Again With The Packing?

Under the Bridge Collage on panel

Packing……..Didn’t I just do this?

Yes. Yes I did. A little more than two and a half years ago.

Today I started packing the books. Can we talk about the books for a minute? I love books. I buy them all the time. Art books…..and sometimes cookbooks. Mostly art books. I can’t help myself. I get inspiration from the art books. If I go to see an exhibit I always buy the catalogue. As for the cookbooks, I guess I like looking at the pictures of all that lovely cooking. In the meantime I rarely try any of the recipes. My bad. Well except for the books on bread baking. I love making bread and do enjoy trying various recipes. At any rate I have way too many of them and I keep schlepping them around wherever I go. I cannot help myself. I am a book-a-holic.

Tomorrow I will tackle the art supplies. I already threw away all the old dried up paint and brushes. So now it is just packing up what remains. I have to do it a little at a time. When we moved from Tucson I was much stronger. It is hard to believe in only 2 and a half years I have become so weakened. That is what age does to you I guess. I am still trying to reconcile the fact that I am now 75 years old. There is way more past than future now. I do walk 3 miles a day but it does not get any easier. Instead each day feels a bit harder. Every day I see a woman walking with her walker. She says she does 13,000 steps a day. With a walker. OK. I guess I should stop kvetching. Keep moving. As long as I am able to.

When I get back to Brookline I will join the Brookline Pool again. I think that will be a bit easier on my feet anyway. They seem to be the one part of me that suffers the most from all the walking. I know someone my age who still runs in races! Good for her I say. I think it is pretty amazing.

Too Much Art

Water Tower in the Mist- digital collage

Is it possible to have too much art? As artists we keep making art no matter what is going on in our lives. We end up saving everything too. Just in case it is worth saving.

I have been painting now since 1976. It was the year my daughter was born and I was living in Key West, Florida at the time. I met a wonderful artist named Eileen Seitz. She encouraged me to start drawing and painting. Before I knew it I was selling some of my sketches to a newspaper called Solaris Hill. I was hooked. I still have some of my artwork from back then.

Needless to say, it is all piling up. The sketchbooks, the gel plate prints, the collages on panels (very bulky to say the least) , the watercolors (both matted and unmatted) , and the fabric collages. Not to mention the art supplies needed to keep all this artwork going! The inks, the acrylics, the multiple gel plates, the gouaches, and on and on.

My new condo is a one bedroom. This means that I will not have a studio. I know. How will I manage? But the truth is, I have not always had a studio. I will keep my desk which will work for watercolors as well as my digital work along with my Wacom drawing tablet. My dining table is rather large so if I have a large project I can work on it there. I will just have to be sure and put down plastic and clean up afterwards.

My overwhelming need to get back home has been so powerful that I was willing to give up my studio space.

That is a lot. I am ready to go home.

Fast Forward

I have decided to resurrect my blog. A lot has happened in our lives since my last post in 2022. We did end up finding a condo in Amherst MA. But it never felt like home to us and we remained heartbroken that we still could not afford to go back to our home.

I never really understood before I moved here just how far away from Boston Amherst is. It is over 2 hours just to get to Newton. Then another half hour to get to Brookline. To get to my son's house on the south shore is nearly 3 hours. Unless there is cape traffic. Then it can take over 4 hours. All this driving was wearing us down. Plus we could not do the drive in one day so no matter what we always had to stay in a hotel overnight and drive back the next day.

I stopped driving a few years ago and my husband really no longer enjoys driving. So we were essentially "stuck" out here with no family nearby. Plus no one wanted to come out here to see us since it was so far away for them too.

Our sadness was palpable. I had my art to keep me busy. Plus I joined a wonderful organization called "The Amherst Woman's Club". I ended up doing alot of their graphic design as well as going to some lovely events in their beautiful house. But even in spite of all this we were still sad all the time.

Living in an over 55 community is not easy. It is hard enough to be getting old. The only young people we ever see here in the community are the caregivers. That is depressing in itself.

So we had essentially given up. And then a miracle happened. And it was a miracle. My grandson was visiting in Brookline for a few days before he moved to his new duty station. So we went into Brookline to spend some time with him. Being in Brookline is very hard for me. I have to entertain my family at a hotel instead of my home. The hotel is also right around the corner from my old condo. I was happy to see my family and sad to be where I wanted to live.

The night before we left I looked on Zillow. I found a condo and clicked the "Take a Tour" button. A realtor called me right away. We set up an appointment to look at the condo. He also showed us another one. A better one. The best one. It was a one bedroom but had two bathrooms.

We bought it. We are going home.