No post for A YEAR? No art?

She don’t call? She don’t write…?

Yes. I HAVE been making some art, I moved away from the desert and changed jobs (out of prison, WOOT!), and I’ve had cancer…

So…I moved from Brawley, CA (Imperial County, the ass end of the state, almost to Mexico) to Vallejo, CA (North-East Bay area, trees, water, PEOPLE!), and I’m still (ALWAYS!) a Librarian, but instead of working in a Level 4 Men’s Prison, I’m the YA Librarian in a public Library now. So far, they LOVE me here.

I get to got to school events and be a Library cheerleader (VERY good at that) and I control the Teen Area of my downtown Library. I help folks find the information they need every day. I RULE, y’all!

Yeah, breast cancer. My Sister-in-law had breast cancer surgery in July and all she asked of me was that I get a mammogram, so I did in August 2015, and they found stage 1 cancer in my right breast. I had/have great doctors and pretty damn good health insurance through both my old and new employers, but the move in November did create some delays in my treatment plan. I had surgery at the end of January where three small masses and two lymph nodes were removed. I make as many jokes about “Frankenbewbie” as I can, and I am so very lucky that a test now exists to determine whether chemo will even help before ya go for it, and for me, chemo would do no good, so I did not have to do it.

I had radiation treatments throughout April (NOT fun), and now I take an nifty anti-cancer pill that messes with my temperature gauge. I’m in the, “cancer isn’t actively trying to kill you right now/any cancer cells that are hanging about are being dealt with/take a million tests so we can keep an eye on EVERYTHING” stage of my treatment, and the only other thing I have to say on the subject is:

FUCK CANCER.

So…Yeah…been busy, but I am getting ready to do SO MANY THINGS. I am getting my art room organized here in my new place so I have BIG plans…It has been a bit of a downsize from my place in the desert to my little city Aerie, but I am really loving it here and there’s nothing wrong with me weeding out things I do not need to keep. I’m on the second story of this 2-apartment duplex; There’s a nice lady, her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend living downstairs and we each have our own little patch of a back yard, and MINE has a nice set of redwood-deck-style stairs down to it. There is a huge tree in my back yard and another out front, perhaps I can figure out what type of trees they are sometime? The cats love to look out the windows even more than I do and the light up here has a magical angle to it at times…

I do really love it here! I’m about a mile from the Vallejo Ferry at the waterfront so my neighborhood includes the arts area downtown where the farmer’s market is every Saturday morning. This town is just one of the prettiest I’ve ever lived in.
There are projects I’m working on, art I want to make, places to wreck, people to do…

While I have done practically nothing in my art journals since last summer until recently, I have tried to keep my hand in the paint, so to speak. I participated in iHanna’s postcard swap last fall (had them sent to my Sister-in-law’s address, as I was moving at the time), did the spring swap, and I just finished my postcards for the this year’s fall swap. Also, I FINALLY (seriously, I’ve had it for about 20 years!) redid my telephone “lefty” table,

and I painted my square tray a nice dark denim blue & lined the bottom with collaged cigar bands.
I’ve already had 5 of the 6 craft programs I set up at my library this fall, but I gotta get more folks to attend…We did origami, weaving, duct tape, and Art Journaling. Since my library is in the Art District, so we aught to expand on that.

More to come…

…trust me.