Busy

painting, writing and cleaning. I’m usually rather lazy when it comes to housework, and many a year the end result has been frantic cleaning consuming most of Christmas eve, and then ending the day with a late meal and falling into bed, exhausted.

So I decided to try, for once, to get everything done at least a day or two before. So, cleaning. Very thorough cleaning, I’m also sorting out some of the clutter – books and magazines, mostly – and carting the ones I probably can’t get rid of by any other means to the paper recycling bin. Painful. Especially the books. But I have several which I just can’t get rid of, no used books store will buy them and I haven’t been able to sell the privately either – or give them away for free, I have tried – so yep, I guess I have no alternatives left but that bin. I simply don’t have the space to keep ones I will probably never again want to read, the limited space will have to be reserved for fiction which I like well enough for multiple reads, and nonfiction. I do have a very eclectic collection of the latter too, I like to have at least a bit of everything I might ever need for researching any subject I might possibly need to look at when writing so there are books about such things as poisons, historical weapons and armor, modern weapons and warfare, field medicine, plants you can eat, plants with medical uses, physics, chemistry, astronomy, ancient Egypt, folklore of different European nations, folklore of several non-European nations, geology, cryptozoology, different magical systems (ones actually in use now, plus historical ideas of magic)… okay, perhaps you are getting the idea. I buy what interests me, but I can also simply buy what I can find cheaply, especially if it’s about something I don’t know anything about. Or what I find amusing. Or weird. I love to read about all kinds of fringe theories, they can be hugely entertaining. And sometimes those books may ask good questions. The answers they came up with are mostly rubbish, but some of the questions seem actually to be valid.

Okay, some art next time. It will be weeks before I will be able to scan the first painting, but I will show some of the sketches I have been doing while planning the next ones.