Ah, the weather is beautiful today! I’m out in the back yard working on a new painting. I paused to blog. I’m typing on this cool little word processor called a NEO that I can carry with me anywhere. I totally rocks.

I’m letting Lola run around the yard while I work. She’s so funny though. She won’t run around the yard unless I do as well. She just wants to stay right with me. That’s wonderful when we’re out walking but when I’m trying to work it’s a pain! She KEEPS stealing my pencils, my eraser, my NEO. The only thing that will calm her down is for me to play my Irish whistle. The instant I start playing she settles right down and sits near me in the shade. Every time. It’s fascinating to me. She loves music! I think that’s so neat. See, dogs and people aren’t so different. She just wants to run around, love and be loved, and to have some good music to listen to. I can relate to that.

Well, Lola has been as crazy as ever lately. Yesterday my husband and I decided to go for a drive in the mountains. We wanted to take Lola but we didn’t want her to leap out to her doom again so we chained her in to the back of the truck. Mark made the chain just long enough that she could look over the side but not jump out. We drove up into the mountains and then saw a really beautiful spot to stop and take some pictures so we got out and started walking away from the truck. I looked back (thank goodness) just in time to see Lola leap out of the truck and dangle by her neck from the side of the truck! OH MY GOODNESS!!! I about had a heart attack! I ran to her and lifter her and as fast as I could unfastened the chain that was attached to her collar. She bounded off merrily towards Mark tail wagging away as if nothing had happened at all. That dog is insane.

She was awesome today though. I took her for a run after dark and as I was jogging along a dog came charging at me from the side snarling and acting like it was going to attack me. Lola, who had been ahead of me suddenly turned and bolted at the dog, snarling and barking right back. I couldn’t tell if she actually bit it or what but it ran away yelping and whining. YES! GO LOLA! She is such a good friend. I love her. Even though I did trip over her and scrape my knee when she ran at the dog. She’s my girl. Yah!

So, I mentioned in my last blog, the one about my insane dog, that my cat had kittens recently. Well they are about 2 months old now. There are six of them. My house is a circus. CONSTANT entertainment. The little fuzzball’s names are Rocky, Foomf, Elf, Per, Panther, and Fred. The momma’s name is Persia, that’s where Per gets her name. She was the first one we met.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and my husband was taking a nap. Persia had been wandering around and I was in the bathroom playing with my hair. Suddenly I heard the funniest little high pitched squealing sound. I walked out into the living room and there was Persia with a tiny little ball of wiggly fuzz in front of her. She had brought a kitten in from some hiding place outside! Mind you, we weren’t even sure if she’d had kittens. We had suspected since she went from fat to really skinny all of a sudden but it was such a surprise! Persia came with this house you see. We moved here in December and Persia was living in the yard. The previous owner passed away recently and the cat was left alone. We started feeding her and gave her the name Persia and she slowly warmed up to us and eventually started coming inside a lot to visit. We thought she was pregnant because she was so fat but weren’t really sure. Then we went out of town for a week and came back to a skinny cat. We totally thought at that time that she’d had kittens but couldn’t find any sign of them anywhere and eventually gave up on the idea. Until of course 2 weeks later when all of a sudden one appeared on our living room floor.

Persia spent the rest of that day bringing kittens into the house one by one, taking the time with each one to comfort and feed it and make it feel comfortable in it’s new home. She’s such a good momma.

Our household has been blast ever since. We are constantly laughing our heads of at the antics of these lively little characters. From climbing up window screens to stealing butter off the dinner table. They are always into something. And the wrestling! If they’re awake, they’re wrestling. It’s just a given. They are wrestling right now. At my feet! Hahaha!

I graduated from college with a degree in business. When I encounter a problem in life, I like to find a solution systematically. I enjoy mathematics. When I want to draw something, I pick up a ruler. Being a draftsman for a time was the closest I ever came to artistic expression. I was told in college that if I want to write, I had best stick to technical stuff. So, for me to offer opinions on creative endeavor is beyond my purview. However, I do have a couple of thoughts I’d like to talk about.

I am moved by good art and good music. I can’t help it, there is something about some forms of art and some forms of music that really have an effect on my soul. Let me give you a couple of examples.

A couple of weeks ago I was following the comments of my niece on Facebook. She was talking about how much she misses her husband who is a soldier and away from home for very long periods of time. At the time that I was reading about this, she was having troubles with managing her home and taking care of her young children and such. She was really missing him and so were his children.

Then earlier this week, I was in the process of working on this blog site for Maria. It is one of my duties to build the content for Maria’s galleries we are showing to the world. One of the paintings I was posting is the one entitled “The Soldiers Father”. This is an award winning painting that has given Maria quite a bit of notoriety. I personally have always enjoyed this work. From my left brained, layman point of view, I like how realistic it looks and I think the eyes are particularly well done. I can’t seem to find anything that isn’t technically correct. So, I can see why she always gets great reviews on this work.

However, when I was posting this painting to the blog, something new happened to me. I had stopped for a moment to check on the quality of the graphic and was looking into his eyes. Suddenly I was no longer thinking about the merits of the painting. I became transfixed on the feelings I could see in his eyes and also in his facial expression. I suddenly could feel the loneliness of my niece and her children. From there, I could feel the anxiety of a father who does not know if his son will survive while being in harms way. Then I looked deeper. Now, beyond the fear and concern, I could see patriotism and the love and caring of a proud father, mother, wife, husband, child or friend. The knowledge that those who remain behind are strong and concerned and fearful. I will never see “The Soldiers Eyes” with only my left brain again.

Interestingly, I had another incident yesterday that touched me deeper than my normal left brain approach to life. It was tax day. Since I don’t get a refund, I waited until yesterday afternoon to post my returns. For the benefit of U.S. history buffs, my own little Boston Tea party if you will. It was a dreary, snowy, wet and cold day. Totally appropriate for tax day. Anyway, as I was returning home, a particular song came up on my CD player. It is a tune written by Chas Hathaway, another member of our family and company. The name of the tune is “Rain”. My goodness, talk about an appropriate tune for a stormy day.

The phenomena that I experienced was startling. Rather than dragging me deeper into the doldrums, I found myself looking at the world with keener interest. Since this tune takes you through subtle nuances of emotion associated with a stormy day, suddenly, instead of seeing dull gray pastures and wet shiny roads, I was driving through a wonderland of nature being nourished by life giving moisture that gave me a feeling of exhilaration and excitement. I was happy to be alive and a part of the experience. It completely changed my outlook for the day. My good spirits lasted the rest of the day. Just like “The Soldiers Father” and my left brain eyes, I will never hear Chas’ tune “Rain” with the same left brain ears again.

I am still a left brained person, just not quite the same one that I was before.