Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Lately, I haven't been posting as much as I want to. My excuses are:

I have to finish preparing my Canadian income tax forms and have them in the mail before the end of April. For me, this is torture.

We've been experiencing a bit of a heat wave the last couple of weeks. Today the high was 92.1F. The nights and mornings are always wonderfully cool (below 70F) so we aim to do chores before 11:00am or so. This could include having the laundry done and on the line to dry, going into Atenas for groceries, cleaning the house and so on. The rest of the day, for me, will be spent lolling in my hammock doing the New York Times Sunday crosswords, watering my orchids, thinking of a cold meal to prepare for dinner ... sounds so lazy but I love the life.

We've been doing a fair bit of pet and house sitting lately and all the properties have had a pool so I can include swimming several times a day as a cooling exercise.

Good news, art wise. Our Atenas Painters Association is presently in the planning stages for our second annual art show to be held August 26th, 27th and 28th at Colinas del Sol, where we held our very first and successful art show two years ago.

I will have four large paintings on display (one pig, one goat, one Brahma, one young Hereford cow) and two smaller oxen paintings. Also hope to do a horse painting.

Look at this:

Our dear neighbor Sharon gave this to me this morning. It's a hand carved cow head made by a Costa Rica artist. I just love it. We're going to be house and dog sitting for Sharon starting this weekend (the famous Diogi Border Collie).

Our lives here are very rich.