Sunny mornings in Toronto are amazing. The air is crisp and clear, the light reflects off the glass sides of the skyscrapers, the streets seem strangely quiet and the little clumps of snow left by the street sides are dazzling.
It is minus 10- Celsius, but it will warm up to 1 degree by the afternoon. Everyone seems cheerful, no one is tired from a long work day yet. For several years now brightly coloured scarves and hats have been the vogue, and although there are not yet many people out yet the people who are out look like exclamation marks on the streets. Business people are in dark tailored clothes, looking, oddly, like clergy. (Is that how we get mixed up:))
I haven't even washed my face or brushed my teeth. I've thrown on jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt (no undies) lipstick, sunglasses and a long down coat and got into the car in search of milk. I feel free confident and happy.
When I get home I feel like going out again with the video-camera but I don't because I am looking for a new job (still have my old one) and it looks as if it's going to be a long haul. I can't spare more than the few moments it takes to write here.
I think I'm going to enjoy it though.
nigel and I are well. One of the things he got me for Christmas was oil paints and all the necessary paraphernalia that go with them. I have never painted in oil before. The test run painting came out well (at least nigel thought so.) I mixed oil paint with linseed oil to make washes of different colours (the paint was almost sheer) and then built up sort of linear patterns of colour on top of the washes so that the painting became 3 dimensional. The colours and shapes were balanced. Some of the colour combinations were subtle, and because nigel had got thirty brushes I was able to keep using new brushes for each colour so that every colour was distinct. There was no muddiness. I guess I will keep going. I will paint small canvasses in sets of three, to be framed in a single frame.
Whenever nigel comes back I paint.
nigel paint also. He paints landscapes in a style that is like a cross between The Group of Seven and The French Impressionists. I like his paintings. They are full of soft aqua colours and white-yellows with emphasis in dark browns and greens. When we have time we drag each other off to Art Galleries.
My mother put on a beautiful Christmas Eve spread. My father did Christmas Dinner. Everything seemed the same as always. The nightmare of the last year is fading away. I got Logastina Pots (6) for Christmas (the ones with the tempered glass lids), because I had expressed a desire to learn to cook, but as I was making Irish Stew (generations old recipe--two secret ingredients, it turned out:)) dark thoughts passed through my mind.
The worst of them was when I was peeling the potatoes. I had had to buy a potato peeler because I don't peel potatoes, at least I never have, and my thumb started to hurt from pushing the peeler across the potatoes, and I thought, good God, there are some women who have to do this every day in order to get laid. Their lives must be a hell!
Then I thought of Martha Stewart--her TV shows that teach women how to waste as much as their time doing precious projects as is humanely possible. It's bad enough having to fuss about clothes and hair, which you may have noticed, I don't do, but add this into the mix... Then children (who actually do need one's care and attention.) Where's the time to live, to think, to learn, to change.
If nigel saw me turning into, this he would stop me. He has stopped me, 10 years ago (fondue).
So life is good and so was the stew, and now that nigel will eat spicy foods and I have enough pots, maybe I will try Thai and he will make me promise never to do it again--at least not for him:))
06/01: Happy New Year 2009!
Sunny mornings in Toronto are amazing. The air is crisp and clear, the light reflects off the glass sides of the skyscrapers, the streets seem strangely quiet and the little clumps of snow left by the street sides are dazzling.It is minus 10- Celsius, but it will warm up to 1 degree by the afternoon. Everyone seems cheerful, no one is tired from a long work day yet. For several years now brightly coloured scarves and hats have been the vogue, and although there are not yet many people out yet the people who are out look like exclamation marks on the streets. Business people are in dark tailored clothes, looking, oddly, like clergy. (Is that how we get mixed up:))
I haven't even washed my face or brushed my teeth. I've thrown on jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt (no undies) lipstick, sunglasses and a long down coat and got into the car in search of milk. I feel free confident and happy.
When I get home I feel like going out again with the video-camera but I don't because I am looking for a new job (still have my old one) and it looks as if it's going to be a long haul. I can't spare more than the few moments it takes to write here.
I think I'm going to enjoy it though.
nigel and I are well. One of the things he got me for Christmas was oil paints and all the necessary paraphernalia that go with them. I have never painted in oil before. The test run painting came out well (at least nigel thought so.) I mixed oil paint with linseed oil to make washes of different colours (the paint was almost sheer) and then built up sort of linear patterns of colour on top of the washes so that the painting became 3 dimensional. The colours and shapes were balanced. Some of the colour combinations were subtle, and because nigel had got thirty brushes I was able to keep using new brushes for each colour so that every colour was distinct. There was no muddiness. I guess I will keep going. I will paint small canvasses in sets of three, to be framed in a single frame.
Whenever nigel comes back I paint.
nigel paint also. He paints landscapes in a style that is like a cross between The Group of Seven and The French Impressionists. I like his paintings. They are full of soft aqua colours and white-yellows with emphasis in dark browns and greens. When we have time we drag each other off to Art Galleries.
My mother put on a beautiful Christmas Eve spread. My father did Christmas Dinner. Everything seemed the same as always. The nightmare of the last year is fading away. I got Logastina Pots (6) for Christmas (the ones with the tempered glass lids), because I had expressed a desire to learn to cook, but as I was making Irish Stew (generations old recipe--two secret ingredients, it turned out:)) dark thoughts passed through my mind.
The worst of them was when I was peeling the potatoes. I had had to buy a potato peeler because I don't peel potatoes, at least I never have, and my thumb started to hurt from pushing the peeler across the potatoes, and I thought, good God, there are some women who have to do this every day in order to get laid. Their lives must be a hell!
Then I thought of Martha Stewart--her TV shows that teach women how to waste as much as their time doing precious projects as is humanely possible. It's bad enough having to fuss about clothes and hair, which you may have noticed, I don't do, but add this into the mix... Then children (who actually do need one's care and attention.) Where's the time to live, to think, to learn, to change.
If nigel saw me turning into, this he would stop me. He has stopped me, 10 years ago (fondue).
So life is good and so was the stew, and now that nigel will eat spicy foods and I have enough pots, maybe I will try Thai and he will make me promise never to do it again--at least not for him:))