The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

Today’s drawing prompt was “frost”. I used a photo as a source for this one because I wasn’t sure what frost looked like. Well it’s not like I’ve never seen frost before, but I wanted a really close up view of it. Kind of an abstract drawing, but I needed a break from figures.

I am starting to rethink my idea for doing Inktober because I’m really itching to get started on my brand new sheet of expensive watercolor paper (it cost me 23 dollars for the sheet!). It’s going to be a big project because painting will be 19 x 25 inches and that’s pretty large for me. Perhaps for October I will do two large paintings and paint every day as my goal. I’ll finish out September doing drawing prompts though and when I’m on away in October I will do drawing prompts on my iPad.

I’m really enjoying writing this blog. It feels like Livejournal again and I really missed proper blogging. Everything online seems brief and abbreviated these days. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok… it’s just photos and videos and little blurbs to go with them. Livejournal you actually had to write to make your post meaningful. I know hardly anyone reads this but the process is more for me than anything else. It’s just a place to store a record of my life in writing with the addition of photos and videos to illustrate it.

So I had my consult with the oral surgeon yesterday. My surgery is October 7th. Not only do I have to get a screw in my jaw for the implant, but I also have a bony growth in my jaw on the other side of my mouth that they need to remove and biopsy. He doesn’t seem to think it’s anything serious but wants to make sure they look at it once it’s taken out. So I won’t be eating solids for quite awhile after the procedure, but I should be healed enough by the time we leave for Chicago to eat normal food again, as long as I chew them on the left side of my mouth. Just no nuts or seeds.

I tried my wedding dress on today because I haven’t put it on since my wedding. It still fits. We are going to Las Vegas in two years to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary and we are renewing our vows at a Taco Bell as a joke (there’s one you can get married at and they give you a bouquet of sauces to hold). I’d like to wear my wedding dress but it will have to be aired out for a long, long time because it smells absolutely awful. For 17 years it was stored in a moldy room at my mother-in-law’s house in New Zealand and though it doesn’t have mold on it, it wreaks like mold. The fabric is a little delicate and yellowed because the dress itself is over 50 years old, but still seems to be holding up.

In December I am going to start looking for work again. I put my job search on hold while I ran all the half marathons but my last one is December 8th and after that I have to resume applying for work. It’s an unpleasant and anxiety-provoking process but I’m hoping with my panic attacks mostly under control and my anxiety being better handled, that this time the job hunt won’t get me too on edge.

I did not run today because my friend slept in and didn’t come and I lost motivation. We are going to run 4 miles on Thursday and tomorrow I’ll do a 5k by myself. I still have time to get my 21 mile goal. If I run Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I should be fine. Sunday is the day after I do my long run so I need a rest day.

I haven’t had any sugar since Sunday but I had cravings for it yesterday. Not too bad, but underlaying throughout the day. As for my intentions, I met most of them. Two I did not do yesterday were meditation and Instagram, but I still have plenty of days to meet my goal of 5 times this week. I’ll do them today.

I made pasta with garlic bread last night but I didn’t have any of the latter because my tooth is really loose now. The noodles had to be cut into minuscule pieces and chewed entirely on the left side of my mouth. This is getting really annoying and the only benefit is that by eating slower, cutting my food up into tiny bits, and reducing my choices to soft things, I end up eating a lot less which helps with weight loss. This week I’m going to try extra hard to make dinner. My husband cooks on the weekend but he’s usually too tired after work to make food on the week nights.

I weighed 120.2 pounds today. A loss of .6 pounds since Sunday. This means I’m on track to lose the two pounds by next Saturday morning. I don’t think I am going to weigh myself until Thursday because I do not feel the need to do it more than two or three times a week really. Once I reach 110, I want to work on just maintaining my weight. Running feels really good at that size and my joints don’t hurt afterwards when I’m 110 pounds. Last time I was there I ate 1500 calories a day and maintained for about a year before I started putting on weight and ballooned up to 128 and got stuck there until recently.

September and October goals so far…

8 days out of 46 days without sugar

9 days out of 46 days limited ultra-processed food

9 days out of 47 days painting or drawing every day

Goals for this week so far…

2 days out of 6 days cooking at home

0 miles out of 21 miles of running

1 day out of 5 days of meditating

1 day out of 5 days of going on Instagram

Drawing Prompt Goals for September

September 19th: Angel, September 20th: Spiders, September 21st: Fire, September 22nd: Dagger, September 23rd: Remove, September 24th: Frost, September 25th: Drip, September 26th: Toad, September 27th: Demon, September 28th: Chains, September 29th: Beast September 30th: Rise