Search Results for: The Truth about our living room

This is the latest drawing in my series, The Truth About Our Living Room. 

I sat in the wicker rocker ice wrapped around my left foot which was propped on a pillow on the ottoman. I set my timer for 20 minutes and started to draw the room around me.

I could get used to this, I thought, sitting around the house at 11am drawing.  I was trying to be conscientious about elevating and icing my swollen foot and felt this was a good start.

When Kitty called it was like a little tea party.  After I finished the drawing and we got off the phone, I sent her a picture of it.

“Cozy! she texted back, “I like that you can see the tea kettle in the kitchen.”

After reading that I knew the drawing worked.

See all the other four drawings in this series here.

This is the fourth drawing in my The Truth about our Livingroom series. 

The third drawing in my  The Truth About our Livingroom series.

The candle on the mantle lit up the painting of Lenore that hangs over the fireplace. On the chair next to the couch I was sitting on, Jon was reading using his booklight.  A flashlight stood on the table between up, giving off just enough light so I could draw.

A few weeks ago I got the idea to do drawings of our living room.

The words, “The truth about our living room” came to my mind and they felt significant enough to pay attention to.  It speaks to the idea of the truth being something that is hard to hold onto.  I know that I can draw the same scene in our living room over and over again, and it will always be different.  Not only because small things may actually change in the scene, but because I will represent it according to what I am seeing or feeling when I draw it.

My drawings are not accurate in their detail, but they are truthful in their essence.

Last night, when we lost power, instead of blogging I made my second drawing of the living room.  I chose this scene because it was lit up by the candle and flashlight so I could see it more clearly than any other part of the room.

A few days ago a couch arrived on our front porch in a box.

Somehow, I don’t remember exactly how, our trip to Albany to see Selected Shorts sparked the idea in us that we don’t get to cuddle as much as we’d like to.

When we sit in the living room and watch a mystery on Jon’s iPhone we always sit in separate chairs.  Our couch is Victorian.  Just the right size for me, but too small for Jon.

So we did a bit of looking and found just the right couch for us online.  It came in four pieces, plus four legs, and four cushions.  The box was big enough for me to lay down in, but not so big or heavy that I couldn’t move it.

Jon asked our friend and shearer Ian over to help move some of the furniture around.   But I couldn’t wait and last night after the couch cushions had 48 hours to inflate, I started rearranging the furniture.

It only took me two tries to get it right.  The wicker chair went out on the porch and I’ll put the rock maple desk (that the fish tank used to sit on) in front of the house with a free sign on it.

Jon and I sat together on the couch last night watching The Brokenwood Mysteries.  I leaned my head on his shoulder and he draped his arm over my leg.

It made relaxing at the end of the day even sweeter.

When I got into bed, I picked up the sketch pad I keep on my night table and drew our new couch in the living room.

When I showed Jon my drawing he said it looked even better than the actual couch did.

it wasn’t until I did the drawing that I could see how I really felt about it, how much I liked it.

Jon made it into my latest The Truth About Our Living Room drawing. Well his feet and legs anyway. Makes me think at some point a dog might show up.

I don’t show Jon everything I make, but I have been showing him my Meditation Mats before packing them up and putting them in the mail.

I like to show Jon my work, and he likes to see it.  But there’s also something about someone else seeing my art in person, while I’m there with them.  I think because what I make so often looks just a bit different from the pictures I take of it.

So what I’m seeing and what anyone reading my blog is seeing are not completely  the same.

As I stood in the living room holding up Rooted, my latest Meditation Mat for Jon to see, he took a picture.

The colors are a bit saturated, but blend in a way they don’t in the photos I took of it.  Also with me holding it, it gives a sense of scale.  As long as whoever is looking at the pictures knows that I’m 5’2″. (My Meditation Mats are all around 29″x40″)

I took a bunch of photos this morning of my finishing Rooted, documenting the process,  forgetting that our internet services isn’t working the way it should and posting pictures takes a lot longer than usual.

And usually I take a picture of my Meditation Mats outside where the color is better, but it’s been raining for days and the ground is soaking wet.

So the truth about Rooted lies somewhere between these two photos.

Rooted is on its way to its new home.

(It’s 3 pm and we just got our power and internet back)

Jon was already awake.  “The power went out again last night,” he said, “but it’s back on now.” It made no difference to me, I slept through it. 

Since I went to bed last night I’d been planning my day. Yesterday I didn’t get into my studio at all.  The power and Internet were out for the whole morning.  By the time it came back on there was still so much to do around the farm as the snow and wind picked up. 

My plan was to finish sewing together Ellen’s quilt, take pictures of my latest batch of Cool Cat Potholders and post them in my Etsy Shop.  In between, I’d blog and I’d get everything done before it was time to leave for Bellydancing. 

But when I looked out the window and saw the two-foot pile of snow that fell off the roof overnight., I felt a pang of anxiety. The belief that  I never have enough time to do everything I need to is an old source of anxiety for me.  I’ve never been able to figure out where it originated, but I know it well. 

The snow from the roof was heavy and packed.  I used my shovel to cut it into blocks then scooped each one up and tossed it over the side of the porch.  The sheep and donkeys were at the gate braying and baaing.  They’d been holed up in the barn all day and night and weren’t happy about it.   I cleared just enough to get down the steps and left the rest for later. 

But when I got to the gate it was frozen and as I walked back to the house to get some hot water to defrost it,  Jon was standing on the back porch with only a pair of shoes on.  “The power is out again,” he said and there’s no estimate of when it’s coming back on.”

Suddenly my anxiety was gone. This changed everything, I no longer had control over my day the way I thought I did a moment ago.  

I made myself stop for a moment and slow down.  There’s no hurry I told myself, I will get done what I can and it will have to be enough. 

I got one of the reserve cans of gas from the barn (Jon had filled up three the last time we had a storm) and filled up the generator.  Then, I switched on the battery, pressed the start button, and flipped the breaker switch. I pulled the lever down on the box on the house that switches our electricity source from the grid to the generator.  

When I  went into the house to make sure it was working and saw the light on in the kitchen I felt like a superhero.  “You want power,” I said to Jon.  “You got power!”

Later, as I mucked out the barn, I thought about that old joke about making God laugh by having plans.  I’d always known the truth behind that joke intellectually, but it wasn’t until the pandemic, when uncertainty became the norm, that I learned how to make those quick shifts between what I’d planned to do and what was possible without getting upset about it. 

So I wonder how it makes sense that I’m less anxious now, sitting in the living room, with the generator roaring outside, writing this blog post on Apple Pages to be cut and pasted onto my blog once the internet comes back on.  

I think it has to do with giving up control.  In understanding that I can control how I react or behave in a situation, but can’t control the situation itself.   

Now I just have to figure out how to bring this idea into my everyday life and maybe then, I’ll be about to deal with that anxiety a bit better.