Yeah, that whole “46 is the year of health crap” last month? Yeah…… Not two weeks later Covid finally caught up with the household, because why would I be able to NOT get sick this year? I’m beyond cranky about this, for many reasons, but most of all because I was hoping to get a bunch of work done and ready to go by October 1 and well, here I am, trying to figure out how to work around what I’m really hoping is not the CFS variant of Long Covid and that it will clear out soon, with a whole lot of work to do.

I’d like to say I spent my time laid up on the couch thinking about grand plans and whatnot, but in reality I spent most of it trying to stay hydrated while wearing a mask most of the time (we can’t isolate from the cats, so we had to do our best to not get them sick) and playing many hours of Stardew Valley. After that, it’s been getting the house cleaned back up and getting caught up on all the winterizing things that should have been done weeks ago, since, well, winter is coming and all that.

I haven’t been completely ignoring work, though. I have some linocut print making materials and lots of notes for Auntie Yaga’s Home For Wayward Monsters (who knew that running really high fevers for a few days would result in breaking through a creative block?), and decisions were made about formally learning to do something I’ve haphazardly poked at since I was a kid, and THAT one I’m really excited about, since it also requires me to get outside regularly (a problem with this year has been being stuck in the house too much).

One of my favorite artists, Rima Staines, recently posted about participating in a class with Caroline Ross, who wrote a book on making pigments and inks from natural items. I’ve often made makeshift pigments and inks since I was little, but they’ve always been very rudimentary and ephemeral, so they don’t show up in anything I post. However, I’ve been wanting to get more proactive about it, and learn to do it properly for many years, and honestly, my soul is telling me that now is the time to do it. So I ordered the book and am looking forward to sitting down with it later on.

Here’s hoping that the health crap is finally done sitting on me for a while!