If this post confuses you ...

...read yesterday's first and all will be come clear. Er.

'Stead of sketchbooking the last couple days I decided to get started on the How To Save the World notebook distributed to me and 499 of my closest friends by Art House Co-op in Atlanta. Here's the cover and Page One. You will be waiting with a bone in your mouth for Page 2, I'm sure.

What if ...

I was thinking about balancing the checkbook and paying bills and not buying books and making doctors' appointments and being more regular with dog-training sessions and whatnot.

It made me tired.

Messy dog

This is my Saturday morning. Click on the pic if you'd like to make it bigger and read the text.

Secret discoveries

I'm curious on this subject. HAVE you ever discovered something someone didn't want you to know about them? How did you react?
Have you ever had someone discover something you didn't want them to know about YOU?

Funny story: Back in high school I indulged occasionally in skipping certain classes. I don't know how I got away with it, but I did. Oddly, though, I'd stay in school and hang out in what was known as the "gym corridor," where upperclassmen were allowed to just loiter and drink Coke during free periods.

I was sitting on a bench there one day when I should have been in Espanol Quatro, when up the corridor strode a man who looked surprisingly like my father. Weird, I thought. As the man drew closer, it became apparent that he actually WAS my father.

The strangeness of this disoriented me. My father never came to my school for anything, and yet there he was: in the gym corridor, having clearly been called to school to kick my sorry, Spanish-class-skipping ass.

This was bad. My father was no one to trifle with. I muttered a few choice, panicky expletives to a friend sitting with me on the bench and steeled myself for the confrontation.

When he finally stood before me, he said, "Karen, do you have Mom's credit card? I need it to buy a new lawn mower."
I gulped, dug through my purse, produced the card and handed it to him.
"Oh, by the way, the office thinks you're supposed to be in Spanish."

Then he walked away.

A little off key

That's a pot of grass by the lamp on the table. I don't know why. When I see potted grass, I think, "Oh, someone has planted nibblies for a cat," but there's no cat here. Still, it was nice grass.

It was funny how, when I was messing up sketch after sketch yesterday, I was not finding it amusing or interesting. No. I was finding it only frustrating. But now that I have a little distance on it, I think it's interesting to consider that the problem in my mouth (wisdom teeth extraction Friday) maybe had an impact on my brain and my hand.

That could easily just be an excuse, but I don't think so. It's sort of the opposite of being in "the zone," isn't it, where all parts are working together in harmony? I was by no means in agonizing pain yesterday, but it's safe to say that all parts were not feeling harmonious, and they had been positively discordant the day before.

Anyway, I kept trying, then turning pages and trying again, because I think it sets a bad precedent to quit in a huff. I don't love this page, but in the end I was at peace with the drawing experience.

New clothes