Just last week...

Just last week (actually it was the week before, I'm a week late posting this) the sun came out and the few remaining patches of snow in our yard finally melted. The sunshine, I admit, has done wonders for my mood, my creativity and my general over all well-being. Finally I am painting again, every day, and finally I feel like myself again. The clouds have lifted, both literally and figuratively.
After the winter we've had, it's funny to me how a few months ago I wrote about four inches of snow...since then... I can honestly say that in the first three months after our move I saw more snow than in my nearly 37 years prior! Cooper was out of school for two and a half weeks! Three major record breaking storms and nearly 50 inches later, here we are and it's nearly Spring! I constantly question where the time goes...
Between snow storms, on a rare day when Cooper was in school and I was out alone I had something of an epiphany, a minor one at least. It occurred to me that I had been spending so much emotional energy missing our life in Alabama, that I was missing out on our life here. I made a little promise to myself to make more of an effort here. Part of that promise was to get my studio set up and organized. I'm happy to report that it's finally in somewhat working order; I liken painting in this small space to doing yoga in a bathroom stall...an all around bad fit, but somehow part of it is possible, part of it doesn't work at all, and part of it you just wouldn't even want to try. It's not perfect, but it no longer feels like a black hole for creativity.
In light of the events of the past several months I've been thinking a lot about setbacks, challenges and change. What the past few years have taught me is how to see these as opportunities, I just needed to remind myself of that. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that every cloud has a silver lining, at least not right away, and for those which never seem to present their silver lining (and they DO exist!) those are just there to force us to grow, to be better and to be stronger.
Amidst the boxes I unpacked in the studio I found the canvases Cooper and I had been working on before the move, one of the reasons we started this blog, they made me smile. Those are ready and waiting for a weekend of pretty weather where we can paint with reckless abandon together...outside. I am looking forward to that.
We are steadily finding our way here. Cooper is doing very well. He's happy to go to school and he's happy to be home. The majority of the time, he's just happy; funny, busy, quirky, delightful and happy.