Dogs and Art and Life

Hello folks! Happy Almost Mother's Day for those of you who are mothers and/or mentors of any kind.

As usual, Things have happened around here. Mr Pax has been under the weather. He was vomiting on and off for about two weeks. Every time we thought we had solved the problem, he'd start up again. Otherwise okay, cheerful and smiling and running playing, and then...vomiting. We did the bland diet, reintroduced things slowly, everything would be fine for one or two days, then bam, back to square one. He threw up a hairball (he's a very dedicated groomer and needs a haircut), and we thought maybe that was it, but no, after a day, back to square one. We took him to the vet after we ran out of ideas, and she gave him some anti-nausea pills and probiotics, and that seems to have done the trick, fingers crossed. He hasn't thrown up since we gave him the first pill, and he's about four days after the course of it and is still okay. She didn't think anything serious was happening. She said dogs can get into cycles where they vomit and irritate their stomach and then vomit because they're irritated, which irritates it further. Hopefully we're on the mend. She says if he starts again, we'll do bloodwork to look for Cushing or diabetes or liver stuff, but he seems okay now. Knock on wood.

It's been stressful, obviously. Mum and I have been on 24 hour nursing care handing off report to other another. I'm trying to get out of this burnout I'm in and be calm and indulge in self care, but sometimes you have to put that aside to look after someone else. I just want to climb out of this hole of exhaustion I'm in. I did have another breakthrough though, in that I got a pair of cheap bluetooth earbuds for myself, and I have been using music to help get through stuff my brain hates. Grocery shopping, chores, stuff like that. Giving myself dopamine while draining it to hopefully end up on an even keel. It's been helping a lot. But I am tired.

I took an online art course, just a quick five day portrait thing that was free from the YouTuber I was learning to draw from, Angel Ganev. It was super helpful, really breaking down everything into easy steps to follow. I redid my Pip portrait with his colouring method, and I'm very pleased with the results:


(click to make bigger)

I used the same sketch as the other version, and I think it's cool to have such different results from the same base. I've coloured other people's drawings for years for fun, but when I was trying to colour my own drawings, I just couldn't find a style I liked. This feels like I can build on it.

I'm still writing. I think I've solved the problem I was having where I felt like I didn't start in the right spot and didn't know how to adjust it without having to rearrange an already extremely complicated timeline. It'll still take work, but less so than if I had to start over again. And I've been reading. I got the first two Game Changers books (the ones Heated Rivalry is based on) from the library on my Kobo. I haven't seen the show, it's one of those things I see clips of on Instagram and go 'huh, that looks good, I'd probably enjoy that' and proceed to just never watch. But I enjoyed the books. The first one is okay. Very fanfictionesque, though I know it kind of sort of was Stucky fanfic to begin with (I had fun trying to guess which Marvel people all the characters were based on). The second is a marked improvement in every aspect of the storytelling. I've got the third one on hold, and am currently reading Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles which is cute so far. I thought it might be translated from Spanish, and just confirmed it is. It 'feels' translated, if that makes sense? Like, it's not quite written how it would be if it were in English first. Like you're getting told a story secondhand, maybe? Anyway, it's enjoyable. Kind of quiet and esoteric and thoughtful.

Hope all is well as it can be in your neck of the woods. Talk to you soon!