Mother, I just killed a man

My mother is in town. For a funeral. And she wants attention. Loads of it. I'm supposed to be flying north to see her next week, having taken leave, and had organised months ago. I was kinda hoping that I'd do the attention thing then.

Funerals are not the best events. They make cheerful people reflective. They make my mother, downright depressed. My sister has moved back home with a bunch of half-grown children, and has found that our mother's grandmothering is very much like her mothering. With less energy.

She's not happy about this. It's not going to be the easiest trip home.

Sunday afternoon

Blink and you miss it.

It amazes me that weekends vanish, and you turn around and it's over. The mystery of the missing weekend. And all weekends seems to contain at least one 3 hour block of time centered on the lounge where one talks about what one should be doing. I just had one of them.

And then you realise it's too late, and you should go to yoga.
Now I'm off to yoga. Hot. Hot sweaty stinky yoga, a that.
Later dude.

Defend your vice.

i'd rather be home, originally uploaded by deepwarren.

I started scribbling cause i was bored at lunchtime. Previous to 1st year high school, i'd been home schooled, and then sent to a state school about 50m from home. I spent a lot of year 7 not at school. So enforced attendance in a small christian school of about 40 high schoolers (year8-yr10) was pretty dull. Specially that hour at lunch, where if you didn't have anyone in particular to hang out with, then you were screwed.

I took up computing. Which was fun. Unfortunately it was at the boys end of the school, and for one reason or another (boys and girls didn't mix - which meant I had about 7 people to talk to) it was discovered that I had been mixing with boys. Which was not allowed. I do remember being very annoyed at this. It seemed unfair, especially since there wasn't that much interest from the boys (not in the computers, and certainly not in me).

So I started drawing. I found some draw cartoons book, and I was bad. But the art teacher made some encouraging noises, and I found out that scribbling was a vice that whittled away the hours, got you lost in your own little world, and created a nice feedback loop between me and the outer world.

It also tends to show my preoccupations. I quite liked drawing dicks for a while (little harmless ones rather than throbbing raging erections). Boxes, and all there mysteries was another.

I think I vowed that I would stop drawing at 30 if I had achieved nothing. As I've gotten older, I've drawn less. Stopping has proven more difficult than I thought. I'd like to think that when I retire I'll be curled on the couch with the dog, watching the Bill (still!) with a sketchbook on my lap.


Why would you quit?