ah ... mindless joy ....

sometimes cleaning is just a chore .... sometimes, i found out today, it can be a mindless joy .... puttering around .... trash, stash, trash, stash .... all that i have left to clean is either ON my table or under my table in the art room (sigh ... i just lied to you .... i'll try again)...... the only things IN MY STUDIO that i have left to clean and tidy still, are either on my huge table or under my huge table .... so i plowed through it today .... trash, stash, trash, stash .... things either got thrown away or they found a reasonable place to live out their useful lives ... like in drawers and bins and cupboards ... so i tossed TONS ... and sorted tons more .... 

at my pal al's house, she keeps her paint by color ... a bin of red, a bin of blue, tra la la  ..... i, on the other hand, keep a bin of fluid acrylics (yum! my favorite) .... a bin of liquitex tubes, a bin of golden's tubes, a bin of all the other hard body paints ... and a bin of inexpensive craft paints that my kids use ..... or that i use for crafts (as opposed to art .... she boldly proclaims herself an artist of the paint snob variety) .... so ... it works for me .... i actually keep the fave fluids separated into three boxes by colors.... red orange yellow ... green and blue .... all the rest .... and it works for me ... but ... somehow ... i've been at al's a lot lately and i DO like her system .... so i'm giving it a try ... all be it, a modified try, i just can't sully my lovely bottles of fluid acrylics' reputation by making them sit with all those big squished up tubes .... i sorted all my full body (heavy body? did i make these terms up? i'm not sure) ... i sorted my thick paints by color .... what a happy mindless joy to sort and ponder .... i tossed about 10 empty orange tubes ..... apparently i like orange paint so much that i keep the tubes even when empty ...... and ... well .... let's do that picture worth a thousand words thing again.....

i love green .... look at this lovely selection of green paints .... yippee!

blue is a favorite .... and i have a big selection because it includes dark blues, sky blues, turquoise blues .... lots of hue and tint variation .....even some precious sparkling lumiere paints in there ......and then ... there's purple .... eek! ..... clearly i have a purple problem! 

this is my freshly sorted paint ... in bins across the back wall .... that blue is brimming ... the poor purples got stuck in with the browns ......

so here you have it .... the close bin below is red and pink (not many pinks, too girly ... and i don't care to be girly), oranges (note to self, buy orange), yellow (perfect amount, nice assortment of tint and hue and intensity), greens, blues, purple and brown combo, blacks, white and buff (buff as in ivory, not buff as in "whoa, check out that buff full body paint, definitely a gym rat") ......so .... to sum up my day ..... 

-boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist are out o' town on a school trip

-i had a three set tennis match 
-i went to little.e.beck.artist's power point presentation (sea dragons, second grade, splendid)

-dashed home for shower and dog walk

-dashed back to school for lunch in the cafeteria (cafeteria food by choice, clearly i'm working on good mommy points)

-off to the studio to fill up garbage bags and ponder the psychology of empty orange paint tube hoarding

-picked up little.e.beck.artist from school, eschewing homework time in favor of pedicures (her toes are orange, mine are blue)

-serious cramming for a spelling test .... vendor should not have an o .... emptying's y is pesky and hard to remember ..... passenger can be sung with a singsongyness that makes it easy .... 

-out to dinner AND ice cream ... just cause the big kids are out of town and we HAD to do something groovy that we could tell them about ... dinner out? on a thursday? and ice cream? on a thursday?  .... i actually had a rootbeer misto ..... splendidly yummy .... 

-tra la la ... lovely full day ..... 

what happiness did you have today?