Passing through a golden doorway

Above: sunlight filtering through the trees lining the golf course next to my house. It's a lovely walk when the weather is right!

Hail, friends!

It's so hard to believe it's the 12th of January already. Almost a year ago that I started this blog, and it seems to have gone by so quickly. Where does the time go?!

Anyways! I don't really have any exciting news to speak of, but I thought I may as well do a bit of a boring little update since it's been 10 days since my last post.

The Fox is as dizzy as ever. He had some more tests done yesterday, which apparently involved blasting loud music straight into his ears. I was at work so I couldn't drive him to this one; he said the bus ride home was quite difficult, as the tests had made him even more spinny. But they say they may have located the nerves responsible for the condition. I can't quite remember what he said... something related to his eyesight as well, by the sounds of it, or at least the neurological processes behind vision. Not that they can do anything about it. Ha! Helpful. However, any new knowledge is good knowledge, and hopefully they'll be able to discover even more with the upcoming high-resolution scan.

He was still feeling the effects of the test today, so he wasn't able to do anything... I had to help steer him to the bathroom when I got home, he was falling over so much.

I had a very busy day, myself. I'm alone in the bakery department for the week as my boss is on vacation!! Which is nice in some ways, because I enjoy working by myself for the most part, but it can be hard to handle everything. I had to skip my second break today just to get everything finished. But I think I got it all done. We have very recently been switched to a new system of ordering from the commissaire bakery which has made it a million times harder to order the right amount of stuff. Previously, we could place our order and it would come the next day; now, I have to look into the future and order everything we'll need for the next week by Tuesday. Gah!

So it's probably going to be a bit haywire until I figure out a sort of default stock level at which to keep each item. I've been looking over past sales reports and compiling averages of how many of each thing we normally go through in a week, so that should help... today I had hardly any time in between receiving other orders and all the usual baking and labelling to do the weekly order, so I had to guess at a few things. I'm hoping next week they'll prove to be good guesses...!

Anyway. So I had a busy day there, and for the past couple days I've been extremely sore in the legs for no apparent reason... so sore at times in my left leg particularly that I've been limping. I don't remember doing anything weird (unless I went skiing in my sleep), so that's a bit mysterious. At least I don't seem to have the cold that every other employee in the store has (knocks on wood)... haha...

I've been dealing with a rather more personal health issue too, ahem, which has thankfully finally gone away. Let's just say it's something to do with being female, and probably something to do with eating too much sugar like I was talking about a few posts ago. That plagued me all of last week. I felt like such trash for the whole week! Argh! So, thanks to that, I wasn't really able to focus on anything except getting myself to work. (I did have to call in sick last Monday because it was so unbearable.) No art last week, alas.

But, I am going to forgive myself for that. It happens, and I really wasn't in any shape to do much of anything. I feel healthier now, and am mostly back to my awful old habits of sugar consumption, heh... I am trying, friends, to eat less sugar, I am!! Perhaps I need to try a bit harder. It's my biggest vice (that and Facebook)...

The Fox set me up with his webcam, and I gave it a little test run the other day... it seems to work fine. It should be good enough to record my first art videos anyways. I just need to figure out some way to mount it somewhere so that it looks down onto the desk. All I want to be visible in the video are my art and my hands; no need to show the world my face yet, eh? And anyway, that's what the videos will be focussed -- the art process. I also need to brush up on my video editing skills. I can't even remember how to animate text! I used to know, as we did a little of that in school, but it seems so long ago now. I've forgotten. Luckily I still have the software though, so I'll just need to watch a couple tutorials or spend a bit of time fiddling with it.

I've done just one piece so far this new year, but I'm pretty happy with it. It's a watercoloured dragon... of course! Tried out some new thicker watercolour paper, rather than the Bristol paper I usually use. I like it; it holds a lot of water, so I was able to do a ton of layers and build up the colour. I think I could have made the contrast a bit better, as it's on the light side, but I liked the soft feel of it, so I let it be.

The first of a whole flight of dragons, or at least that's my plan...

I'd like to come up with a catchy name for my "studio"! Using my own name would be ok I suppose, but it's not that interesting. I've been thinking of names relating to mythological creatures. We'll see where that leads.

Anyway. So that's the art side of things these days. I haven't done any art today because I was too busy with doing dishes, making dinner (roasted butternut squash and homemade pea and ham soup, by the way, which turned out delightfully if I do say so myself), and doing laundry after I got home from my exhausting day at work... sigh... oh well. I was so drained from work anyway that I doubt I could have focused on anything artistic. Today was a day of chores and responsibilities! I'm in a surprisingly good mood after such a day, too...

Pagan group was cancelled last week, so nothing new to report there. Really I should be studying it on my own as well; the group is nice, but they're all so knowledgeable and experienced that sometimes I feel like I should be catching up. I did have a little walk in the woods on Sunday, which is as good as going to church, for me, so that was nice. A little too cut short though, as I got there a bit too late and the sun was already starting to get low... it was cold! Next time I will try and make it a priority. My weekend was very productive; got a lot of random little errands done that I have been meaning to do for years, as well as grocery shopping and cleaning and so on. Not a lot of Fru Time, though, which is too bad.

My alarm just went off telling me it's time to go to bed, so I suppose I should do that -- after I put the clean sheets back on my bed (whee!). My lunch will be leftover soup, so no prep to do there. Skipping the shower tonight, because feh. So, to bed!

Though I am sore and poor, I am plucky and lucky, friends! I will try and return the good vibes I am getting from wherever they are coming from back into the universe tomorrow...

Safe travels!