My Day Ahead – Oct 04, 2019

Today

If today is as long as yesterday or many of the days this past week, I think I’ll have to put in for an extended pension, lol!

No, I’ll be glad to have the energy and time and life to claim the days are long.

Woke up thinking —
It’s gonna be up to me what kind of long days I’m gonna have ❤️

May go w/Sheila to Gold’s Gym to walk the indoor track. Rumor on TV is we may have cooler weather by early next week 😊 So I may soon have more options!

Plus I did post a list of a few older posts with major updates! So today want to do a an actual new post, lol!

Beyond that, want to do I bit more Notan work, including read my new book, and see where all this’ll go. Not too bad a plan going into the heart of my birthday month 😊

Yesterday

Morning
(bone density test, heat in Texas)
Spent most the morning into early afternoon doing things needing doing but that I’d rather’ve spent time doing something else 😊

I’ve a tweet I saved and have retweeted a few times the past month, a month I usually spend in Vermont, away from the 100 degree relentless heat of nearly a third of a year – https://twitter.com/FelipeAdanLerma/status/1173087350223724544 – that talks to that ☺️

Made breakfast, then headed into Austin, left off Sheila at Gold’s Gym, and went next door for my bone density test.

That test kinda shook me up a bit, or a picture on the screen of my spine during the test I should say. The curve in my lumbar was so clear and so pronounced, I don’t know. Lab tech did a great job, having to reposition me several times to get as clear and straight a shot as possible for the doctors.

And that curved look of my insides is after two years of PT (finished just about two years ago this month) to relearn how to properly use my muscles after a lifetime of compensating for my scoliosis by over using some muscles and literally almost not using some at all!

And, after over the course of just over a decade, lost nearly 60 lbs and kept it off.

What would that curve on the screen that was inside me have looked like if I hadn’t done all that? Makes me cringe to try imagining the answer.

After the bone density test I walked over to Gold’s Gym and did laps til Sheila came out of class, and got in ‘bout 15 minutes.

From there, to groceries at Sprouts. Just a few things, including wild Salmon for lunch. We let two people behind us w/literally a handful of items to go ahead of us. One was a young guy listening to my wife and I and the cashier (almost our age) gripe about the heat, lol. Really, sincerely, nicely, he said he liked the heat. Felt warm to him.

I nodded, smiled.

I know how he felt. I’d felt the same way ‘bout his age, 20s to young 30s. I do. I grew up doing construction in Houston, summers.

I still distinctly remember my brother and I working through lunch one July day so we could head home early, nailing wood singles to the roof decking. The sky was clear, as usual, and two (old) guys on the ground were complaining how hot it was.

I also distinctly remember thinking (and it wasn’t the only time this happened growing up in Houston), actually, wondering, why were they so hot? Warm, yes. I understood that. But hot? No. Couldn’t understand that. Not then 😊

Just like the young man we let past us in the grocery line.

Nice person. Like my brother & I that day.

No need to rumple someone just to rumple them.

There’s already enough curve balls in our lives to worry about 😊

Afternoon
(blogging problems)
I know I said yesterday I could probably live with a blog update til mid November if it really helped things work way better, and still mostly do, but it was exceptionally trying and tiring yesterday afternoon to update posts and create new ones.

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s that picture on the screen of my curved spine.

But those are nothing new. Tiresome at times, but not new and not something I haven’t dealt with for most my life, even if not to the degree like the last decade or two.

No, I think I’m just tired. Done too much for too many days.

A day or a two of recovery’s not enough at this pace.

The pace needs to change.

And the weather 😂

Evening
(art, Notan, transversus abdominis)
I remembered, ‘bout 6:30 in the evening, after Sheila & I’d had a snack of chips & humus & fresh sliced cantaloupe, that I’d woke with a clear distinct 1st thought that it was time to orientate back to my art.

Not just time to, I want to.

On a whim I check my blog to see when stopped actively blogging about actually painting – Delivering My Painting to Art for the People Gallery Austin in late June. By then I was having 4-8 hour intense gallbladder attack pain, and of course ended up in the ER then the hospital for five days.

I’d started blogging about painting in December 2018, with work like, New palette knife painting, Birds and Sailboat in Paradise, by Adan .

But I’d begun to upload new paintings November 2017 to Fine Art America.

My 1st painting, The Crack of Time, was my first since we’d been in Galveston in 2011!

In between, I’d decided I needed to just take pictures. Let the process of photography and learning to see what attracted me in daily life teach me to go beyond the beautiful but extremely rare moments in Austin that inspired me, like those I sold last week at the Veterans art show at Jerry’s Artarama.

At 1st my photography, from 2011 in Galveston and into Vermont then Paris, was hit or miss, most often hitting if on the seawall in Galveston, the water or mountains in Vermont, or most anywhere in Paris, lol!

Back in Austin to start 2013, my New Year’s Eve pic was one of my best for a long time back here in Texas.

When Sheila and I finally got to visiting Vermont again in the summers, I began to see I was seeing & recognizing more and more. By the time we got to late 2017, I especially picked up painting again mostly to capture some of the wonderful images I’d come to appreciate from there, and picked out 1/2 a dozen to paint & take back to Vermont for Art Hop 2018.

And things progressed from there until the gallbladder and then the 2nd surgery derailed me.

But last night, I got out a Tombow dual tip black pen I’d bought before I couldn’t do anymore art work in June, found a loose sheet of sample print paper in the art room, and did where I’d left off at in June when I was beginning to really want to understand values in my work and did a few quick sketches on the balcony with Sheila as it began to get dark.

It was like when I 1st started PT two years ago for a “few” weeks that stretched to two years. I was told to tighten my lower core, specifically and only specifically to start – the Transversus Abdominis – and do a few leg raises – and couldn’t feel where it was they wanted me to contract. They had to place my fingers on the right spot, and practice moving my legs, for months, until I began to identify where that muscle is.

That’s how I feel doing my first Notan style observation & sketch 😊

If I can learn to feel my lower core —

I can learn Notan ❤️

Related Amazon Search & Products

Core Muscles

I do like to point out I pick my selections to showcase from my Amazon searches. May not always be the case, or wholly always the case, but for now, I prefer picking titles and book covers and gift items that just really appeal to me. There’s lots more to choose from, but only have so much room, lol! I hope you enjoy —

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My Related Blog Posts

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Thanks so much everyone! 😊

Adan

Twitter / Instagram / FB @FelipeAdanLerma
Amazon Author Page – https://amzn.to/2YpgyUf
Fine Art America (FAA) – https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/felipeadan-lerma.html