The Cooper Conundrum and This Week's Diva Challenge

Bid'ness first. Here is my Diva Challenge for this week. The challenge was to use the tangle 'Henna Drum' by Jane MacKugler.  You can see the basic tangle here.  I usually don't like my work while I'm doing it or right after I'm doing it. I will go through old pieces later and think 'Hey, I kinda like that', but that's after my knowledge of the mistakes and things that didn't go like I thought they would have faded. This one I actually liked while I was doing it!

I'm not sure why my camera makes my backgrounds have a bluish tint. This design is much more striking on the white paper it's drawn on.  Oh well. Last week was a pretty stressful week, it was nice to sit down with this and relax. Once again. The Diva ROCKS!

Exciting news! Tonight I am meeting with some Madison Zentanglers in what I hope will become a regular monthly group. One of the artists will be Diane Knauff from Stone Art Angels, who I was lucky enough to have as a teacher when I attended the Zentangle retreat in Mineral Point last fall. If anyone in the Madison area is interested in attending, comment me and I will send you location and time. The more the merrier! This technique really is relaxing and has enriched my life tremendously. You don't have to be any kind of artist to do this. I've proven that! It's just repetitive pen strokes for meditation and relaxation. You don't have to show a soul your finished product if you don't want...just reap the benefits of the Zen, baby!

In Cooper news, as he grows, we are finding out more about him. We suspect he is part porcupine and part flying squirrel because of his penchant for surprise acupuncture and hang-gliding, even though the vet insists he's just a Maine Coon cat. He apparently has acid flashbacks of some kind because one second he's calm, cool and collected, and the next he's completely wigged out and bouncing off the walls all wide-eyed, and Halloween-kitty like. He has some kind of a gravity-related super power.  One minute he's defying it by flying through the air with the greatest of ease, and the next minute he apparently uses it to increase his 3# weight ten-fold as evidenced by the herd-of-rhinos clatter he makes when he runs from one end of the house to the other over and over and over. And over. And over.

This weekend we had a family meeting to discuss the fact that one of us is consistently knocking over the recycling basket for no apparently reason.  We narrowed it down to Cooper who was remarkably un-remorseful, unrepentant, and since being id'-ed , hasn't modified that particular behavior one bit. Lord knows what he has against being eco-friendly. And the piece de resistance was when we discovered last night where all the missing objects (a sock, Kleenex, pens, a book mark, a recipe card, a gum eraser, post it notes. etc.) have been going lately. Apparently we can add 'pack-rat' to the number of species that make up our dear boy.  He had a little nest of objects he's pickpocketed in a den he's created under the bed. Some of them are bigger than he is! No wonder he rushes out and attacks any toes that come near the bed. He's protecting his hard-earned stash. 

Sigh. I'm just glad we adopted him and brought him into our family since he is apparently incapable of being a normal, contributing member of  regular society. He fits right in at our house. I saw a tee shirt the other day that said 'We don't hide the crazy in our family.  We give them an ice tea and set them out on the porch to mingle.' I swear it had Cooper's picture on it!