw it. He showed great respect to my Mother, the women in the neighborhood, no matter what their station or economic status was; to my sisters and to even us young girls.

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He was a soft-spoken man, gentle in every way. He was eloquent, intelligent, egalitarian, protective, kind and generous. He was a true family man. He was the youngest of five children yet he was well respected and became a sort of family advisor to his bothers and sisters' families. He was a loyal friend. He and his best friend met during the war and remained best friends until their death. They called each other "Brother".

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My father was well-read and well-informed. He was a spiritual man, very philosophical and argued philosophy with other men. When we were growing up, he told us we can be anything we want (...except a starving artist! yeah!!! - he meant any other professional, okay :)) Neighbors asked him to give them advice and intervene in family squabbles. He and my Mother made our house a refuge for battered women. Many times I saw him talked to abusive men. He was not afraid to intervene especially in a society where it was acceptable for men to beat up their women.

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I argued with him a lot. I even said so many disrespectful and fighting words when I was a teenager. Oh my God! I can't believe I got away with them. My sisters and brothers were horrified! He and my Mother just guided me towards reason and to their side with their gentle ways. I think he wanted to tell me how a man should treat me, he knew I was in for some adventure.

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I miss him so much!

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Thank you very much Tatay!
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The above church photos were part of an album of the consecration of The Cathedral Of San Sebastian by the Papal Nuncio which was photographed by my father.

Something I Haven't Done In A While

(Click to enlarge)

Draw in my Moleskine notebooks. I always loved doing this at lunch time. It's my ruled Moleskine pocket appointment notebook that I fill with appointments, numbers and drawings. Easier to doodle on it because it fits in my pocket and I just use a ballpen. Maybe I'll do one today. I was trying to draw my Finn Comfort Soho shoes - the best sneakers in the world!

P.S. If you have not claimed your Mental Ninja Award yet, please read the previous post. Thank you.

2009 Mental Ninja Awards

Ces's 2009 Mental Ninja Awards

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HIYAH!
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I am convinced I am the only conservative and registered Republican visitor of the Darling Renee. That makes me feel very special, which now means that quite possibly I am presenting this award to some liberals. What can I say? I have high ideals and I try to overlook the shortcomings of these beloved friends of mine for they are brainiacs and mental ninjas, artistic and creative minds and word warriors.

Baino (thank goodness she can't vote in the US)

Renee (double thank goodness, tripple thank goodness, quadruple thank goodness she can't vote in the US!!! La-la-la-la-la!)

Bjornik (you're a genius, so can do anything you want dear)

Bella Sinclair (what can I say, love is blind)

Tessa (I am keeping my fingers crossed. Someone who is a cross between Austen and Kipling can't be aligned with the party of Barney Frank! Oh God, please don't let it be)

Manon (if you are, a beautiful woman always gets away with anything)

Linda Cardina (if you are dear, I'll just think of it as a bad Gemini trait)

Valerie Walsh (you can do anything you want Val)

Karin (So intense and I love your journals, be who you are Karin)

Diana Evans (you are my only hope)

Aimee (she's perfect to me!)

Dusik (I hope your beautiful fairies are not fairies)

BT (Who says gardening is not a mental exercise?)

Kaili (My dearest kapatid - be perfect and special, be not like the rest)

Pam (I am counting on you)

Lavender (I have hope yet)

Chris (I have no doubt, but I like her anyway and she is sooo much fun)

Bimbimbie (I like her very much, she can be anything she wants)

Arija (if you are, I may convert just to be like you!)

JoyEliz (Best news today!)

Update 5/25/2009. I am giving this award to Sarah who I've just gotten to know recently. I love her art and her diverse skill plus she gets called by parents who need help disciplining their children, so does it really matter whether she is liberal or conservative?

6/4/2009. Deborah, Midlife Poet!!! - There's hope yet!
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NOT! Maybe I should advertise my blog as a conservative blog to attract my own kind. or maybe the conservatives are minding the stores. So what does that make me?

Award design inspired by my very own Mental Ninja Em!

Acidic Doodle

I am at an impasse. I have nothing left. The well has dried up. I am thinking orange, something orange...Oh the vinegar from coconut juice or wine becomes orange as it ages. This was the study for the Vinegar Woman. It was a doodle. I actually crumpled it and threw it in the trash. Then I saw it again and liked it, so I painted it.

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No kidding. The county where I live which is bigger than the state of Rhode Island, was deluged by rain last night. We had severe thunderstorms last night. It rained all night and I woke up several times. The roof was battered by the rain. I got out of bed at 4 AM to let Daisy out. She refused because of the rain. I later went outside to put the trash at the curb and was so shocked to see our neighborhood was flooded. The carport was filled with water. The street was gone, just a huge pond. I scrambled for news, the children's schools were closed, the streets were impassable. There's a post diluvian calmness now but I have to work from home because the children are home.

A Pillow Of Winds

I did this drawing while I was up most nights doing certain pre-implementation project tasks. Sometimes I drew in the morning but the lack of sleep made me doze off several times while drawing this. I thought the song below sounds like a good lullaby. This is for my friend who kept me company and made my work nights bearable and sane and for making me concentrate and persevere so I could finish the most mind-numbing tasks. Thank you.

A Pillow Of Winds
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A cloud of eider down
Draws around me softening the sound
Sleepy time when I lie
With my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And the candle dies.
When night comes down you lock the door
The boot falls to the floor
As darkness falls the waves roll by
The seasons change
The wind is warm.
Now wakes the owl, now sleeps the swan
Behold a dream, the dream is gone
Green fields
A cold rain is falling
Near the golden dawn.
And deep beneath the ground
The early morning sounds and I go down
Sleepy time in my life
With my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And I rise like a bird
In the haze and the first rays touch the sky
And the night winds die.

Pink Floyd

She's Leaving Home, Bye-bye

Update: I stand corrected by my brother. The ship that collided with the oil tanker was the Don Juan, not the Dona Florentina. The Dona Florentina was used by the company to ferry family members to the site of the accident during the search. Thank you Toto.

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Sometimes, I wonder if it really happened. Maybe it was just a bad rumor. They never found her body. So for years I kept hoping she’d resurface and I get a call and some bright cheerful voice on the other line will greet me with “Cille! What trouble are you getting into this time?” and then a giggle.
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It’s ironic how things work sometimes. A gift is given when one is not asking for it. So it gets overlooked and placed by the wayside. Because it’s there and it’s not a bother and it may in fact entertain you for a while, you keep it. Some people are gifts, blessings. Someone must have really liked me. I am showered with gifts of friendship. Alas, when they happened I have been too selfish and pre-occupied or too immature, or what’s that term, un-evolved.
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When I was fourteen, I played the role of matador. My quest was to fight two bulls in order to save the beautiful princess being held captive by a mean lord. Never mind that the bulls were two Girl Scouts pretending to be bulls and the lord was the Patrol Leader; the beautiful princess did not have to pretend. She was beautiful and her demeanor matched that of a fairy tale princess.

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I, the Patrol Second and well dressed matador saved the princess and met a friend. We were young, competitive and nothing was impossible. Cyn and her younger sister and another girl were representing their school. I and another classmate represented mine. We were immediately drawn to one another, even though we had seemingly opposite personalities. I found her gentle, demure, diplomatic, sweet, constant, calm and quiet as opposed to my overly assertive, outward, frank, hyperactive, fickle, gregarious demeanor. We learned each other’s traits. I became calmer and more tender; and she became more expressive when we were together. For six months we saw one another frequently in different camps and events. We had fun, especially that I missed the last three months of my high school senior year. However, we did not have to teach each other how to get in trouble.
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At fifteen, we became classmates in nursing college. We accidentally set the Chemistry lab on fire when during one of the lectures we dropped potassium permanganate into the slit not realizing that there were aprons in the drawers underneath the desk. The fire and smoke were controlled within an hour and no damage was done except the class was cut short, so we let the incident settle quietly. In biology we were threatened with a failing grade in anatomy because we both refused to dissect the live frog. I found them gross, cold and ugly and she found the live dissection cruel. We let ours loose and they jumped all over the place causing disruption of the class. When I got in trouble with my Spanish instructor it was Cyn who waited for me in the corner as everyone emptied the lecture room.

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She was a quiet person with a hearty yet delicate laugh, she joined the crowd but preferred to let me or others take the limelight. She always smiled and when we got back to the dorm, that's when we talked quietly with each other, away from everyone else. We shared the same color of lipstick, bright red though we muted it when we were in the wards. We shared the same sleeping quarters, the same projects, the same internship schedules, helped each other with our clinical tasks, all the serious and important things and she shared my downtime. She made internship bearable with her quiet and steadfast demeanor. She was not possessive or needy. She would always be there when I came back but she let me run around with other classmates. In the end, I thought of her as my grown up friend even though we were coetaneous and we were two of the three youngest students in the graduate class of 91 women and 2 men. She was beautiful. She joined the beauty contest as our class muse; she was one of the two class muses. She was a perfect muse. She was always considered by everyone as attractive and beautiful.
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She listened and gave advice and I was her confidante. We separated after graduation. I went to the mountains for my rural internship for one year and she went to another province. When I went home in the weekends Cyn was not there but I visited her mother or her sisters at home. She married her physician intern boyfriend and I left our province to study speech pathology at the University of the Philippines.

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One night, the Dona Florentina, a passenger ship that we loved to take for our trips home during semestral breaks, collided with an oil tanker in the middle of the night. Having ruled out that we had no immediate family member on board, I relaxed. In the morning, on my way to the Philippine General Hospital where I had my clinic internship, I read the paper on the bus. They have listed the missing passengers log alphabetically. The names were familiar since it serviced our province and docked in my hometown. The entire family of my third grade classmate was listed. There were the names of our neighbors, my sisters’ classmates, and my cousin who worked for the shipping lines. Then, I saw Cyn’s grandmother’s name, her cousin, her only brother, her sister and then I read Cyn’s name.

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There was no name listed for her unborn child. Months later I came to visit her mother. She asked me to recall my adventures with Cyn in college. When it was time to leave, I got up and gave Cyn’s mother a hug then I told her that one of the greatest regrets I have, is never telling Cyn that I loved her. Her mother smiled and replied, “I am sure she knew”. Actually, I still love her.

Only One

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Say if I lose my mind and lose everything and I am now an outcast and relegated to the streets or under the bridge and I have to leave all my clothes and shoes and worse, I will have no lipstick but the person who directs this loss tells me that I can take with me one painting, only one painting, I know which one it is.

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This oil painting is 16"x20". I did it in 1983. Every time I paint, I always use one new brush dedicated to that painting and the rest of the brushes I use have been used on other paintings. It's like a ritual. Well I ran out of new brushes that day and I sat in front of the easel and wanted to paint. I had a new palette knife so I squirted a string of oil paint on the canvas and spread it with the palette knife. It felt so good. From then on I use palette knives to paint. I still use a new brush for each painting even though if it is just to paint the eyes. I love this painting. It is so primitive and so plain. My furnished apartment below reeked with linseed oil but it did not deter my friends from coming over and plopping themselves on that awful looking sofa which I sometimes used to dry the paintings. There's a painting of the Manhattan skyline in one of the photos with the World Trade Center Twin Towers.

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Go Figure

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In 2004 I was involved in a project to implement Adverse Drug Event prevention rules. I was responsible for writing the rules that would alert clinicians to events that would adversely affect patients when drugs are ordered in the presence of existing clinical conditions. As a nurse I understood the meaning of the rules. One Sunday afternoon, I sat down to paint and was preoccupied with my work. I kept thinking about the rules development tasks. As I continued to get preoccupied, I thought about the rationale of the whole process where events happen and logic processing takes place then an action occurs. Everything was organized and meaningful in a rule. So I asked myself, if I were to paint the Adverse Drug Event Rules, what would they look like? The result was a complete surprise to me. This was the first time I ever painted geometric figures.

Night Life

I love the night life
I like to boogie
In the disco round...yeah!

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Oh no, these days, my nights are mellow, mostly composed of on call work, preparations for project implementations, money work creeping into my sleep...
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My forest floor in progress, providing much needed diversion from performing mind-numbing tasks of rule resinstantiation. I am dispersing interesting shadows all over the place, well they are interesting to me.

Illustration Friday - Theater

LIGHTS, CAMERA ACTION!

'Cause Girl Just Want To Have Fun!

Of course it was my theater! I was a young, bold, egocentric, stubborn, selfish, wild, moody, tempestuous, impulsive, temperamental, arrogant, woman.

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I was Best Actress playing the role of my life. I am being facetious. It was actually gruelling, gut wrenching, introspective, artistically prolific time for me. I created more 200 paintings, charcoal drawings, stippling illustrations most of which I gave away. Sometimes I stared out of the window and at impulse would paint the scenes (above). I even cross stitched and learned to sew. I was seldom alone, always with company, invited to parties and working with people who wanted to feed me. I valued my solitude. I locked myself in my apartment when the time allowed and basked in the quiet where no one asked for anything. I wrote love letters to my Mother and Father, my boyfriend, my sisters and my future-Mother-in-law. I was a teetotaler. I read Aristotle, Voltaire, Austen, Darwin, mythology over and over.

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I was an impulsive painter. I was practically starving because I skipped meals, did not cook, had nothing to cook. I only ate peach ice cream and grapes. I was exposed to lead from constant use of flake white pigments and became very ill. Once my fellow nurses had to break entry into my apartment for I have not reported to work for three days. I was ill in bed, from exposure to hepatitis from a patient and I thought I only had the GI flu. I was broke. I had to close my bank account because I could not even maintain the fifty dollar minimum deposit. Still, I danced every Friday and Saturday nights until dawn at Studio 54.

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Let's Have Some ACT-SH-YAWN:

Arbor Day

Two things: Either my eyesight is getting bad or my new camera is bad. Hmn. which one is it? Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday of the month. This is the work I have been trying to do for the past week. Not surprisingly it's about trees.

P.S. I have been working a lot of hours because of projects. So I thought I'd cheer myself up with this song:

Keep It Tightly Knotted

or this:

Unless one is bathing in the river, one must always be careful to wear a full set of clothing under a patadyong since they are liable to fall off one's waist sometimes. I don't know what happened to this painting. I think I dressed her up (painted over it) because people kept asking me if that was me and I got so tired of explaining. I think the cover painting is this one on the right. I do not like that painting. It makes me feel...I don't know how to feel with it.

I Am Ilonggo

Above tube wraps of the Ilonggos: The left and middle wraps are called "patadyong" while the one on the right is called a "malong". These are native wraps of Filipinos who live in the central (patadyong) and southern (malong) regions. The malong is generally worn by the Muslims while the patadyong is worn by Christians. Other regional Filipinos and tribes have their own ethnic and regional woven fabric using different weaving methods, fibers, designs and patterns. Modern Filipinos do not wear patadyongs but in the rural areas, they may still be worn especially while performing chores.

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There is nothing more Ilonggo than the its language and the patadyong. Ilonggos are people who speak Hiligaynon or Ilonggo and who live in the province of Negros Occidental and in Panay Island. Ilonggo is a gentle and melodic language. There are no swear words in Ilonggo. They are all borrowed from Spanish, English and Tagalog. An Ilonggo is a soft-spoken and generally gentle person. They are less confrontational than some ethnic and regional groups. Their language intonation is so gentle that sometimes one won't recognize that an Ilonggo is expressing anger.

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From Ethnologue: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hil

Language: Hiligaynon
A language of Philippines
ISO 639-3: hil
Population: 7,000,000 in the Philippines (1995).
Region: Iloilo and Capiz provinces, Panay, Negros Occidental, Visayas. Also spoken in USA.
Alternate names: Ilonggo, Illogo, Hiligainon
Dialects: Hiligaynon, Kawayan, Bantayan, Kari.
Classification: Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Meso Philippine, Central Philippine, Bisayan, Central, Peripheral
Language use: Language of wider communication. Speakers also use Tagalog.
Language development: Bible: 1912–2002.
Comments: Christian.

Patadyong

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“Textile weaving in Iloilo dates back even to the pre-Spanish times.Long before the coming of the Spaniards to the Philippines, the Ilonggos were already weaving clothes from various fibers.Thus, when the colonizers arrived, they found that the weaving craft was already well established in the area.

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The most common garment woven was the patadyong which was worn by the women folks on a daily basis and even by the men as a tampi, a wrap around the waist.The first recorded account of the patadyong, described as a tube-like garment with both ends open worn by the Visayan women, was made by Juan de la Isla in 1565 (Isla 1565).Also, a little later, a manuscript was written that says that "the garments and dresses of the Bisayan women consists of mantles with…” Read the rest of the article: http://www.thenewstoday.info/2008/09/19/the.enduring.patadyong.in.ilonggo.life.html

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Malong

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“The malong is a traditional "tube skirt" made of handwoven or machine-made multi-colored cotton cloth, bearing a variety of geometric or okir designs. The malong is akin to the sarong worn by peoples in Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. The malong is traditionally used as a garment by numerous tribes in the Southern Philippines and the Sulu Archipelago.

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Handwoven malongs are made by Maranao, Maguindanao, and T'boli weavers on a backstrap loom. The pattern or style of the malong may indicate the weaver's tribal origin, such as the Maranao malong landap. Very rare malong designs and styles can indicate the village in which the malong was made, for example, the extremely intricate malong rawatan made only by a handful of Maranao weavers in Lanao del Sur, Mindanao.” Read the rest of the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malong

Vinegar Woman

Langaw . Oil on canvas.

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Last year, I painted this woman while I was on the phone. According to experts, she is the cause of global warming.

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Update: After Linda's comment I thought about the things I would like to do someday:

1. Work at Williams Sonoma. I know almost all the products they sell especially the knives, pots and pans, dishes, kitchen utensils, etc. In fact I once wrote a letter to Chuck Williams and he replied. That was in 1986.
2. I would like to have a coffeee shop, even if it does not make a lot of money, as long as I don't lose money on it. Break even is fine. I will hang out in the coffee shop and maybe have a studio on a loft. I will let other artists hang out in the coffee shop and drink all the coffee they want, or tea.
3. Work as a greeter at WallMart or an invoice checker at Sam's club.
4. Be a short order cook.
5. After I retire, I will make pyjamas my official uniform. Nice pyjamas of course, but I will probably get dressed when I go to the coffee shop.
6. Be an ice cream taster.

The Blue Nude

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Hmn, tell me something. Don't you think she's a little bit cold? There's a blanket there she could use. What is she reading? Aristotle perhaps? Something about Amity? What is she thinking? Is she alive? IS SHE ALIVE?!!! She looks very cyanotic. Holy Pythagoras! Crashing Theorem!!! she may be dead, dying, rigor mortis!!!

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I loved this painting. I felt very close to it and at the time I painted it I felt different, different state of mind, adventure...I can't remember much of it. Unlike the The Lady With The Pearl Necklace when I remember how I felt, what I did, I cried in front of it because I haven't painted for twenty years because I was busy being a nurse and being a wife and being a mother...so I cried when I finally thought I'd given her some feelings or let me say, I started feeling for her. My son was young, was in intermmediate school and he saw me as he walked past my easel and he asked why I was crying and I replied, "...because I found some of my missing parts..." and he looked at the painting and he said that the The Lady With The Pearl Necklace had all her body parts...and I smiled and laughed nervously. I told him someday he'll understand and then he said "Is this one of those artist things again where the painter has all that stuff inside her head, you should stop painting if it makes you sad...I told him I was happy, they were tears of joy and he said "Oh cool, don't cry so much okay?" as he picked up his skateboard and off he went down the street...

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This one, I don't know if I want to remember much...but I miss her...

Earth Day April 22nd

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Isabella, just rolling along...

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When I grow up I want to have a farm, a bamboo farm where I can cultivate giant clumping bamboo like these:

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In fact, I'll be happy with just a plot of land with giant bamboo clumped like the one above.

Woman

Woman combing hair. Oil on canvas. Someting like 28"x24", I can't remember.

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In case you have not known by now, my desktop computer died. The desktop doctor is trying to salvage it if mainly for the sole purpose of retrieving my files and documents. You see, I have this 1 terabyte storage system that was intended for back-up but I think the last time I backed up the computer was last summer. I know. I know. And I am an information systems clinical analyst. What can I say? We have analysts and database managers in charge of creating backups and fail overs so I can concentrate on - creating more data!

That leaves me without my jpeg files. Oh yes, vacation pictures which you now no longer make hard copies because it is so easy to just send an electronic file. I feel so dumb, stupid and lost. I feel ill at ease because I can't change my header. Yes, I love changing my header and my sidebar images that now that the files are gone, I feel like I have been wearing the same shirt for two days! Oh, yes, also my vacation memories. This reminds me of a time when I deleted over 400 images of our Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota trips. I was just sitting there watching some half-blood Indians putting on a tourist show when BAM! I reformatted my memory card.

I have quick fingers. If the computer is a gun, I have already fired a salvo of shots. That's why my husband bought me a Canon SLR XSi so I can pretend to be a Sports Illustrated photographer even though I am only taking photographs of the lantana and heavens, how much change will a bloom of that weed plant change in say, 6 seconds?

So what was I talking about? Oh yes, Manon Doyle is a new-found blogger who I like very much because her art is intense and the images of her women have fiery souls spewing from the pages of her journals. She talked about being forty and I immediately jumped at the opportunity of giving her my 2-cent worth of opinion. I have been there, done that and whether she wanted it or not, I was going to give her a review of my favorite decade.

In essence I just told her something like this:

Childhood is precious,

The teenage years are rebellious,

The twenties are notorious,

The thirties were anxious,

But the forties were delicious.

I should have said sensuous instead of delicious. Perhaps because I am fifty years old, basically past middle age (I don't think I'd live to be a 100) that I used a gastronomic adjective to describe a decade. It was sensuous. YES!!! So.

But the forties were sensuous.

I have never been happier, more excited, more energetic than the early years of my fourth decade. It was not smooth and easy. In fact I found myself in an emergency room being ruled out for myocardial infarction (heart attack). I went home with a diagnosis of acid reflux with this new label: Female, Forty, Fecund, Fertile, Fair. Thank God, he did not use Fat. I was very slim then so the gastroenterologist substituted Fat with Fair. Now he may have not done that.

So the best thing was being Female, Fecund and Fertile without having to worry about childbearing because I made sure that baby factory closed down. So I was free. FREE! FREE! Even though I had a toddler and preschooler following me all the time, climbing all over me, tugging on me, I soared like a bird.

At work I became very productive. I developed new friendships and ventured beyond my comfort zone. I became friends with two African-American women and one of them literally became my best buddy. She also happened to be the most feminine, estrogen laden woman I have ever met. Her pelvis was liberated wherein she walked with the kind of gait you see on the catwalk or movies except she was natural and was not in a hurry. She was also very funny and most of all, she loved clothes, shoes and red lipstick! I hit the jackpot. We went out to lunch almost every other day, even everyday on some weeks and sometimes instead of eating we went shopping for shoes - SHOES in capital letters. Not one or two, but five sometimes ten. There was one stipulation, she was not to ever call me Imelda Marcos, or I would have killed her. She couldn't because she was equally addicted to shoes.

So sometimes you go somewhere and you pick up something for your friend, say a little ornament of note cards or pen, well Cyn and I picked up shoes and purses for each other. One day she came to work with brown leather pumps designed by Paloma Picasso which I fell in love with. She took them off and gave them to me. No she did not go home barefoot, she had an extra pair or two in her office, just as I did in mine. Men will take their shirts off their backs for you, a best friend will take off her shoes and give them to you.

That was the superficial part. Cyn was a spiritual person, a young sage who happened to love being a woman. I was trying to find myself and having worked so frantically in my twenties and thirties, I was ready for a new outlook.

Women sometimes talk about their marriages and relationships. Cyn and I did. Sometimes I would tell her things that annoyed me in my relationship or how much I want to hit my husband with the iron skillet on his head. There were times when my screaming voice hit crescendo plus I had the worst PMS. She listened and laughed and then to my surprise I found myself seeing my husband's point of view. Cyn had this enormous capacity to listen and take every word I said but she laid it our there for me to hear, like Dragonball Z where Vageta sends a kamikaze fire ball and Goku catches it but instead of getting hit by the fiery onslaught he spreads it out in the atmosphere for Vageta to see and feel. Okay! Okay! I watched Dragonball Z with my kids.

She never said a nasty or unkind word about my husband no matter how I complained about his activities. Instead she would ask me what would make me happy or satisfied and if I could tell my husband exactly what I told her, except she told me I had to have ammunition. "First every time you make love with your husband do it like it is the last time you'll ever make love and then at an opportune time tell him what's on your mind. If he dismisses you, withhold sex." I burst out laughing. I told her that he wins no matter what. "Don't think of it that way, think of using him for your own pleasure and tell him exactly what you want in bed." My jaw dropped to the floor. Then she added, "Cille' do you love your husband?" I replied "Very much so." Then she said, "There! That's settled." Make it work for you but make him think you're making it work for him, he'll be kowtowing and sucking your toes. The least that could happen is he'll realize you are the greatest woman ever and when he takes care of your kids, he'll be telling them so. He won't change, much towards his friends and he may still do some of the things that irritate you but he'll be seriously thinking of you and your marriage is not going to be him versus you but how to make "us" work. You'll both be happy. He'll be the envy of his friends and you get what you want." I asked, what would that be and she replied "What?! You don't know what you want?" I replied "Well, I'm thinking." She said, "Girl start looking within, and be good to yourself. He married you because you were the best woman, don't forget that...and oh, you can still do the sex thing."

I loved my forties and when I turned fifty, it did not faze me at all, I welcomed it. If anything else, I found myself in my forties. It was a decade of self discovery. I was reborn. I love being a woman more than ever. I would like my fifties to be adventurous and auspicious.

As a token of my appreciation for her friendship, I asked Cyn to select a painting of her choice. She chose this. She said it will remind her of the times we shared together.

In the end it wasn't her advice that changed it for me. I made my own choices and decisions but it was good to know that there was someone other than my sister or even my Mother- who I know only wanted the best for me; who understood what I was going through while faced with the realities. Someone who was not bitter, someone who was open and sympathetic and non-judgmental and someone who truly cared, a girlfriend.

Man!

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Red Wine. 22"x24" Oil On Canvas

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Man! My 'puter is dead!

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We have laptops but I am not fond of them. I can't type in them, too many misspellings. I am trying.

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Time out chair. Wood.

Illustration Friday - Impossibility

Arbor Day, April 24th

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Tree planting with a girl named Bella would have been impossible when I was six years old. Pigment ink on 9"x12" Bristol Board. Click to enlarge.

Washing Dishes

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Washing dishes...

My daughter originally drew this tiger for her dream catcher in 2nd grade art class. When she took it home, I liked it so much I asked her to draw it on the Fiesta Plate. So one Saturday morning we played with dishes.She drew the tiger on the plate using permanent markers (which is not permanent when used on dishes).

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Later, I used the same tiger image for this painting I called Epsilon Naif. All the figures on this painting were patterned after drawings made by my daughter in her art class. The original 12"x16"drawings are hanging in my office. I wanted to remember this stage in her life with this painting. You may also see Snowflake, our pet rabbit snuggling to my daughter asleep on the left lower corner of the painting.
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Edit: Epsilon Naif. Oil on canvas. 36"x24". This is the finished painting. You can see Greenie, the Epsilons' pet turtle. You may also see the Fiesta carafe which was a recurring object in my paintings and drawings in 2006. The forwning clown now sports a flower pot on the brim of his hat. By the way, the Sleep Inducer is a woman, that is Bella Luna. Click on image for enlarged view.