HAPPY NEW YEAR

Welcome 2010! As though it would never get here, my blog sat vacant for too many months. Months that seemed to me only weeks; weeks that had been days ran long into months before even I began to notice. And I hid, not wanting to confront the sadness and the fear of even starting this blog let alone keeping it going. One flippant comment wounded me so easily. My inner critic raised her ugly blonde head and began, "I told you so.." My Creative Muse withered in the back of my mind, ignored.

Oh, how I ran! Ran as psychologically far as a mind can get, Then BANG! Happy New Year! 2010 finally arrived! New beginnings, new adventures, new outlook. We're allowed to be out with the old and in with the new, whatever that be, is up to us. It's funny how, when you're ready, everything looks better in a new light. And so we begin again, or perhaps pick up where we left off.

I am humbled and thankful for so many things. Life has been a whirlwind the past few months - but everyone is as the holidays approach one after the other and the year winds down and we look to a new one on the horizon. We hurry to finish up loose ends only to begin weaving more.

This fall left us with an empty chair where Mom O sat and commanded us. Yes commanded us. We were lost this season without her here to organize and tell us where and when to be. She was, it seems now, the glue that kept us together, the organizer of all things family. And we had learned helplessness. We didn't have to think anything, just do and follow the lead. So we had much to overcome in the oddness of the celebrations, the sadness of the captain missing at the helm. But having said that, and surely she would shake her head at us (she did NOT like new traditions and let us know more than once)... we did attempt a couple new ideas, if not traditions, in the very least they were new experiences. And with that we found comfort and joy in unexpected places, and in not forgotten familiar faces. Big arms, warm hugs, family, friends and food. What more is there in life?

Cowboy and I - we don't do drama. We don't do it well and prefer not to do it at all. Know what I mean? We are a mixture of someone who doesn't like confrontation and someone who believes that if we just talk about it, we can solve anything. We had so many warm and loving invites over the season, and we took you up on a few and the rest we tried to find some semblance of "normalcy" within our inner circle of parents, children and grandchildren. Sometimes We were the parents, sometimes WE were the children. We ebbed and flowed and sometimes we didn't get a good bearing on decision making til the last minute. But it all worked out, it always does, doesn't it? No stress, that's what I tell my daughter-in-law - "No Stress Allowed" - And I like it that way, I think we all like it that way. I’m trying very much to live my life as such. So if we didn't get to sit at your table and break bread, it didn't mean we didn't want to; simply we had something else we needed to do or decided we needed to do or just plain it's where we ended up. It's all good. And that's what I'm looking to for 2010 - it all being good no matter what it is.

What does any of this have to do with art? Well it's the art of living life, of making way for more creativity, an exercise in thinking outside the box. At least that's what I'm telling myself. At least it's getting me dusting the cobwebs off this blog and thinking about clearing a bigger spot to work on my art table. In my new art room. Studio? Can't quite get there with that word yet this year.

Ahhh new art room you ask? Yes. This fall Cowboy decided we would move to his mama's house and we have affectionately nicknamed it the "Farmhouse". We spent so much time going back and forth working on it and collapsing at the old house we finally moved in and decided to work on it as we go. We’re still moving bits and pieces of ourselves here, in boxes and bags and more stuff than we can imagine two people could possibly collect. It is definitely a labor of love, will be a long labor of love as we do what we can, when we can, as we can. Everything in its time. And that's okay. It's life, it's how it works when you stop fighting the universe, stop trying to figure it all out and just be; be yourself in your own skin in your own little niche in the world. So this is it for us: and it's a piece of his mama and her mama and daddy, and all the aunts-uncles-cousins-friends of a few lifetimes. It is an old house, with good bones and loads of character, rooms full of memories of good times and more still to come. Grandchildren and grandchildren’s children have slammed the screen door and swung in the porch swing. It stands tall, tired and worn, but familiar and comfortable like your favorite pair of jeans. I look at it and I see what it was, where it is, and what it longs to be. A lot like me. Possibilities. Potential. A work in progress. It is Home.