Sunshine!

• Today the sun was shining and the temperature went up to something in the forties! The snow is melting. There is a plastic Adirondack-type chair out in the middle of the yard which was almost completely covered with snow. Today I watched the snow on it disappear until I can see the arms.
• About the middle of the afternoon, I put my snow boots on and went out to see if I could actually get trash into the trash cans. I managed to get two bags into the non-recyclable container but the recyclables are sitting on top of the can because my fingers are not strong enough to open it when it is shut properly. Even though a lot of the snow had melted, it still wet the bottoms of my jeans while I was putting the trash in the proper containers.
• And talking about trash reminds me that our next door neighbor came over to tell us that our landlord has broken both bones in the lower part of one of his legs while he was skiing! He, of course, cannot manage his stairs so he is staying with a friend who is looking after him. I have occasionally heard someone upstairs in the morning so I expect it is someone picking up clothes for him. Anyway, the neighbor came over not only to tell us the news but to assure us that someone at the her house would dig us out of the snow if we had more. I don’t know if that means they will see to getting the cans out on the street on Monday night for a pickup on Tuesday morning!
• This morning I did laundry. There is nothing either fun or interesting to say about it.
• Tomorrow I am going to paint some more backgrounds and work a bit on one painting I am a bit nervous about. I was showing it to one of Fred’s daughters and she said it looked rather like flowers. Now, *I* had thought that too so I was interested to hear her opinion was the same as mine. I am considering making it a bit more like flowers by painting the spaces between the flowers but I am a bit nervous about it because I don’t want it to look realistic! Now I have gotten really into abstract pictures, I want to continue with that.  Anyway, I console myself by thinking even if I completely ruin it, I can always paint over it. Gesso is my friend!

I am grateful for:

1. sunshine
2. the SAD light
3. the fact that I have all the "Firefly" episodes and the movie "Serenity" and I am rewatching them.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

Marcus Aurelius