Okay, it's all good, really it is.

Jeesh, I'm tired. More mental than physical, though I have been up & down on a ladder, drilling holes, planting plants, cleaning studio, placing lights and moving large rocks from one area of my yard to another. The outside version of rearranging the furniture. I also moved a dead log from one part of the yard to another, but had to move it back because I felt sorry for the 3rd generation of huge carpenter bees that have lived there for years and couldn't find their home after I moved it. One bee was still in the hole in the wood, but the other two kept trying to penetrate a sandbag near the original site.

The studio is about as clean as I feel comfortable making it. I eradicated everything on top of my studio work table in order to accommodate a coffee urn and some pasties PASTRIES for the Saturday morning visit. That's fine. I have to start from scratch every so often anyway.

I need to think some more about the works before I give my talk. There are still several influences and factors and tangents that I haven't had the time (inclination) to parse. It might be time I applied for an artist residency. Mmmm. Time. Unfettered. Sigh. Yes.

Yes, I thrive on a reward system. Doesn't everyone?

I still have non-art related paperwork to do, but I made a huge dent and thanks to my ever-shortening attention span, I accomplished much yesterday. I live so dangerously. All it took was one question that required more information than I had at my fingertips and I was able to seamlessly leave the computer, pick up a paint brush, make some strokes on a canvas, wipe off my paintbrush, walk in the house to attempt to retrieve said information, only to become further distracted. Why yes, I would rather be painting. I purposely don't wear paint clothes in the studio when I need to do paperwork, thinking, obviously mistakenly, that I won't paint in nice clothes. Roulette, I tell you. I think I escaped with no oil paint on the nice clothes, but by 6:00 pm I had, HAD, to suddenly refurbish the breakfast table which I've been absolutely loathing for some time. The table top itself was fine- it was from the appropriately titled, "5 o'clock room," at my aunt & uncle's old house- but I was SO over the chairs that it would require a separate post to explain.

In order to be economical, I would keep the table top and use my vintage Arthur Umanoff barstools as the new chairs. This required table surgery. I removed the old base and decided the Vika Artur trestle from Ikea would make the perfect new base. My worktable in the studio has been on a set for years. The height is adjustable- perfect for us non-committal types. By 6:30 pm I was sitting in traffic on my way to Ikea in Burbank. By 9 pm, I was loading up the car with the Vika Artur, 2 throw pillows, a scatter rug, a new shower curtain, a bath mat, 4 new cereal bowls, and a new bed pillow. By midnight, I had put together the table legs and had completed my home decor jag. Perfect!

Other than the spate of recent earthquakes, the economy and the never-ending To Do list, today was a jolly good day.

First off, my earthquake policy was almost cancelled because the last two payments were not credited to my account. The joys of online banking. FYI, The California Earthquake Authority and Allstate, although working together, don't seem to work well with certain banks. Seven years of online banking and as soon as I started making payments from a new account, the system breaks down. My payments were quietly credited BACK to my checking account, thus putting me behind 2 months.

After that was resolved, I hauled 3 cubic feet of bulky items out to the curb for my free bulky item pick-up tomorrow. My backyard had been looking rather white trash. Plywood, dilapidated chairs, junk wood and those used stretcher bars I tried to sell on craigslist. By end of day, scavengers had hauled off the stretcher bars.

With all the crap gone, I opened up my compost bin, which I confess not having contributed to in a while, and it was full of bamboo. I like bamboo but it's a bit tenacious and reminds me of kudzu. It will apparently grow through any organic object. It shot through a plastic bag of potting soil, which prompted me to think that if bamboo can grow through plastic, it could probably grow through human flesh.

I spread out the bamboo leaves and what soil was in there, and relocated my compost bin away from the bamboo patch. Then I raked up some pathetic patches of dirt and arranged some of the potted cacti in a pleasing manner next to the bamboo patch. Next I rearranged the outdoor furniture to look as though civilized people might sit down and converse. The outdoor furniture used to be indoor furniture. Imagine you happened upon a ghost town furnished by Design within Reach and Tommy Bahama. It's not exactly Southern Living, but it's got some character.

Then I went to the studio, worked on one of the new paintings and came to the conclusion that I am a diabolical genius.

After I arrived at place which resembled a finished painting, I put said painting on the wall and stepped back. I looked at it from a distance, then walked up close to see the details. Here's the funny part. I couldn't see the painting that close unless I put my glasses on. Maybe it's just me, but it made me laugh. Which is how I concluded that I was a diabolical genius.