Art share

I slept fairly well last night from 12:30 or so until 2:30. From there I spent the remainder of the night tossing and turning, going from intense hot flashes to freezing cold (because my windows are open and the ceiling fan is on high in an effort to prevent said flashes). It's been like this for the better part of two weeks now, and I feel so sleep deprived I can't even function normally lately. Today will be another day of slogging through by taking way too much caffeine. Nothing about this is healthy, but my life isn't such that I can sleep throughout the day to catch up, and realistically even if time and circumstances allowed that, I just don't go to sleep well when I try. I'm very, very frustrated. I'm taking every supplement that is supposed to help and can't get in to see my naturopath until the end of June.

How funny--when I opened up this blog post I had no intention whatsoever in mentioning my sleep. I was specifically opening this post to talk about a cute picture L brought in to show me as soon as she heard me go to the bathroom this morning. I guess I needed to purge myself of the bitterness over my hormone issues.
Okay, so on to the intended post. L came in talking a mile a minute, before my caffeine kicked in. UGH! She had drawn a picture of this cat to send to our friend's baby, Clover. Clover is 8 months old. Hawk Fur (the cat) is one of 70 characters in the books she is writing. Each character is very well defined with a history, personality, and she's drawn pictures of each one. She thought Clover would enjoy looking at a cat picture. She called M at work to tell him she needed him to bring home a large envelope, because she didn't want to ruin the picture by folding it.

She pointed out the tiny little triangular notch on the bottom. She explained that she would 'sign' all of her art pieces in that way, because nobody would really notice or expect that, and then it would be obvious if somebody tried to copy her work--she could always tell the original by the notch. We have a book that we work on, in which there are pictures of many traditional masterpieces, and there are fraudulent copies of these pieces. She has to examine each of the pictures and try to find out which is the original, which is faked, what is different, and then identify which gang of art theives did it, based on each gang's unique signature. It's a very cool book that gets her interactively involved with these paintings and learning about them in a fun way. She's apparently decided to proactively protect her art from gangs of art thieves.

<-- A list of all the cat characters in her book, categorized by their tribe and role within the tribe.

She also showed me the prototype laptop and cell phone computers that she drafted on paper. Her brand name is Purrfect Paw, and Cammy (my mom's cat) is the mascot who is her version of Microsoft's little 'paperclip guy'. She and Hunter spend hours drafting (usually on paper) the elaborate electronic inventions they are planning to create. They are so very cute. I love that they absolutely believe that they are authors and inventors, and have no doubts that their various creations will ultimately happen.
These are pictures L drew of two of the five cockatiels we adopted a month or so ago. She named them, and these are drawings of Sirus and Peach.

We got an envelope in the mail yesterday that contained hand-drawn pictures, used as thank you notes, from Fran (Joe's mom) for mother's day. Well, one is a thank you note and the other is a get well card for Chloe. She is extremely polite, as well as sweet. I absolutely love the pictures she drew. They are beautiful, and the time and effort she put into these are so very appreciated. We were very touched by them, and I wanted to share them. My mom also got one with a gorgeous hand-drawn cardinal on it. I wish I had the ability to draw like that! It's even more impressive, though, because Fran has extremely limited vision.

I now have 15 minutes in which to get dressed, get myself looking less dead, take more caffeine, and leave to meet Denny & Orinda for our Friday lunch date at El Jardin. We have lots of schooling to get through this afternoon, so I'm hoping to get a burst of energy after lunch.