A Little Less of Me

Did you see the full moon last night? January's full moon is called the Wolf Moon. It was beautiful as it rose up behind the bare maple tree branches.

I'm happy to get on the scale on the Monday mornings when the number cooperates. (as if I don't control that number with my behavior) It's a good way to start a dreary looking day. Maybe the sun will come out later, I know it's supposed to be warm-ish. Of course I have to work so I wouldn't be able to go outside and enjoy it. Not that I did yesterday when I could have. Yesterday I went down into the dungeon and plunged into the forgotten boxes under the stairs. I am determined to work my way through our stuff and streamline our lives this year. It'll be hard, especially for Durwood who likes to keep everything "just in case," but I'm determined. Tomorrow evening I'm going to the botanical garden to attend an Urban Chicken class co-taught by my DIL1. One of the other instructors raises show chickens (show chickens???) so I'm hoping that he'll bring one along. Chickens have personalities of a sort but they're in no way pet material. Henny & Penny are smart enough to taunt Porter into rushing the coop but not smart enough to realize that she'd eat them in a heartbeat if she could get through the fencing.

January 8--Raphael, Lucretia. He just wanted to draw her hand. Why was it so hard? He looked at his own hands every day. He should be intimate with the mechanics of hands. The baker with his flour-cakes hands selling loaves and the barmaid who served his beer. The woman who brought in the clean wash and the boy apprentice who cleaned his studio and his brushes. he saw their hands daily, watched their grace and their dexterity. Saw them work small and big jobs with ease. So why was it proving nearly impossible to sketch Lucretia's right hand? The left one he had rendered to his satisfaction almost at once. The right one was another story. The angle was a challenge, he supposed. The truncated shape, awkward and unfamiliar, but it was a hand. Something so familiar as to be forgettable but so obvious when done wrong.

And that, my friends, is that for today. I'm off to gobble down a bowl of Cheerios, take a shower, dress in clean jeans and a nice sweater, and go off to save the world from SCUBA diving. See ya.
--Barbara