Doodles

While on the phone and not wearing my glasses I doodled these little birdies.

View from a Campsite

Inspired to paint this by a photo I took from our campsite up at Mississagi provincial Park a few years ago.

Standing Still

It’s hard to write anything here for me, mostly because I have nothing noteworthy to write. My life is pretty much in the same place it was 5 years ago, even a decade ago. The only difference is that my kids are older and the things I do to look after them has changed, such as I no longer need to cut their meat. Except for Devlin, I still cut his meat for him, obviously.  I’m still changing diapers, just like I have been for the past 20+years. In 1994 I started changing diapers and watching a steady stream of children’s television programming and all these years later I’m still doing it. Still making puree meals, still watching the kids tv shows. The thing is that is not going to change, not anytime soon, if ever.

It can get a bit depressing, when I sit back and think about how much my life hasn’t changed, and how it’s going to be this way until the day I die. So, I don’t think about it. I fill my mind with other things, things that are sunny and bring me joy.
Other people don’t understand why I geek out and obsess about TV shows, why I get so involved with fictional characters from books?
It’s a way to keep my mind distracted. To keep the sad, depressing thoughts about my life away from the forefront of my mind.
It’s the same with my sessions of dungeons & dragons, I really like to play, getting together with my family and friends and spending a few hours, even most of a day, sitting back and relaxing and being someone else. It’s a vacation from my life, for a brief time I get to be someone else and not think about the shit that is my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t walk around all upset and lamenting that my life is all tons of suck. I love my boy. I love how happy he is. I love how much he makes me laugh and how amazing he is. He has a smile that just makes me smile. 95% of the time, I’m loving him and not feeling like anything is wrong at all. But that other 5% of the time I’m dreaming ‘what if things had been different’.  It’s a sad indulgence that makes me feel even worse because I get all wracked with guilt, like I’m wishing this happy little guy out of my life, and I’m not. It’s just that sometimes I think what my life would be like if my 18-year-old son was on the verge of graduating from highschool, if I’d been able to have a job without worrying about what kind of child care I’m able to get for my son. Not having to hire a babysitter for him just so I can go out and run errands and not have to take him with me.
If I’d been working since Devlin started grade 1, as was the plan, what sort of life would we have had with a 2 income family. I imagine we’d have owned our own house. I imagine more vacations in our lives instead of just 2 real family vacations in all these years. Life might be easier in some ways, but there’s no guarantee. There would have been other road blocks, other obstacles that we’d have had to face, and perhaps we might not have faced them together. Who knows?

So, when my 5% pity party ends I go back to being happy with my life and forget about all that other crap for at least another 6 months or until some other issue drops into our laps that makes me regret not being able to work like other parents, not being able to shoulder some of the financial burden so that it didn’t rest entirely on my husbands shoulders.

I thought I’d stumbled onto a solution for that part of my worries, but it didn’t work out.
And that’s ok, because it came with its own set of problems. But now I’m stuck again. Waiting for my life to move forward, hoping it will move forward but knowing that even if I manage to take a step forward, there will always be something else pulling me back again.

You Are Not Worthy

I’m one of those people, when good things are about to happen, the Universe always likes to rear up and remind me that I’m not worthy.

Opportunity drops into the palm of my hand, and I’m scrambling to try and make this happen. My husband is busting his ass to get this to come to fruition. And every step of the way is a giant one. A barrier. A way for the universe to remind us that nothing comes easy. A way to remind us of our place, at the bottom of the dung heap.

I’m just not the kind of person that good stuff happens to. Sometimes it seems like since the day I was born the world has been working to bring me down.

Yellow and Blue

A rose by any other name…

I was practicing painting roses wish my Watercolor paints.

Me

First time trying to draw myself since I was 13 and had to do it as an assignment for school.  

It’s hard to be self critical, trying to draw what you actually see rather than what you perceive.

My husband laughed and said that my drawing was a time machine, that I’d taken a good 20 years off my face.

So I sat back down and tried to see the flaws, the wrinkles, the laugh lines, the blemishes. I realized that I hadn’t deliberately un-aged  myself. That’s just how I see me when I look in the mirror. No grey hair, no wrinkles, no strange hairs growing out of places they shouldn’t be. 

I see me as a fresh faced, girl that’s ready to take on the world. Not a middle aged woman that the world kicked the crap out of.