Joyously Prolific

I put bird food out today. Now, for most people this would be a nice little afternoon task, no big deal. Not for me, of course. I'm allergic to sunflower seeds and this food is mostly just that. We bought it when Russ was here and he would put it out. I love getting bird pictures through my office window, and I've missed that this year. (Among so many other things I've missed, but I'm trying not to get depressed.)

So I literally took my life into my hands and dragged the stuff into the backyard and started filling feeders and the birdbath. I spent most of the time telling myself not to breathe. And then I would at the worst time, of course. I got them filled and my hand started to itch like mad and I had little bumps all over it and my arm -- but as soon as I got into the house I washed up and took allergy medication. For the most part, it worked. Except that the allergy stuff made me too tired and I slept for about an hour and a half. There were probably birds all over the feeders, gorging themselves while I was asleep and not taking pictures, right?

If I eat anything with sunflower seeds (or oil) I break out in huge hives and can't breathe real well. So this really was quite daring of me. And maybe tomorrow I'll get some good pictures, too. And maybe the food will last for a few days and the horde of squirrels won't get to it before I can get a few pictures.

Writing is going well. I'm close to 30,000 words on the new version of Silky 2, about 15,000 on Silky 3 and over 8,000 on the nonfiction book. I am, quite obviously, on a Silky kick and it looks as though I'll have at least two of them completely done in the next few months. I think I have the cover for the first one finished as well. I'm not certain why Silky has taken over my life, but I'm enjoying it for the moment.

I've also been having a lot of fun with the art stuff. Have I posted a link to my ArtZone Gallery here? I don't know. Here it is: http://artzone.daz3d.com/index.php?mode=photo_album&p_id=885 I have really enjoyed learning how to work with some of these programs. It's a wonderful new world of creativity for me, and there's still so much more to learn that I don't think I'm ever going to be bored with it.

And you know, that's pretty wonderful -- to have two things (writing and art) that never bores you. Even when I'm annoyed or depressed about the rest of the world, I can always sit down and write something or open one of the programs and work on it.

Sometimes it's a good idea to remind myself that I'm really very lucky. Even when things were looking bad, I was still making a bit of money and able to help keep us going while Russ took a job -- a job he really didn't want to take, but one that allowed me to still be here, in my lovely little office with the kitty guys.

I'm really very lucky. It's a good thing to remind myself of that sometimes.