February 5. Another Saturday morning watercolour class. It’s cloudy and warmer than yesterday though I don’t know what the temperature was in the morning. I do know that I am not feeling as spunky. I left for class a little earlier so I didn’t have to rush to get there on time. The streets were icy. I hit mostly green lights. We’re at the halfway mark at lesson 4. I was happy to hear that we were going to get a 2 week rest. The instructor was going on vacation – that is if things work out for her. I’m looking forward to a bit of a rest.

My painting of the little monk had a better reception from the instructor than me. She quite liked and praised it with none of the criticism of it that I did. We are indeed our own harsher critic. It does make me happy. It’s good to start the class of show and tell from each of us 5 students. We get to see each others’ efforts, the good and not so good. Our class today was on texture, how to make those marks – tree trunks, leaves, feathers, hair, etc. We had a practice on painting rocks and how the light hit them. Surprising how much pleasure I can get from a small exercise. I can’t say the same for mixing paint though. I heaved many a sigh over it but the exercise is invaluable.

It is now 5 pm. The temperature is-17℃ outside and -8.4℃ in the greenhouse. How fast the day goes. I did not ski today. It is good to have a day of rest, to let my body unwind.

February 6, 9:45 am – sunny, -14℃ outside, -11.5℃ in the greenhouse. It’s our sourdough pancake Sunday. Unfortunately or fortunately, we’re all out of bacon depending on how you look at it. At one time we were foolish enough to have bacon with our breakfast every morning for a whole year. I am sure we paid for it in one way or another – financially and health wise. Now we indulge only on Sundays until our supply from Farm 140 runs out. It ran out today. We got our pork in the fall. We are heading out there this afternoon for our beef supply. It will be a nice drive.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night but once I did, I got up only once. It works not to have my evening cuppa after 8 pm. Perhaps I should not take my calcium/magnesium till I’m going to bed. I kept falling asleep last night while watching the movie Munich, The Edge of War on Netflix. I enjoy movies on WW11. It’s a way of learning history. The movies show the worst and best of humans in those times.

It’s 3 pm. The sun’s disappeared pretty darn quick this morning. We’ve been out to Farm 140. We’ve had our ski. I can’t say it was pleasurable. It was work. We got to enjoy the set tracks in the park for only 3-4 days. Then it’s been snowing every few days. Today was one of those days. We had to reset the tracks ourselves. Not an easy task to dig them out under the blown snow. We hope to get the city groomer to come again soon. Meanwhile – we smile the while and ski the best we can.