Success and failure!

I've had one or two ups and downs over the last few days.  My writing is showing signs of success with the new novel taking shape and flowing well.  I'm on chapter four already and feeling good about it.  On the painting side I did a rather good portrait in watercolours, but when I moved on to trying my hand at the style of "pointillism" I found it to be rather more difficult than I had imagined, but my first attempt wasn't too bad.  Then I decided to do a second painting in semi-pointillism - a bit on the daub side - and left it a quarter finished in mild disgust.  Now, because it was my preparation for Groupe Chroma's next lesson I have to find something else - because if I can't do it I can hardly expect my pupils to do it (would be horrified if they could - only joking!).

Last night I was taking my essential tablets and one of them stuck to my finger and was flicked across the kitchen right under the nose of Toby, my tiny young Yorkie.  He's very quick on the draw and the tablet disappeared down his throat in one blink of my shocked eyes.  Thank heavens it wasn't my blood pressure tablets, but was an anti-stress tablet - aie!  They don't knock me out, but he only weighs three kilos and me, well, I'm a lot bigger.  Too late to ring the vet and it's Sunday today, so we've been keeping an eye on him and so far, thank heavens, he's not showing any adverse affects.  A bit calmer than usual perhaps...and more obedient - he's actually been playing and passing me his ball without any argument.  Right now he's fast asleep on his cushion, breathing regularly - but then, he's very good at that normally, so I figure there's nothing left to worry about.

Re-surfacing

After five months of chronic sciatica, two months of which I couldn't walk, I'm finally sitting up and taking notice. There's still some residual pain - in my left buttock, would you believe - but I'm painting again and doing a little writing - should do much more, but I have to take things easy and the last few months, if they've taught me anything, they've taught me the importance of finding plenty of time to relax after a long illness.
Christmas had to be cancelled, as did New Year. Not a morsel of turkey passed my lips, nor a sip of celebratory alcohol. After all, what did I have to celebrate and the old hooch (or is that hootch?) was out because of the medication I was on. They even put me on Morphine patches, which only just took the edge of the pain for a couple of weeks. But here I am, gradually getting back to a shadow of my former self and hoping for better soon. As I say, I've started painting and am back teaching my art group in the village here. And I've held the first meeting of my small writers group.
Better still, I've started to gather research on my proposed new novel. It's something of a suspense saga set mostly in Ceylon before it was called Sri Lanka. It's one place that I have visited that I haven't used as a background for my stories, so I'm looking forward to the nostalia trip.
Right now, tiredness is setting in, so I think I'll retire and put my feet up in front of the tele. I wonder if I can persuade my husband to cook dinner - he did all the cooking while I was immobilised and I got a little too used to that hithertofore unknown service.
Now that I've remembered that I actually have a Blog I must try to contribute to it more often.