Day: June 19, 2008

This morning I opened photoshop and figured out what I’d been doing wrong yesterday. I then stayed at my computer for most of the day and flood filled two dozen strips. Tomorrow morning Howard will review what I did, make some tweaks, and they’ll be ready for me to drop into place. Those are the last major piece of the book. The next task will be to go through the file page by page to make sure that everything is correct. It is almost done.

After all the strips were colored, I realized that I needed to be away from computer screens for awhile. Our business and much of our recreation is very focused on electronic screens. Sometimes I need to get away from that and reconnect to reality. What I really wanted to do was get out of the house and away from the kids. Unfortunately this leads to the problem of babysitting. I can require Kiki to babysit for me, but there are limits to the amount of time I can put Kiki in charge of Gleek without them having a major altercation. With as edgy as Gleek has been lately, and as tired as Kiki was feeling today, I decided not to leave the house. I do that frequently during the summer, decide that leaving the house is more trouble that it is worth. I think I’m wrong about that. It would be good for me to get out. I think I’ve been out without children in tow only a couple of time since Summer began.

I did get out into the garden. I spent an hour out there. I pulled some little weeds, but mostly I lay on my back in the grass and stared at the shifting canopy of leaves above me. The sun was setting. It shafted light through the trees at an unaccustomed angle. There were beautiful patterns of light and shadow contrasted with the architectural strength of the trunk and branches. I wish for my camera while I lay there, but I was too lazy to go and get it. Then I wished that I had the skill to really catch the beauty I was seeing in a photograph, so it was just as well that I didn’t get the camera.