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My recently planted lupine is in full bloom now.
Lupine purple
botanicals
Supporting parents over non-parents?
Sharing financial resources is a zero sum game. Someone’s gain or increase is going to be someone else’s loss.
Do you think parents of adult children have an obligation to financially help the ones with children of their own more than the ones who do not have kids? Or do you think parents should always maintain total equality in the ways they divvy up their support to adult children?
I have been on one end of this dilemma for over 30 years. I’m the one who stayed married and raised a family. My sibling had a lavish wedding (in two locales), but quickly divorced and had no kids. She never found a career she enjoys and is frequently unemployed, despite being very highly educated.
Now I am temporarily (hopefully) on the other end of it. My son currently only has himself to take care of and my daughter is building her family.
Hypothetically, if you had 10K to share at Christmas, would you give each one 5K? Or would you take into account the selflessness and outrageously high cost of raising a child through college and tip the scale towards the parent?
I think maybe you can tell which way I lean, but I know that there are strong counter arguments.
If you’re childless and found out your parents gave your sibling more money than you in their estate plans, how would you feel? Would you feel as if they didn’t value your life as much as theirs? Or would you understand that grandchildren were factored in?
What about an opposite situation, where parents support a single, childless adult daughter more than another one who had the benefit of a husband’s income? Do singles deserve more support than those who married and raised children?
Curious for your thoughts.
Internet Wisdom
One good thing about social media and the general interconnectedness of the whole world online is that you can access “group think” so easily.
If you’re feeling a certain way about something, there’s definitely someone out there that knows exactly what you mean.
I’m still not over the high family drama that I experienced in January.
Thank goodness the internet gets it.
Dream Flower
I have been patiently waiting for a magnolia blossom to fall off my neighbor’s tree. Yesterday, it happened. I found a blossom in the grass on my walk and brought it home.
It lasted about a day in a small dish of water.
On Day 2, I attempted a technique that was demonstrated in my watercolors class, but it didn’t really work. The idea is to press flowers and leaves into wet paint and get an interesting effect. You can also paint the veiny side of a leaf and press that onto white paper.
The image was not really recognizable as a flower after I pulled it off the wet paint. I ended up painting in some petals.
April showers
One thing about being older is that you have so very many snippets of songs, poems, sayings and jingles floating around in your head. Literally decades worth of popular culture is lodged in the ole memory. Half the time, you can’t remember why or from where you know something.
Apparently “April Showers Bring May Flowers” is a saying from England that dates back to at least the 1550s. Imagine. That saying has been kicking around the English-speaking world for over 450 years.
The flowers that bloom in the spring,
tra-la.
OK, just Googled and that’s from The Mikado, which makes sense. I was in that show in high school (embarrassingly, in full yellowface). Gilbert & Sullivan are responsible for a great deal of brain clutter in older people who like musical theater.
Springtime for Hitler and GER-MA-NY
I wish that one from The Producers would leave me, but it just won’t. Must be lodged too deep in the grey matter.
Spring in general has more songs, poems, and sayings than all the other seasons combined. Don’t you think?
What pops into your head when you experience the miracle of spring where you are?
Second attempt
Crocuses (Croci?) are still calling to me.
My second attempt to paint one is OK.
I’m struggling with the idea of painting “loose” vs control. The teacher I have now at the community arts center (Sandra) is all about getting all your colors down early. A “color story” she calls it. She doesn’t care if they all bleed into each other. I think I need to paint bigger in her class to get the most out of it. This one is only 5×7 inches. If you paint loose and small with watercolors, there’s a decent chance you just get a mess.
Sign of Spring
Spring is springing here in Greater Boston. Hallelujah!
I’m realizing now you really just have to paint a lot to truly improve. Watercolors require a great deal of trial and error. And now that good weather has returned, I’m not sure how much I’ll keep painting outside of the class I’m taking.
Honestly, I’m still not sure what my life is actually going to look like longterm in retirement. We are still in a transitional period. My husband’s knee surgeries have been such a huge feature of the past year. We don’t know how much he’ll continue to work once he’s fully recovered.
I feel like my retirement travel budget is not going to be as significant as I had hoped (thanks Trump) but who knows…maybe we’ll become road trip people.
I’m trying to focus on Good Things today:
- It’s 73 degrees F and sunny here 😎
- I have a screen porch, which I just cleaned.
- Hungary dumped Trump & Putin’s buddy Viktor Orbán.
- I get to see my cutie 🥰 tomorrow.
- Dessert – last night I had the genius idea to sprinkle flaked coconut on two Salted Caramel Mochi from Trader Joe’s. So good.
Creativity workshop
I’m participating in a two-hour creativity workshop on Zoom today. The focus is on “exploring our art making process,” not learning particular techniques. It’s described “as a time to feed our souls and learn with and from each other.”
To prepare I need to:
Find a piece of clothing or textile with an interesting pattern or texture and bring it to my artmaking space. Assemble a bunch of different drawing tools such as any drawing paper of any size, pen, markers, pastels, colored pencils, watercolor, charcoal…
OK, I’m good on drawing supplies, but a bit stumped on the textile. Maybe I’ll bring my favorite skirt. It’s reversible so it has two cool fabrics to choose from.
Drawing is hard and can be tedious, but the only way you get better is to practice. Painting is the fun part, in my opinion.
Update:
In the creativity “playshop” (rather than “workshop,” get it?) we looked at a section of our textile, and experimented with it in some way.
My textile:
Watercolors—botanicals 10
These are the last few pages in my botanicals “Watercolor Workbook” by Sarah Simon, a very thoughtful Christmas gift from my daughter.
It was great because it kept me painting through January and February in this very cold and snowy Winter of the Knee, where we’ve mostly just stayed home. (Part 2 of The Year of the Knee—aka “The Other Knee”—is now scheduled for March 16. 🙄)
I enjoyed inking the pre-printed designs with my new artists pens and learned a few good techniques for painting flowers and foliage. Also, I got a lot of useful color mixing information. Each page preserves my color recipes, which will be convenient for future reference.
Finally, hurray for flowers and plants! I’m bad at growing them, but they’re fun to draw, paint. and photograph.
🌺🌿🌷🌻🌼🪴🌱🌸
Watercolors—botanicals 9
Almost done with my Watercolor Workbook by Sarah Simon.
I painted the center flower as one big wet boundary, but I think it might’ve looked cooler if painted each petal separately. Would’ve taken longer though!
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