A long, strange day

 
 

I'm listening

Skype portrait, black marker on bond paper

8 1/2 x11 inches

Barbara Muir © 2010

My day started with the alarm beeping very
early this morning.  I'd been marking until the
wee hours, as I have been for more than a week.
But I rushed around, got ready, hurried out of
the house with lunch and bags, and inside boots,
and outside boots, and muffled up to the max
in down and fake fur (it is one cold time of year),
and off to the garage that has my tires for the
second time.  This time I sat calmly marking, met
a very nice gentleman who told me stories of his
life in India and Scotland when I took breaks
from marking, and waited. And waited.  For
two and half hours. The problem?  The machine that
broke the first time I came over a week ago, broke
again and I couldn't get my snow tires on.

Oh my.  I was upset.  The nice man who had to
break the news started handing me gifts -- a notebook,
an umbrella with the garage logo.  It reminded me of
the character in the movie Love and Other Drugs, who
escorts the doctors into the hospital in the rain with a
drug logo umbrella.  Only the sun was shining, and the
product -- snow tires (which I own and are stored there)
-- were still not on the car.

The running news loop on the waiting room TV was
of the snowstorm in London, Ontario, two and a half
hours away, where they've had more snow in two days
than they normally get in half a winter.  So I will need
those tires.

When I came home after teaching, the cats had knocked
over a poinsettia plant in the hall, eaten part of it, and
made themselves ill.  So there was dirt, plant and cat
sick to clean up.  Ah well.

I am good at picking up the mood.  Thank goodness.
I ate dinner, and now for a change I'm going to...mark.

Here's a Skype sketch to end the day on a happy note.
I like the mood, and enjoyed the challenge of working
with a thick, black marker.  Drawing like this creates
an image almost like a woodcut.  Nice.


Have a picking-up-after-the-cats-and-enjoying-it day.