At the bottom of the Garden

I've caught up with work for today, so I thought I'd give you all a little health report update at the end of August.

August was very up and down for me. Settling into the degree properly and meeting the challenges set for me probably took more of a toll than I have given it credit for. Also becoming somewhat obsessed with painting probably didn't help. I do tend to become hyper-focused on new activities, so that's nothing new, but with painting being so messy, I did prefer to do it overnight while the kids were asleep.

With all the kids staying up later now - particularly Erik and Lukas - I find it hard to feel as if I get any down time. So, I fell into a pattern of napping in late afternoon then getting up and staying up late into the evening.

I started to forget to take my anti-anxiety medication (because I was usually asleep at the time I scheduled to take it), and after a couple of weeks of that I became overcome with anxiety. It was very depressing realising how …

Erik's (and my - she was mine first, but Erik sees her more than I do these days) psychologist asked me the other day why a label for Erik was important to me. It wasn't an accusing question, just one I needed to reflect on.

She is keen to emphasise that we do not need to label Erik as having Aspergers.

He is fourteen and at this tender age, he is keen not to stand out from his peers. He is afraid he will be 'dropped' by his friends if they think he is different - even though he has always been different, just not with a label attached to his difference.

I see his point and I understand why the psychologist is keen not to use the label.

It is quite common to hear people, particularly parents, referring to labels as a negative phenomenon. Labels categorise people and well, they are always imperfect because no two people are the same and categories, by their very nature, tend to want to make everyone within a category appear the same as everyone else within that category…

I'm thinking of setting up a gallery of my paintings here on the blog. I know they're pretty rough and probably not commercially appealing but I'm gaining so much joy from the process of working with paint - especially pouring paint and it would be nice to have one place where I can review my progress.

The other day I gave this painting to mum for her birthday. It makes her think of a particular volcano in Iceland with a glacier in front of it and so it appeals to her.


Anyway, then s-dad pointed out that if you turn it on it's head, it looks like a different landscape altogether and the glacier becomes the sky...

The lighting for the second photo isn't very good, but you get the idea.

Another painting I recently did, turned out to be upside down - at least people prefer to look at the other way up from how it was painted.


This is how I painted the painting. It's an abstract - it isn't supposed to be anything, except perhaps a play with colour and texture.

A…

Today, I'm having one of those days which hasn't panned out as I thought it would.

It started out okay. I went to bed at 8pm last night and got up just before 7am this morning, which is a major win for me on the sleep front. I took my iron and vitamin B, got dressed, packed my lunch and was ready for a day at work (Uni). The plan was to read and summarise at least two new articles, possibly three.

Then the Grumpy Old Man tells me Rudd has announced that if elected he will legislate that parents who do not vaccinate will not receive Family Tax Benefit A. Now, this is a huge part of our overall income, so I got straight on the net to find out exactly was said. Lucky I did, because it turned out to only be the end of financial year supplement we stand to miss out on. (if you want to skip where I rant about this issue, go past the green text to the next lot of black text ~ you're welcome)

Then, as described in this article, I found that it is possibly only for the years the ch…

I was feeling so boyant in June. I started this year on a real low - after many years on a real low, actually, but by June I was feeling really good about life again.

I thought it was because we moved house. I thought it was because we'd finally sorted out our finances to a place where we weren't constantly chasing our tails (so long as we were very conservative with our spending). I thought it was because we had a car.

Now I know it was because I was on anxiety medication.

That was quite a depressing realisation when it finally dawned on me. I can't help but feel incomplete as a person because I need medication to feel like living. I know I'm not alone, but still...

You see, I had gotten into a poor pattern with sleeping and in doing so, I had let taking the medication slip. At first it was a day here and there and then it was every second day until finally I realised one day I hadn't taken it in a week.

The realisation came as I sat in tears at 4am feeling complet…

I'm still painting... These are the paintings I did in the first week. Yes, I'm an all or nothing sort of person. I personally think that is a good thing; the amount I learned over that one short week was phenomenal. I'm very excited about doing a painting for exhibition later this year! Watch this space, guys, watch this space!

I hadn't posted the following two paintings on the blog yet. Honestly, they don't even really look like this anymore because as the paint dries it becomes transparent in places; changing some of the colours. They mostly looks like this, but is different at the same time.



Erik and I had a bit of a chat about my paintings. He's absolutely not a fan of abstract art, it's too abstract for him. He likes paintings to be recognisable - landscapes, faces, bowls of fruit... He doesn't want to examine his emotional response to paint on a canvas. He's a fourteen year old boy with Aspergers, LOL.
I thought I'd help him out a bit an…

Painting, painting, painting...

I've been doing a lot of it recently. Doing it and thinking about it - I'm constantly in the land of paint and mediums in my head at them moment, I feel driven to do this right now!

I've always been attracted to painting, but have lacked the confidence to tackle it. On the rare occasion I attempted to pick up a paintbrush in the past, I inevitably was left feeling embarrassed by my feeble results. I just don't have a lot of hand-eye co-ordination. I'm very much the same with drawing.

I'm very attracted to colour and light, though. My mum calls me a colourist, though possibly that is too grand a term for my interest.

So, recently I came across some videos on You Tube about fluid acrylic pouring, and they appealed to me a lot. Here is an example.


This kind of art really speaks to me - I love to study busy paintings, I love to see colour blend and seemingly move on a canvas...

So, I've given it a go with mixed success...

I alrea…