Cough, sneeze, wheez, blow!

I have no idea if these meets any of the EDM challenges but it certainly is what is currently my Every Day Matter, darn it.
One of those lovely winter bronchial things has settled in for what seems like forever. Now on the second round of heavy duty antibiotics I plan on being hale and hearty by next weekend.

In the meantime, send chicken soup. 

Challenge - something sweet

The Christmas candy on the table at my son's house was so tempting. I love peppermints and now I'm wearing them. Aiiiyayaiiii! Now we are back home and I have a sore throat and bronchitis. Where are those peppermints when I need them? 

Sketches from another waiting room

This old lady is sketched by another old lady as we wait in the doctor's office. She has the most interesting face when I finally got a frontal view as she came out. I would loved to have drawn her again but at last it was my turn to go in. Her hair was in a braid that she had pulled up and clasped on top of her head. I may attempt to go after this with some water color a la Casey in EDM. 

Challenge 93, an egg carton

When really looking at the egg carton on my counter top, I was amazed at how dark the shadows were. I've always played with these cardboard cartons and think they are much more fun than the styrofoam...shows the criteria by which I buy eggs. This was fun in spite of how I struggle to learn watercolor. 

Challenge 92, a brown bag

Here is my drawing of a brown paper bag. Shadows are always a challenge for me and yet they are always present so I can't ignore them. I like this subject just for that reason. I think I shall try turning the bag and doing this again and again. 

Challenge 85, a store in my neighborhood

This quaint little building houses antiques and funky stuff and is part of several businesses in the oldest part of my small city. Seabrook used to be a sleepy little fishing village and the place where wealthy Houstonians came by train in the summers to fish and sail. It borders a channel that runs from Galveston Bay to Clear Lake (which is no longer very clear but is still pretty and home to many marinas). We felt it ironic that we should end up living here in Seabrook as my husband used to visit his aunt and uncle here in the summertime. His uncle was the minister of the small Methodist church.
As a result of the location of Johnson Space Center on Clear Lake, the whole area has mushroomed and now has high rise condominiums springing up along the main thoroughfare which ends up where this cute little shop sits about a block from the bay. Down the street is a Bed & Breakfast in the old parsonage. 

Challenge 41, a local landmark

This strange little building is actually in the shape of a triangel and is no more than 12' in any direction. It has been a Seabrook landmark for over 50 years and sits at the main intersection of our small city at the edge of Galveston Bay.
It began as "Curly's Corner", a bait shop and when we moved to the area over 40 years ago, it sold crab traps, crab nets, shrimp bait, and Coca-Colas out of an old metal cooler. I remember seeing straw hats and old-fashioned bonnets hanging around the small doorway. At that time Seabrook was a quaint fishing village lining the entrance to Clear Lake from Galveston Bay. Shrimp boats lined up along the wharves and Houstonians came down to buy shrimp off the boats. I paid 50 cents a pound for shrimp.
About 15 years ago or more a local lawyer bought the small property surrounded by Highway and Nasa Rd 1 and hired an imaginative architect to design an office from the standing structure. It is such a fun building to look it. The side away from the viewer in the sketch is mostly glass with some mosaic tile work to one side. So "Curly's Corner" has been preserved with imagination and is fully functional as a law office. I haven't never been inside but hope one day to get the view from the inside out. There is room only for one car to park by the entrance. Notice the amazing iron railing in the shape of dolphins. 

This unusual street light was outside of Starbuck's as my grandaughter and I sipped our drinks and sketched last Saturday. It was just one of those rare lovely glimpses of fall and we so enjoyed sitting at an outside table. A young man was getting a voice lesson next to us and singing French opera....a very new experience for my young grandaughter and I rather enjoyed it. Evidently he and his voice coach meet regularly there...it probably annoys some but I thought it added to our experience. 

Challenge 86

Once again I became more aware of images that I see every day but usually don't absorb. But goodness, there is such a wide variety of traffic signs I think I could fill pages and pages. 

I had a wonderful Saturday morning with my grandaughter starting with an exhibit of things built from Legos at our local library and then an hour of sketching at our local Starbuck's. The dog was a lively pet on a leash at a table next to us but bounced around so much that we just tried to capture its head. The cup was filled with my usual SF Hazelnut Breve Latte. My grandaughter loves the EDMs and is trying a few of them. This weekend we plan to develop her own blog so that she can share her drawings with her dad. We had so much fun! 

Challenge 66

A fire hydrant. Some fire hydrants in our neighborhood are actually yellow and blue....but I picked a more traditional one near my house. It was pretty interesting to really look at one. I love the way these EDMs make you really, really look at something you usually ignore. 

"My lunch" Challenge

Today's lunch: apple, grapes and cheese. Ink and watercolor in Raffine. Another EDM done. Now to see about dinner. And then on to "Dancing with the Stars", one of the three TV shows I watch weekly. Such fun.  

Challenge 84, Bread

Yay, back to working on Challenges at last. Of course I just had to have a Bear Claw from Panera to draw. It was just difficult to leave it alone long enough to find my watercolors. Well actually I plead guilty to having a bite before applying a brush.
This was a treat to myself after a Physical Therapy session....hard work deserves a treat, right? 

Walking, walking, walking---Yippeeee!

Looky here! Walking. No cane, all gain. At last. I still wobble a little here and there but I can even drive! Wow! Things are definitely lookin up. Now to get pain free. That will come but in the meantime thank goodness for pain meds.

At last I can carry a glass of iced tea to a chair. It tis the little things that one can really appreciate after this kind of experience.  

Another view from the hospital...Mrs. Martin

My sketch of Mrs. Martin Mrs, Martin is a tiny, frail little woman with huge blue eyes under enormous glasses who was rolled into the dining hall of the hospital for meals and I was fortunate enough to meet her and dine with her on occasion. She wore this incredible look of innocence matched always with a rather impish smile. She reminded me of Yoda from Star Wars. One had the feeling that she had just found herself in a wonderful dream in the midst of a big party where she was the guest of honor. She may have a touch of Alzheimer's, thus the look of waking up in a whole new world hourly but I loved being near her and in her energy.
One day her daughter, son, grandaughter and great-grandaughter and great grandson joined us for dinner. She was delighted with all the attention and her adorable great grandson about 2 years old wore the same look of innocence in his matching blue,blue eyes. And we all enjoyed her very precocious 6 yr old great grandaughter. 

Another sketch from the hospital stay. The tech who saw it (gorgeous Anthony with the dark eyes and pony tail---not all of me was numb) said I must have been really really bored to resort to drawing my bedside potty. He was right! 

Here is a postcard I made a few weeks ago as part of a project with my Artist's Way group. We've been sending postcards to folks who are ill or having difficulties. I also send out some through Postcard X, a fun website for exchanging PCs. 

Another sketch from the hospital. Why the OTs wouldn't just let me draw inside of making omelettes in a plastic bag is beyond me. It wasn't until my last day that I demanded my sketch book. At that point I didn't care whether I made them mad. Sweet ladies but glued to their job descriptions. Sketching beats dominoes in my book any day in rehab. 

Home at last

Well, hi there. Home at last. Yep, it was 2 weeks ago last Tuesday that I went under the knife and after 6 days in the Surgical center and 10 days in the rehab hospital, I am a very happy camper to be home again and sleeping in my own bed. I will try to spare you most of the gory details but I had a complication with the epidural and had to have a blood patch to fix the leak. That was an eiry experience as the OR was closed down on Saturday morning as they wheeled my bed through the dark and empty bays toward a table all lit up...I would have sworn I was in some kind of weird movie and Freddie Krueger was going to be waiting at the end. But thanks to two fabulous anesthesiologists I am all fixed up and was sent on to the rehab hospital.

Reminder: if you can help it, never schedule surgery before a holiday weekend. Minimal staff does not add to your comfort zone. Labor Day all the patients were wheeled into Physical Therapy (hereafter known fondly as PT) at once and it was a major downer for me. I looked around the room and thought "OMG, how did I get here? I have crossed over into the land of the aged and infirmed. Holy cow!" We all got in a big line and wheeled our wheel chairs around the gym to music...now try to get this picture...a parade of wheel chairs. Lovely. That was our Occupational Therapy for the day followed by more group fun with Physical Therapy.
By the next day my attitude had changed 180 degrees and I became just simply so very grateful that I was not struggling to gain movement in a limb following a stroke, or that I had not been in a terrible auto accident. I had just had a wonderful knee replacement by one of the best doctors ever and I was soon going to be much better.

Because Medicare requires 1 hour of Occupational Therapy each day that you are in a rehab hospital, I had to do some really dumb stuff. At 8 one morning six of us were lined up at table in the kitchen doing Chopping 101 on onions, green peppers, tomatoes, ham and mushrooms on paper plates, all with rubber gloves of course. We each put our name on a Ziplock freezer bag, cracked two eggs into the bag, squished them around, added ham, etc and cheese followed by more squishing. The preacher next to me and I got so good at it, we made a bunch for the staff. These bags were all dropped into a big pot of boiling water for 13 minutes and out came omelettes. They just rolled right out of the bags ready to pop into a tortilla. Seemed like an awful lot of trouble and waiting to make an omelette but it was kinda fun.

Talk about meeting some interesting folk, I have never met so many people with missing teeth, not just one or two. It is a terrible mark on our health coverage that it seems that much of our population can't afford dental care. All patients were encouraged to eat in the dining hall which is an effort at 7:00 am when your roommate has kept you up all night. I finally got to where I could tuck my sketch book under my arm while I pushed my walker around. I will share more drawings later.
The rehab doc was great and when I came in, I was greeted with an icy orange mega vitamin drink. A hospital that gives vitamins? Wow!!
I am doing so great...at least a couple of weeks ahead of where I was with the last knee. I go to outpatient PT 3 days a week and had a pedicure yesterday thanks to dear daughter who has delivered chocolate as well...she knows her mama.
I want to thank everyone, especially my husband, for all their incredible support. I had many folk come to visit so I never felt lost or lonely; beautiful flowers and cards; lots of prayers; and some wonderful nurses and therapists. I am so, so grateful to everyone and to the technology that is available. This knee is even better than the last one.
Thank you, Universe. I believed and you delivered. 

The knee joint a la plastic model

Here is what a knee should look like on the inside. My right knee doesn't look like this...it is bone on bone so the muscle over the top is cut, the joint pulled apart and plastic and titanium inserted into the femur and the tibia so that the joint will roll as smoothly as glass. And you should see what I can do to the security checks at the airport!!! Major surgery and very painful because of the muscle incision but it works! Worked great on my left knee, now for the right one. 

The Adventure begins

Today was spent at the hospital doing all the pre-op stuff. I've decided to make the best of this and draw all I can about this experience of having my 2nd knee replacement. So I have more drawings of folk in the waiting room, etc. The doc says my leg isn't silly, just crooked from years of being knock-kneed and he is going to fix it. Yay! Imagine that...69 years of knees wanting to meet each other head on and I am going to have two straight legs.
So here I am after a chest x-ray, an EKG, blood work and a little band on my wrist that tells my blood type (I was told I would be struck by lightning if I took it off before the Tuesday surgery).

Now if we can just make sure that that darling little tropical storm headed to the Gulf disappears into nothing and definitely not Seabrook/Galveston I will have it made in the shade. 

Failing Clouds 101

Oh dear...my first attempt at clouds with water color crayons and Inktense pencils. Early this morning traveling down a local highway I saw this amazing huge thundercloud with this brilliant light from the sun around its edge. It had a dark line as storms frequently do on the bottom edge.
But this doesn't even come close to what I saw. I know why I have avoided landscapes...clouds are HARD...at least to me.
Should I be started with something simpler? Is it my media? Are they easier with watercolor paints? Is it the composition or all of the above.
Frustrated but determined in Seabrook, TX where it is thundering right now. 

EDM Challenge 79 Ears

Finally I found an "ear" model or rather I coerced my husband into some still time in front of the TV. This was an interesting challenge and I realized a couple of things in the process. (1) I had paid more attention to eyes than ears and that there is great variety in ears.
(2) the first drawing was from a live model with a Sharpie Extra Fine Point pen and the second from a magazine picture with a Lamy Safari pen. I am discovering that I draw much better I believe from a live model than from a photo. Any one else have this experience? Is it some sort of energy exchange? Just curious (the therapist in me rising to the front) as to what that is about. 

Challenge 78 - A souvenir

These masks are souvenirs of a trip to Bali where I was privileged to meet and work with Amon, an honored mask maker in his village. These are two of the four I purchased. Amon arranged for our group to dance with our masks accompanied by a gamelon band. I wore the mask of the old man and danced as an elder. I was in Bali to co-facilitate a workshop orginally planned by my friend, Lucia Capacchione. We visited shamans and were witness to many village dances including the amazing Kris dance to purge the evil from the village. Too bad Western cultures can't adopt these rituals instead of sending rockets and dropping bombs.
I collect masks from all over the world as I am fascinated by the representations of the psyche by different cultures. Many other souvenirs I have disposed of, used up or given away but my mask collections stays as a reservoir of my experiences. 

Challenge 77 Something cool

I saw this picture in the N Y Times and thought , "Now, that is cool."

Lucky doc