Rejoining Life

Life has pretty much settled down ’round these parts as of late. After the big death, the big funeral, and the big holidays, it sometimes felt like there wasn’t much opportunity to really relax. Now that rest has been had, for the most part, it’s been nice to get back to those things I do to keep my brain amused.

The first thing was getting back to doing art. I’ve had a couple of in-progress works in the pipeline for quite a while, and they’ve given me some incentive to get off my lazy butt and finish them. The scratchboard of Scarlet* is all but finished. I’m letting it sit for a couple of days before I take a final look, do some last tweaks, and then sign and varnish it. The airbrush portrait of Tess and Vince is still going slow. Not because it’s posing any particular problem, but because it’s just too cold in my garage studio to work on it for the hours at a time that it requires. Temperatures have been moderating recently so I’m hopeful I’ll be back to shooting paint very very very soon.

Having the opportunity to drop by and help Scarlet with a RAM thingy yesterday, I finally got to meet her new beau, Joxer. Though we (Scarlet, Joxer, Mary, and me) only huddled around the kitchen table and talked for an hour or so, I have to say that based on first impressions I like the guy. Sense of humor, respectful without being obsequious, confident without being cocky, and he obviously enjoys being with Scarlet and Dawn. Doubtless there are youthful indiscretions that I’d rather not be in the resume (few teens nowadays seem to escape with clean slates), but being the sort to prefer judging a person by how they are now and how they treat me and the ones I love, I’m definitely giving him a passing grade from this one meeting. I’m hopeful that we will continue to build upon this foundation.

Now it’s time to turn my attention to finishing my novel. That’s now in full swing again as I’ve re-read what I wrote before and have set up a template in OpenOffice.org Writer to handle the novel format (Microsoft has broken me…I don’t like their policies with Office and have decided to abandon the $uite). I figure with a week or two of work, I’ll be back to sending it out to various agencies and hoping someone likes it. I’m hope that this current WGA strike won’t be like the previous one in the 80s were all these screenwriters suddenly flooded the publishing world with material.

Other than that, I’m trying to enjoy a lower-stress life. I’ll soon have to start tending to the yard and house. Frighteningly, I’m almost looking forward to it. Then, when it gets warm in four months or so, I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a couple of years…take time out to enjoy the oasis that is my back yard. It’s as bucolic a refuge as I can conveniently handle (I could do without the rumble of traffic in the background), and one I’ve neglected using for too long. Until then, it’s just doing what I can while also trying to stay warm.