Thursday P.M., and I insane?

That's when my day 'officially' started today, at 2 p.m. when I got my ass out of bed.

O.K., so that's not too good if I want to get anything substantial done in the studio, but that's really great if you're one of my cats and you just want to snuggle in bed.

But, I digress (something I do quite well, actually.)

I DID get three solid hours of painting done tonight. I'm still working on my three self-portraits and I'm going to continue exploring the mapping of my body tomorrow. Why not? I'm paying them for the privilege of painting so I'm going to paint what ever I want. Besides, I've got a lot of life material to work from.

I get a big kick out of the other students in my class who are waxing nostalgic on the 1950s (an era they never actually lived through.) They must believe 'things' (that is, life) was really better back then, in a 'simpler' time (you know, before iPods and Facebook and the internet, when people actually waited to communicate with one another or used ancient technology like the telephone.)

I could go on for a long time about nostalgia; the longing for things that are irreplaceable.

But were things really that good?

Back in the 1950s people died from cancer at an appallingly higher rate then they do now, the majority of women had a much more narrow career choice path, children lived under the constant threat of nuclear annialation, (remember the drills in grammar school when they lined us up against the walls of the basement preparing for an attack?) we played on metal jungle gyms over cement pads, didn't own bicycle helmets, and, doctors touted the benefits of smoking and drinking in the popular magazines and newspapers of the era.

How did humanity ever survive, let alone the child born in the good old 1950s?

So, things are insane in the world right now (and apparently in my head) because I am, despite all the common-sense notions of what a middle-aged woman 'should' be doing with her life right now, going to art school to get a BFA.

Do I trust that everything will turn out alright? I don't know tonight, but I do know that if I hadn't done this thing (attend college in my 50s) it would turn out to be one of my greatest regrets when I draw (I love that I get to use that word) my last breath on the planet.

So, as Walter Cronkite once said, "And that's the way it is."