Playing With Color

While The Peanut was home sick last week, I re-discovered something that I absolutely love:  coloring.

It's funny how you can pick something up that you haven't done in years and have so much fun with it, isn't it?  We colored a LOT while watching movies or just listening to music.  She found it a soothing way to keep from scratching her chicken pox, and I found it a nice creative change of pace and a good way to relieve some of my mommy tension while she was so sick.

We both had a blast spending time together, sitting side by side and sharing crayons and colored pencils.  I had forgotten how fun it can be to bring a little black and white picture to life with a little color.

How had I forgotten how fun that is?

Several years ago -- before The Peanut started school, actually -- I had gotten myself an intricate coloring book of springtime designs by Ruth Heller on an Artist's Date when I was trying to kick start my creative juices via Julia Cameron's Artist's Way.

Somehow, though, this coloring book got buried in a drawer (during some whirlwind "company's coming" clean-up spree no doubt)...and only got unearthed again, years later, this past week.  Which I think may be the most symbolic representation of my creative fits and starts and my difficulty with putting my creative needs on the front burner ahead of family and everything else in my life.

It is what it is, right?

But the thing is, once I rediscovered this coloring book?  And then started coloring in it?

I had a BLAST.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

There is a part of my brain which is begging me to call first thing in the morning to my surgeon's office and make them read the pathology report out loud to me if it is available.  That's a big "if" given that the intervening Thanksgiving holiday has slowed down everyone including the lab, I'm sure.  And that the folks at the office have better things to do than assuage a stressed out patient over the phone.

Especially when she has her appointment with the doctor to go over said lab report and surgery notes on Tuesday anyway.

Color me impatient for all the answers.

You know what, though?  It's a sort of lesson in zen.  You cannot make the world move to your timetable every single time you wish that it were so.  You can choose to chafe at that, or instead use it as an opportunity to learn patience and find some better thing to do with your time than fretting.

I'm choosing the latter.

Some things I'll be doing this week instead of sitting around and stewing over the three short days left to get my news, in no particular order:

-- Being grateful for my loving family who have taken such good care of me the last few days.  My life is really, really wonderful, and stopping to soak that in fully gives me enormous comfort and joy.

-- Planting an indoor herb garden to get me through the winter months with fresh, antioxidant-rich herbs in the house.  I already have a thriving rosemary plant that will be coming indoors shortly before the frost claims it.  I have another pot that will get filled and planted this week with thyme, oregano, and a few other choice herbs -- not too many because I don't want to overcrowd, but at least some that we'll be able to pick from fresh through the snowy, winter months outside.  Won't that be lovely?

Me And Julia Cameron

Thought you all would get a kick out of this picture, taken with my new iPhone by another participant.  This is the last day, I'm looking a bit rumpled but very happy to be there.

These are two women who really needed more coffee due to daylight savings time.  Julia was very gracious about allowing me to snap a picture for the blog.  Thank you!

Artist's Way Seminar: After The Third Day

Back home again.  I had booked a hotel room in Pennsylvania to break the drive from Massachusetts into two smaller, more manageable bits, but I was too homesick for my family to wait.

And so I drove the whole way and am exhausted this morning...but I am blissfully home, much to the family and the doggie's contentedness.

Yesterday's final session with the Artist's Way seminar was really enlightening.

Julia Cameron has a really crafty way of drawing you out on things you haven't thought about in years, or haven't let yourself think about because they "aren't practical."  But that make great motivators or rewards for your artist when you allow yourself to dream a little.

Very fun stuff.

One of her exercises had us thinking about things as if we were looking at the larger-than-life Hollywood version of ourselves, where money and budget, accuracy to our actual life, and all the other practicalities that get int he way no longer exist.

So, thinking about your own life in those terms, what would the view from your favorite room in your house be?  What would you be wearing?  Where would you have traveled that you have never gone before?  What talents do you have?

And a very fun one:  who would you cast as yourself in your movie?

Artist's Way Seminar: After The Second Day

Let me tell you, digging through all the artistic blocks and censors you have built up through the years is hard, exhausting work.

It has been well worth it, absolutely.  But I crashed hard last night and slept so soundly the alarm was startling this morning.  This seminar has been incredibly energizing in so many ways for me, but my body needed down time in the worst way last night -- funny how when I need to process heavy information, my refuge has always been and still is a lot of sleep.

Woke up and did my seminar homework morning pages first thing. 

It's funny to think about them as homework, because I do them regularly these days and love them.  But it's been fun doing them here because I'm in such a creative frame of mind that I'm digging at some really useful stuff that has helped unlock so many things for me.  It's really been a wonderful tool for meditation and creativity while I've been here.

Meals yesterday were also wonderful.  Again.

Artist's Way Seminar: After The First Day

It's the morning after the first day of the Artist's Way seminar, and I'm exhausted, but having a lot of fun as well.

Yesterday, I started the day with a great breakfast of steel cut oats, fortified with a little yogurt, some walnuts and a little maple syrup and cinnamon.   Yum.  Let me say that again -- yummmmmmmm.  I also had a couple of boiled eggs and some stewed apple slices.

As I was enjoying the meal, I sat at the table thinking "Why don't I eat this way all the time at home?" 

There is no good answer for that, because I really could eat this way at home more often.

So I hereby vow to try and do so.  Because eating healthy food makes me feel so much better than eating crap.  ("Duh, Christy, how many times do you need to learn this lesson?" you ask me.  "As many times as it takes to learn it," I reply.)