Last life drawing class until fall or winter was tonight. The drawings I made tonight were considerably better than the ones I made a month ago. I am ashamed to admit that these classes are the only time I've been drawing at all: 2.5 hours a week. If I were to schedule time and subject matter to draw, no excuses, no having someone else schedule it out of existence, imagine the kind of improvement that could be made. Clearly this needs to be a priority, even if only in a small way. It is unlikely that I will be able to draw people in the nude between now and the next classes, however there is ample opportunity to draw hands and feet, which are surprisingly difficult to do justice to. I can draw my own extremities. Actually...I could draw the rest of myself too....nah. I know it is standard fare for artists to do nude self portraits but I am just not comfortable with that idea!

Went partway up the hiking trail today; had children along so kept it easy and truncated. We saw the Lomatium dissectums again, now mostly in seed, penstemons, larkspurs, the small yellow lomatiums, and a lot of ferns that appear to either be in a state of flowering or to have the haploid and diploid generations both present simultaneously. Ferns are sort of confusing that way. There were a lot of others...oh yeah- there was a plant I haven't seen before. If I make it up that far tomorrow, I'll key it out.

And...I found out that I was unexpectedly scheduled to work today, after I was late to the work I didn't know I had. I just had a talk with her a week and a half ago about not being able to work on Mondays because of trauma therapy, and she said OK, and that this would result in my working fewer days and hours. Perhaps I am a wuss, but I do not want to come directly to work right after going over that kind of stuff. For one thing, I need time to process and integrate what we went over in therapy in order to make the most of that time and really benefit from it. If I wait until later, I will have forgotten a lot of it by then. Secondly and more importantly, I don't want to rush to work without a minute to spare, still feeling vulnerable, freshly reminded of painful things, with my soul feeling raw, tender and sometimes aching. I've already been having anxiety at work, having days when it is all I can do to fight the tears back and to get through the day...but I haven't left early because of it. Coming to work right after therapy is where I draw the line. Were it a few hours afterwards, I would be OK with it, but that is not the case. Frankly, this job is beginning to cost more in gas and stress than it is worth to me, particularly at 8 hours per week. It is a dishwashing job and I cannot cope. What does that say about me? What can I do instead that would be more compatible with my schedule, abilities, children, etc?