Yesterday was Rollo's 'Doption Day. It was 3 years ago in the morning that I brought Rollo home. He's probably the most outgoing piggy I've had, I think from being socialized more as a youngster. Here he is test chewing his new oat box tunnel, as his previous one was mostly a twisted strip of cardboard. He seems to be enjoying his new toy, as the edges of the tunnel is already well gnawed and I've watched him rolling it around. He always makes me smile.

This is my newest painting, a young Asian water monitor, climbing on tree roots in an eastern rain forest, which I finished a couple weeks ago. It was the first painting I've ever done that I couldn't show to my mom when I was finished, which was upsetting. It's a larger, more detailed version of one of the pictures I did for The Sketchbook Project last winter, so I'm taking comfort that she saw that. This one is 14 in. x 11 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. I added leaves and more roots and a lot more details to everything. A friend helped me name it, "Mangrove Rest". I'm thinking of a black frame for it, when I exhibit it at the craft show on Dec. 1st, where I have all of my new work from the year.

My mom spent the summer going back and forth to the hospital and in between at the nursing home.She'd had a gall bladder infection, fluid in her lungs, low blood pressure and her heart often went into afib, where the heart rate goes really high for a few seconds, sometimes leading to her passing out. On August 4th, a nurse at the hospital told us that she would never get better, that the pneumonia she'd had for months was getting worse and so we admitted her to hospice, which was a beautiful building with a soothing atmosphere. There, our mom seemed calmer and less frightened than she was in the hospital and for the first few days was quite lucid. On Wednesday she slept most of the day and on Thursday morning Aug, 9th, she passed away, with my sister by her side. Even as I write this, over three weeks later, I cannot stop crying. The funeral home thankfully let me write her online memorial, it was one last thing I could do for her. You can read it here:
"my mom's memorial"
It saddened me that she belonged to no groups or church or had any clubs or teams to root for, it struck me that she had an Eleanor Rigby sort of life. All of her pursuits were solitary. She suffered from depression and Borderline Personality Disorder her entire life and that prevented her from socializing. Though she was a control freak at home, she lacked self confidence in public.
I wasn't sure how long I was allowed to make the online obituary, but I could've put more things about her. She loved Care Bears and lemon meringue pie. She liked the paintings of Thomas Kincade & every year I'd get her one of his calendars. She could turn cartwheels still in her 40's. She enjoyed Reese's peanut butter cups & even ate them towards the end when she didn't want anything else. She made the best potato salad in the world.
I hope eventually that I can remember her before she got so sick. And that grocery stores stops being emotional land mines full of food she used to like. It still feels very raw to my sister and I, though I know that it will get a bit easier to bear as time goes on. But there will still be moments when grief washes over us like a tidal wave. We had a difficult and dysfunctional childhood with her, which sometimes carried over into adulthood. But even with all of that, we still loved her very much and we will miss her all the rest of our own lives.

Over Memorial day weekend, my mom became extremely confused and paranoid and also grew physically weaker. It was quite sudden, so it didn't seem like her dementia got worse. I thought it was a UTI, but my mom refused to give a sample so it could be diagnosed. By Tuesday, my sister & I decided to have her taken to the hospital via ambulance, since we can't get her down the flights of stairs in the apt. building. She was checked into the ICU & they did all kinds of tests. Their diagnosis ranged from pneumonia, to UTI and then to her heart, we still really don't know what caused the sudden symptoms. She improved enough to be moved to a regular floor by Thursday afternoon, which confused her, but she eventually settled in. Then on Friday night, she started having diarrhea and though they ruled out the C.Diff infection, was still going on Saturday and isn't being treated.It's dangerous for an elderly person to get dehydrated & how can she not be with that going on for almost 24 hours? I argued with the nurse in charge of her room to no avail. My sister is going there after work and will hopefully spur them to action, as she's an RN herself and knows what they ought to be doing.
The plan originally was to send our mom to a nursing/rehab place to build up her strength after being released from the hospital. My sister & I have been pouring over lists and reviews of nearby nursing homes to decide where to send her. We have a first choice, but it's a small facility which may not have a room available, so the second & third choices are proving difficult. This whole plan may be delayed until our mom is stabilized.
I've been going in everyday to visit my mom. She can't see well enough to watch Tv or do puzzles, sewing, etc. so I know visits will break up her day. If my sister is off, we go together, but usually she's been going after work. The day after she was admitted, she didn't recognize me at first & was mostly out of it. But as time goes on, she is more lucid & interactive, though she's usually sleepy in late afternoon, so I leave so she can take a nap.
It's a bit strange here in the apartment without her. It took a couple days to stop going into her room to ask if I could do something for her or what did she want for supper and readjusting for the lack of her presence. My mom & I have often had a contentious relationship over time, but the last couple of years as I've become her major caretaker, I've had to learn to let some things just roll over me, as arguing just makes things tense all around & doesn't really solve anything at this point. I try to savor the moments when things are going well between us and ignore the nasty remarks that she sometimes makes. Same thing with the nonsensical comments. It's been hard learning all sorts of skills that don't come naturally to me, but the end result is that I feel less guilty and angry.
At this point, I'd just like my mom to be stabilized and as pain free as possible. She's 90 and getting frailer all the time, so things need to be the best they can for her.

My Sketchbook Project is finished! It was actually done ahead of the April 30th deadline, which is when it had to be postmarked. The paintings and cover was all glued at 5 minutes past midnight on Tuesday and was mailed Thursday afternoon. The post office tracking showed it arrived at the Brooklyn Art Library on Saturday afternoon. They are to catalog and digitize the books by the end of June when they depart on a multi-city tour and will end up back in Brooklyn to become part of their permanent collection. When mine is published online, I'll post the link here.
By the time I was finished with putting the book together, I felt burnt out and just wanted to be finished. I spent the last 6 months working on it, since January exclusively. My usual medium of acrylic paint wasn't allowed so I had to learn how to use gouache paints, which were very different. I also used markers, watercolors, crayons and pastel pencils, usually a combination on a single picture. Acrylics allow you to cover mistakes,but the other mediums don't, so I often had to redo the entire picture if the mistakes were too big. It was challenging to say the least. Some of the pictures did not come out as well as I'd hoped, because the new paints weren't able to do the shading and effects that I'm used to. It was frustrating, but I did the best that I could within the limitations.
I'm hoping that as the memory of the difficulties fade, that I'll feel more of a sense of accomplishment. In any case, I'm glad that my art will be in a permanent collection and that a different audience will see it.

April is zooming by and I'm now in the homestretch of the Sketchbook Project. I've spent most of the month alternately painting and gluing. The latter being what happens to the finished pictures, as the paper in the official sketchbook is too thin for painting on both sides, so I do paintings on other paper and then glue them in. I found a nice fabric/paper glue called CraftBond by Elmer's and it works really well and is flexible and waterproof when dry. When the paintings are all installed inside the sketchbook, I'll glue a printout of one of my coral reef paintings on the outside for a cover. I even was able to add the title "Animals & Aqua" onto the picture using the 'Paint' program on my computer. I'm midway through the last 2 original pictures & am hopeful of finishing in the next week. I'd really like to be able to get it in the mail before the April 30th deadline, because I'm worried about getting sick & not making it to the post office in time.
I'm also trying not to panic, because I know that will make everything worse. Just a little bit more to go.....

Wishing everyone a lovely holiday.
Last Sunday, I went to a local chocolatier to get Easter goodies for my mom and sister. My sister loves their peanut butter filled chocolate eggs and they're extremely popular, so they often run out in the days preceding Easter. This year I went early and there was still plenty, so I was able to get my first choices for them. I'm a diabetic, so can't eat regular candy and the sugar-free type bothers my u. colits. Having given up coffee for Lent, I'm really looking forward to having that again and may go to McDonald's for one of their mocha Frappes to celebrate. We no longer color eggs or have ham or anything traditional for Easter, so it's very low key for my family. But for those who do a proper celebration, I wish them a happy day.

Didn't realize it had been so long since I've updated. It's disappointing when others do that and here I am doing it myself. My u.colitis has stabilized, though my arthritis has been bothering me a lot recently, no doubt because of the cold weather. last winter we had more rain than snow, but this year we are making up for it. The snow started before Christmas and it has snowed just about every week since. Sometimes everyday. There have been a few freakishly warm days, but most are cold.For all that snow, it hasn't piled up too much and sometimes melts in between snowstorms.
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One of the reasons I'm not online as much is that my new art venture. It's The Sketchbook Project, which is buying a sketchbook and filling it with pictures before sending it back to NYC for inclusion in a permanent sketchbook library and traveling exhibit. There is a deadline, it must be postmarked by April 30th. Since I'm a notoriously slow worker, this is proving quite a challenge, as is the restrictions on what kind of mediums are allowed. Acrylics, which is what I do most of my work in, is not allowed, so that makes everything harder and more difficult as I try substituting other types of paints, which doesn't always work and sometimes leads to me doing certain pictures over. I'm afraid I won't finish in time, so that's making me nervous, but Plan B is to fill in with computer printouts of paintings I've already done, reduced in size. I would prefer not to have to do that, but it does give me an option in case I don't fill every page.

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My elderly mother is becoming more fragile and though she can feed and dress herself, she can't cook or do things that take a lot of moving around. So I help her as much as possible, which sometimes frustrates her, as she often thinks she is able to do more than she can. She's unsteady on her feet, which she doesn't always realize, so sometimes she gets angry at my hovering. She also has a pressure sore on her ankle which hasn't healed in nearly 2 years(she keeps laying on it), and the most recent medical treatment is changing the bandage everyday. My sister, a nurse, does that on the days she's visiting, but the rest of the time I do it. All of these duties call on skills that I don't really have, so it's been an adjustment. Because our mom struggles with depression anyways, we don't want to put her into a nursing home unless we absolutely have to, so it's imperative that I try my best to do everything I can.

After some over wrought holidays, I'm glad to be moving into a new year. However, so far, it appears to be following the pattern of the old. My u.colitis has been acting up for nearly a week, preventing me from going anywhere. That's probably why the car wouldn't start when I went out to go to a dr. appointment. I really didn't feel like dealing with AAA, so I'm putting it off till tomorrow or the next day. We're out of everything, so I'd planned on getting some groceries after the appointment, but couldn't do that either. Not feeling well has given me even less energy than usual, so I'm really struggling to deal with everything. My sister stopped by after work to bring us some of the basics, but I know I need to do a proper shopping trip.
Anyways, maybe things will smooth out after a bumpy beginning? One can hope.