Day 5

The run:

When the ground is a little less icy I will run around the athletic field of the school next door to ours (we don't actually have a field but borrow theirs on a regular basis).  But I rise at 5.30 to be at school and ready for teaching by 8.00 on Tuesdays, so there was no running today, except up two flights of stairs (I always run up stairs now), which doesn't really count for much. So here is a panorama of our pond, yes, there is an icy pond under all that snow!

The self-portrait:

One of my senior students is just a marvel, one of those people who can draw anything, he has a future with Pixar or in graphic novels, just amazing.  Today I was teaching them about faces and the features on them, because one kid, Jean (french, a boy) wanted to learn how to draw male and female faces, he is frustrated as his people always end up looking androgynous, or boyish. And he so wants his girls to look 'hot'!

And it is really difficult, because if you draw from life, then each face has individual characteristics, which may fit into the male or female stylised categories, like rounder, smaller, for women, and angular, bigger, larger-browed for men.  And it seems as though we draw ourselves, or our sex, better than the opposite one, as in my class, all the guys can draw male faces more easily than female, and vice versa.  So here is my (female) eye, which, as you can see, is indistinguishable, out of context, from a male eye, isn't it?

Day 4

The run
Have to teach on Mondays and Tuesdays, kind of forgot that when I made the resolution.  Some Mondays I am able to run, as I only have to be at school by 9.45, but mostly I am in a flat spin by the time I have to leave for school. 

Today I was feeding all the animals, epileptic dog with special dietary needs, geriatric piggy (guinea-pig), ancient cat with partial dementia, and then the troop of 10 - 15 bluejays who wait noisily for their morning peanuts, and all the meeker birds, the cheerful chickadees, the tame downy woodpecker couple, the beautiful-against-the-snow cardinals, the dark-eyed juncoes with their little snowy tummies, the hyperactive nuthatches and the graceful tufted titmouses (just sounds better than 'mice'), when Matthew phoned to ask me if I could drop off his Biology book which contained all the enormous homework packet he had done over the Christmas break! 

So I just ran up to the beehives, threw the ball for Molly a few times, urged her to do her business and then ran back and rushed off to school.  But here is an amazing image from yesterday, a hanging mobile of snow!

The self-portrait

Home late after a lovely day at school, but tired, one always has to get used to working again after a holiday.  Then there's the ecstatic dog to take out in the cold crunchy snow, supper to make, husband to commiserate with over work he has had to bring home, boys to have conversations with,  the skinny old cat to reassure with affection, washing up because our dishwasher broke at Thanksgiving and everyone else has too much work to do...  So I  thought I would just make a quick collage, which took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but  lovely to work with such pretty colored paper.  It is meant to be me whistling, not really very successful, but it's done, at least, now for bed!

Day 3

The Run

Tim and I have been so tired all day, having got up to shovel the car out at 4.30am, in order to get Emma to the airport to catch her flight, which was still flying out, to our great astonishment, snow pouring down since yesterday! 

So I was pretty miserable all day, and it was quite late when I went for my run and I only managed 1.8km, because in places the snow was more than a foot deep!  Very beautiful and I observed a red-tailed hawk hunting in our meadow.  I often seem to sing along in rhythm to my running feet, the same song, "Land of the Silver-Birch" which I learnt when I was a Brownie, long ago, and it is always amazing how all the words of so many songs and hymns are just there somewhere in a file in your head, waiting years for you to retrieve them, but fresh and ready when you do.

The self-portrait

Drew my left hand, which can do quite a lot of things which my right hand is better at, but it tries really hard.  It can juggle, and throw the ball for Molly.  And do quite a few things when the right hand gets tired, like vacuuming the staircase.  The rings: thumb-ring, birthday present from my friend Mary in 2009, the silver frog ring, a birthday present from my daughters a few years' ago, and on my ring finger, my wedding ring and my mother's narrow war-time wedding band. 

Day 2

Today was slow going because of the snow, which was about 6 to 8 inches at Refridgerator Corner.  Like running through thick sand, I suppose.  I ran 3.3km though, which I was pleased with, no one else ventured out with me except Mad Molly Malone, the black labrador, who runs behind me making hopeful roaming round patterns around my straighter footprint path.  We crossed so many deer, coyote and rabbit tracks in the meadow. I am always so happy to know that all these animals are about and hopefully thriving.  I was thrilled to catch sight of a long-legged coyote about a week ago in the forest.

I want to do something different each day with the self-portrait, so tonight I took some yellow paper and used a sketch and wash pencil, did a quick picture which only took about half an hour and began with me looking extremely ugly but turned out not too badly in the end.   I was surprised to notice my mothers' eyebrows had popped into my picture.  So strange to observe one's ageing face, I will know it very well by the end of this year.  My husband says that I look like Emma (my oldest child) in this image.

Day 1 (the beginning)

The first day of the new year, the new decade, a year full of ambitious hopes and desires after 2009 left many of my friends and family exhausted, sickened, brokenhearted, poorer, etc. etc.

The Run
Woke up late, about 10.45, so didn't run until about noon or so.  Running is very new to me. Having been an asthmatic all my life, I never thought I would be able to run, in fact, couldn't run, but about 3 months ago I decided to try, and have built up my stamina from running 60 steps then walking 20, to the point where now I can run for 2.5km (1.6 miles), sometimes longer, without stopping.

My daughter is visiting so she and I have been running a few circuits each day of her stay, putting in my regular distance, but with much more laughter than when I am on my own.  My circuit is a meadow and part of a dirt road behind our house, like a cross-country course, I suppose. I have my own Heartbreak Hill, as in the Boston Marathon, which is followed by Refridgerator Corner, with its own personal wind-chill factor, and then we come up to Smelly-Side, near where an animal must have perished fairly recently. 

There was a snowfall of about 2 inches yesterday, so this can make the going a bit more difficult.  My husband came out to try to photograph a small kestrel or sharp-shinned hawk that I had seen chasing what looked like a flock of tufted titmouses (titmice?) and took this picture of me and my crazy black dog Molly.

Now to the creative side of my resolution, the self-portrait.

While everyone else watched the movie "Up" which I have seen already, I went to the upstairs bathroom, which has light in which I look quite good to myself.  I listened to the radio while I drew the portrait, and an hour went by very quickly and pleasantly.  I used a charcoal pencil which I had forgotten I had, and then rubbed a bit with my thumb, although I am always rather loath to do that, having been forbidden to do such things by a very influential and domineering lecturer at art school.  My family liked the portrait and I was quite pleased with it myself.

Day 1

Having watched 'Julie and Julia' last night, and because it is New Year's Eve tonight, and the beginning of a whole new decade, I was inspired to set myself a 365 day task. I will run and make a self-portrait every day, post the picture and write a brief record of my daily run. Here we go!