Inner Doodles

It has officially been over a month of tumultuous emotion, ever-changing news, rapidly changing lifestyles. I feel sea sick. Everything comes and goes. Like a slow pulse. The morning bleeds into yesterday bleeds into last week bleeds into - are we still keeping count? These logs are my only way to know the days anymore. If it were a hundred years ago, I suppose I would have notches on the wall. Now I have notches on The Cloud. The wind was angry today. I think it was trying to blow us out of our houses. If Aesop had taught him anything, the wind would know that a calming tactic is more persuasive. I watched the trees knock against themselves. I watched the sun shine and then quickly be replaced by rain pouring itself down in buckets only to be interrupted by the sun again. The weather could use some calming techniques. It left me feeling disjointed. Chief Mate helped anchor me back to reality. He made up a game. It was called Quest. It involved detailed labels of care instruction...

A fresh gale tore through the front yard today upheaving our canvases. I knew it was windy before we set out, but I put “painting outside” on the schedule and, by God, we were going to paint! “I don’t want to paint in the wind,” whined the voice of a boy who’s been allowed one too many television shows this week. “It will be fine,” I ran inside to grab reinforcements. Not sure who I was really trying to convince. Frog tape did the trick. With canvases anchored to plywood boards and palette paper taped to the sidewalk (I was sure HOA wouldn’t mind) we set to work. I invited our next-door inhabitant to paint with us. She stayed on her patio, us on ours. Nothing like painting with friends 20 feet apart in strong wind. “I made the feet too fat,” cried the novice painter. “Oh! But you can just repaint them. Paint is so forgiving. You just wait for it to dry and then layer and...” But Chief Mate was done painting. He was already whacking trees with his favorite stick. A regular pastim...