Which is another way of saying this is a catch-all post. My schedule for today is homework, more homework, work-work, possible lunch with friends (yay!), and if that happens and I have my homework done, I get to go shoot butterflies.
Yes, I know you need a teeny-tiny calibre to shoot butterflies… you all are nuts, you know that? LOL
The Cox Arboretum, which is up the road from me about twenty minutes, has a butterfly house, I found out a few days ago, and they anticipate a hatching any day now. So I plan to take me and my camera up there. But I have to earn it.
Bouncing around the internet this morning I found an appropriate article to follow up on my ramblings yesterday about how much time we waste in an ordinary job. Because kids do need to learn how to relax, and this guy gets that, with his treatise on banishing the scheduled playdate. My kids rarely had the chance to just play with friends, but that was because we didn't have any kids their age living near the farm in NH. Now, that has changed, but the teenagers have so little time they have already missed out on that spontaneity. It's a shame, really, that we've imposed our fast-paced adult life with it's pressures onto kids this young.
It's one thing to train for efficiency, another to train incipient workaholics. The beauty of homeschooling only taking a few formal hours was that it left me free to do other things with my day, whether that was laze around with a stack of books (one was never enough) or ride horses with my sister and friends. Kids need that time.
And on that note, I created two digital paintings last night, giving my new android app, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro a tryout. Wow! This thing has everything I'm used to a painting program having. Layers, a ton of brushes (yes, I did find the smudge tool, it's just not immediately obvious what it is. But google is my friend), special effects, and the ability to save as a .psd file and preserve layers for working on the big machine later. I'm a happy girl-artist, now. Painting with no mess, and the ability to set it down and resume at leisure is perfect. Maybe I can start improving my skills and getting the picture in my head to look like the one on the paper screen. I've had a lot of fun with the free apps, this was only $5 and definitely worth it.
Butterfly Dreaming the Day Away
Pixies in the Spider Web