"Meet Me By the Bridge Tonight" - A Work in Progress and

"Meet Me By the Bridge Tonight"     9" x 12"      Acrylic on Canvas

Oh my goodness, you have no idea how much I have missed you all! I've missed writing, blogging, painting, reading up on all of your own blogs and updates and all the other things that we bloggers have to do to maintain any sort of readership (of which I'm sure my own is practically gone by now!) and that any of us bloggers or non-bloggers alike have to do to just keep ourselves entertained if we aren't incredibly overwhelmed with stuff to do. Anyways, I truly do greatly apologize for my absence and hope there aren't any hurt feelings out there - I know I need to send out some prints and paintings and that I am more than just a bit behind in all this -  but unfortunately such is the life of one in my condition, with Myofascial Pain Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, SRI Joint Problems and more (the list is steadily growing - uh-oh!) - and it's already hard enough to even get out of bed each day let alone try to order and mail out all my free little prizes. But I will get them done one by one, because I'm a girl of my word, even if it may take more time than I had originally hoped for.  But hey, at least they're free, right?! That's gotta help count for something! ;0)

I've been thinking lately about whether or not I can really do this considering my condition, and for now at least I just really want to focus on getting as much caught up as I can on all my projects this year so that I can get myself and this sweet little business of mine off to a good clean start this year with a nice clean slate! I'd love to not "owe" any prizes to anyone anymore, and I hate having that feeling hanging over my head constantly, especially the guilt. So for those of you who are waiting on prints if you don't mind waiting a little longer that would be absolutely wonderful to me - and don't worry - I have in no way forgotten about you! In fact it's quite the opposite, I think of you all the time, and I feel so bad that I haven't been able to get your prints to you sooner. I'm so sorry if I've frustrating anyone with the wait, but things have been just a bit hectic around here if you can imagine it. Please just try to be patient - or rather, I should say please just try to continue to be patient - you already have been spectacularly patient as it is, and I feel awful asking you to wait even longer, but this is my life and I'm getting hit hard with the realities of my weaknesses and my disabilities left and right right now and it's just not pretty. In fact, it downright hurts. But just so you know, I'm trying to add in a little extra something to anyone who's gifts or prizes are late right now just to try to make it up to you - I know it's not much but it's the best I can do at the moment. I just want everyone to be happy and pleased in the end and at the very least when all's said and done the one thing I need to remind myself of is that I truly AM very sick and these really ARE free prizes, so as long as I get them to you as soon as I possibly can we should be good in the end. But the sooner the better, right?!  =D

And once they're all done, I'll hold my FINAL CONTEST, the one that was supposed to be held in December but had to be postponed for personal reasons. Since I didn't do it in the 12 months time that I had aimed for (oh man, I was sooo, sooo close!), I figured I'd like to do it once all the others were accounted for first, so as not to add extra stress so that it could be perhaps a bigger or better prize in the end that way. Who knows - we'll have to see what happens, but I can't wait for the day to come up with and then announce that one!!!

Speaking on the subject of contests and prizes, the painting above is one of the paintings that was a prize a long while back in February - it was back in the beginning before people other than just my friends read my blog, so of course one of my friends won the prize (go figure, right?! Haha!). =D  Anyways, I had sooo hoped to finish it much earlier in the year for them, but was really surprised by the difficulty of certain aspects of it, especially when it came down to laying down the bridge. I hadn't anticipated the architecture of it to get the better of me, or at least not to that degree, but oh how wrong I had been! It literally took me weeks, perhaps even months, for me to realize that I had painted in the base columns incorrectly, putting them in at an angle exactly similar to the shadows that follow alongside them, which was ALL wrong. You see, in real life they would run parallel to the horizon, not diagonal to it, which was a shocker to me for some reason though it makes perfect sense logically speaking once you really think about it.

Already I feel like I've spent so much time on this piece and yet I still have what feels like so far to go on it -  I mean, if you look, you can see I've only just begun to lay in the cherry blossoms, and they're all floating in mid-air as of yet, so pretty soon they'll be getting some branches to hang from but even then they still have more layers they need to make them look full and complete like a true flower in bloom. This painting has definitely been an adventure for me, and a great learning experience as well - now here's to hoping my friends like my interpretation of what they were wanting and that they can see it with eyes wide open as it still has a ways to go before she'll be done. Haha, I guess it's a "she" after all - funny, I didn't realize I thought of my paintings in that way before but I guess I really do!  =0)

I really have been dying to get back to the easel on this one but I haven't quite been able to get back into painting yet - I don't know if it's purely emotional or if it's because my body just doesn't quite feel good enough yet to really get the job done - I mostly need to lay around and do simple exercises during the day and after seeing my Physical Therapist he reassured me that it wasn't just in my head, which did me a world of good! Apparently, my body is so weak that it can't even truly support the weight of my own head coming even a fraction of an inch off of my pillow (that's how truly bad it is), at least, not without causing itself intense and agonizing pain. That explains A LOT!!! It's always nice to know that you aren't imagining things, that's for sure!  =0)  But I'm so happy to be working with him and I hope and know that in time if I follow his advice he'll get me back on track - he's done it before and he can do it again. As for right now though, even just getting this post up on here feels like a such a huge victory - one that I can hardly describe, but it's just absolutely fulfilling to say the least!

Well, I hope you are all doing well and I can't wait to go visit you on your own sites and see what you all have been up to while I've been away. Hopefully there will be more posts on my end and much more frequently too - going that long without a post was sooo not cool and I deeply apologize again, and I mean it. I always hate it when I would follow someone and they would just drop off the grid for months and months at a time, with no explanation ever given. I would check back and they'd put up a single post or maybe two and then off they'd go again, not to be seen for almost a year if at all. That's not what I want for this blog and not what I want you to feel when you come here. So I will try my hardest to work harder for you. It might mean more photography and less painting, or perhaps just more works in progress than paintings completed in a day, especially since we've yet to see any rain and rain is my absolute arch nemesis and my best friend at the same time since we so desperately need it to not go into a drought. I just wish I could find somewhere more permanent that I could stay during the rainy season over here that would be perfect - unfortunately living somewhere outside of the rainy season to stay warm during the storms with my boys is a bit unrealistic - but, oh how awesome that would be! Oh well, I got some really awesome days this winter with all three of my boys that I'll treasure forever, and I'll just have to try harder to be up on here on my blog more often, as much as I can, but in the meantime, I hope and pray you have a wonderful day. Take care and God bless, my friend!