What I did today

Drawing 546

Drawing 547

Drawing 548

Drawing 549

Drawing 550

Bringing my drawings to another nice round number :)

I must be in a rant-ish mood this week. Someone ruffled my feathers with a comment about being unemployed like being on paid vacation and how it must be nice to just sit around at home. Yeah, it's so nice having very little money, reporting to the government on an all too regular basis and grovelling for my pittance, in a state of near constant anxiety over whether I'm going to make rent and pay the bills this month. While the luxury of time is great, I spend a fair proportion of it hunting for a job, which is not so much fun. As to sitting around, I thought I'd make a list of what I did today, for instance:

• Got up at 8am, gave myself an insulin shot, got dressed
• Fed myself, the cats and the magpies (not necessarily in that order, the beasts are demanding)
• Read a section of yesterday's (Sunday) paper with breakfast
• Unloaded the dishwasher
• Spent a frustrating half hour on the phone with the phone company trying to solve the problems I've been having (the phone rings once, then the caller gets the engaged signal. Or the call goes straight to voicemail without ringing. Or nothing happens at all. This is not the first time, or the second, I've reported the fault but apparently this problem is all in my imagination because the company claim it doesn't happen, in fact couldn't happen. Hah!)
• Phoned a friend who wants me to make new cushion covers for her outdoor furniture, discussed the project and made a time tomorrow to take measurements and sort out what fabric she wants
  
• Cleaned the bathroom and the kitty litter trays
• Made my drawing-a-day
• Donned my apron, mixed paint, and put a background colour on a canvas, cleaned the brushes and the palette (a grandiose description of a takeaway container!), cleaned me, de-aproned
• Loaded new dirty dishes in the dishwasher
• Put away a basketful of clean laundry from yesterday
• Emptied the water buckets from the shower onto my plants(apart from irregular rain, this is all the water the garden gets with water restrictions)
  
• Drove to the mail sorting centre to collect a registered letter (erk - notification of a rent increase, could've done without that) en route to lunch (I try to make one outing in the car serve several purposes, if possible)
  
• Collected a friend, drove to lunch (mmm, Chinese style bbq pork & veg), dropped friend back at her work
• Raced inside the house as spits of rain fell on me whilst exiting the car, hurtled out to the clothesline to rescue the dry sheets and towels before the heavens opened (which they did, just as I beetled up the steps to the back door)
• Whipped back outside as both cats whined at me for a piece of grass (our usual routine when I bring the washing in - a blade of grass for each feline, unless Pye has had a "walk" outside on the leash - there's not so much walking, more grazing with me pushing him on, then some intense sniffing of bushes that must have been sniffed a hundred times before)
• Put some of the towels away (not an activity I can tolerate for long, I'll do the rest later. Maybe)
• Leafed through my folder of drawing-a-day looking for inspiration for the next drawing in my artist's book. Selected several, put them aside while they percolate for a bit.
• Read a chapter of "Fatal Voyage", by Kathy Reichs. I finished one of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series last night, and I have another (good and thick!) of the same series but resisted starting it just yet. Don't want to burn out on one author.
• Took photos for this blog. Edited those photos.
• Read my email
• Checked out several job websites, downloaded promising position descriptions, made notes of closing dates (I'll work on typing up applications, and tweaking my resume, later when I'm offline)
  
• Blogged

Phew. And it is now just after four pm. Miles to go before I sleep :)

Yep, I just sit around on my arse all day, reading novels and eating bonbons.