drawing purty pitchers

It’s been a nice little week. I haven’t had a headache for about ten days now, and that’s the first time in a long time I can say that. Like, a long time. Now if I just knew what has made the difference I could patent it and put it in a bottle. Heh.

I’ve been working on a court scroll this week and it has gone amazingly well. Gee, you suppose no headache had anything to do with that? I also got a commission to design an invitation for Ten Thousand Villages for an event in September. I needed to have a rough draft ready for them to look at last night. I had put it off and put it off, and finally couldn’t put it off any longer. I started to say that I don’t have any idea why I didn’t want to start it, but I think actually it was because I’ve never done anything exactly like that before and I was intimidated. What exactly did they want me to do? Yesterday I remembered that the woman I talked to mentioned using items in the store as inspiration, so I went over to see what I could see, notebook and pencils in hand. I saw a couple of things I liked a lot, and sketched notes on several other small potential details. It was fun—I haven’t done that for a long time. I finally got on the stick and put together two options. One is a tree of life, from Indian inspirations, and the other was also Asian, from some Vietnamese pottery we have. This one was some leaves and a dragonfly. I took both ideas to the meeting last night and they really liked both of them. They were all teasing me about my warning that these were rough drafts—they thought they were great. Wow, it feels so good to be complimented instead of belittled. Not that I expected this group to belittle me, but my most recent work experience tended rather much in that direction. Anyway…. It was funny—everyone liked the dragonfly better visually but we all voted for the tree of life because of the symbolism…. though none of us knew exactly what the symbolism was. Amusing. I’ll be able to make a nice invitation from it, though.

the other half of the day

It’s been a weird day physically. Last night I fell as I was starting the bathwater. By sheer luck I managed to not hit my head, but I still landed hard enough that it jerked my head and I started to get a migraine. I hit the Imitrex immediately (I think I’m starting to get the hang of this, now that I’m sure I have enough to last me through the month!) and took ibuprofen to help keep the shoulder and buttal region from being so sore, since that’s where I took the brunt of the weight. I don’t like the fact that I have fallen several times in the last year and a half or so. When I mentioned it to the neurologist she sort of blew it off. I said, Well, I just think it’s weird-- adults just don’t usually fall down. How many times have YOU fallen recently? and she just looked at me like I was crazy. (okay, don’t say a word…) She obviously thought it was ridiculous that I asked if she had fallen. I mean, she’s a grown up and doesn’t just fall down. She didn’t answer me, either.

I was still sore today when I got up and went for a bone density scan. That was wonderfully painless, unlike the second appointment, which was a mammogram. I had the diagnostic version instead of the usual screening one, and of course they cranked the machine a little tighter for that kind. Oh, joy. At least the tech was going to some effort to keep the pressure on for as short a time as possible, unlike the really bad one I had when I swear the tech looked like one of those women in a Wagner opera and was determined to prove she had some serious strength to crank that machine tight. Yow. (Not to mention a serious run-on sentence!) After that they did an ultrasound. That didn’t hurt either but the tech was awfully non-verbal and kept cocking her head back and forth while looking at the monitor and making little hmmm sounds. Unnerving, I have to say. She didn’t help any by saying, “They’ll call you with the results. I’m not allowed to tell you anything else.” Which of course I already knew, but she was rather abrupt about it. Great. Now I get to wait “a couple of weeks” to hear the results. Whee.