Today, I’m sharing with you the Reflections of My Life in April.  Let me start by prefacing my catalog of events by saying I didn’t fully commit to the A to Z blogfest until early March and for many of my 9-years that’s the way I did it.  I eventually figured out the best way to handle this challenge is to get everything done before April.  That makes the blogfest more relaxing and fun for me.   Unfortunately because I was slow to get onboard this year, I lost that luxury.

Two things I’d like to say about the A2Z host/hostess.  I totally appreciate the dedication each of you put into this shindig.  I’m happy that you picked out a great artist to fill Jeremy’s shoes.  I have to believe he smiled down on us last month.  An improvement to the master sign up this year giving me the option to tell other A2Zers my intent to only visit those who first visited me was an especially nice touch and it removed some of my stress.  I devised a pretty good system in recent years to reply to commenters before making each return visit and I figured I’d do the same process this year.  Unfortunately, things didn’t go as hoped.  

The first full week of the challenge I had two doctor appointments.  Although I had several posts scheduled, my time to spend responding and visiting suffered, not to mention working on my art.  I wasn’t going to sweat it,  I knew somehow everything would fall into place.

Fall into place?  Did I ever get that one wrong!  That’s when the junk began to happen toppling my house of sketches.  The commode fill valve broke.  Anxiety hit and an emergency trip to Home Depot to buy parts before we could fix it.  Home repairs always take longer than you think.  Plumbing is always a headache.  With the disaster resolved, stress was soon relieved.  Still there was something wrong.  DH said he’d been hearing running water and had hoped it was the commode fill valve that he was hearing but it wasn’t.  His worry was the water heater. Crisis not over yet!    

Our water heater is 22 years old. It’s done wonderful but old appliances can go at anytime with little to no warning.  My new mission was to find a replacement water heater.  In between research, I took time to destress by working on my Procreate recreations.  In my search, I found no one had the water heater that we wanted on display to look at.  We ordered online.  The expected delivery date was set for today or tomorrow.  We ordered the other necessary supplies needed to change out the old unit for the new.  A few things we couldn’t decide on, so we figured we had plenty of time to make a trip to Home Depot to buy those things before the heater arrived.  Guess what?  The heater delivered April 22nd.  That was DH off-Friday, so went on to Home Depot to get the remaining items for the DIY project.  We figured we could get the water heater replaced on Saturday and if needed we could finish up on Sunday.  That sounded reasonable.

Reasonable? Anything but reasonable is how it turned out.  We got everything out of our garage which holds everything except our car.  It contains all the overflow of stuff one accumulates over 43 years of marriage because our place is too small.  There we were with a pathway to the old water heater.  Now to figure out where the water leak was coming from, was it the heater or plumbing?  It was the plumbing and no we did not have the supplies to take care of that job.  With everything out of the garage now blocking our driveway, we could not go anyway to buy the parts and we knew by the time we got stuff back into place it would be too late to go out.  For some reason putting stuff back always takes longer than getting stuff out.  Why is that?  We were super exhausted and it was dark by the time we got indoors.  Needless to say, we knew tomorrow wouldn’t work to go to out being not only tired but sore.  

In addition to the incoming plumbing line leaking, we discovered the outdoor facet won’t shut off. Hopefully, it just needs the washer replaced.  With two plumbing problems to fix and too pooped to go out on Sunday, we figured out what we needed to buy online.  We were pleased to find everything saving a ton of time.  With this temporary behind me I was able to resume working on my art sketches.  

I worked diligently on my Procreate illustrations every free second that I had.  I was amazed how much detail I had in my early pencil sketches, especially consider how new I felt doodling.  Discounting my two years of high school art classes, I really consider myself a self-taught artist.  An average redesign takes between 1-3 days to finish but some pieces took more than a week.  My eye has grown more critical so when something doesn’t look right, then I have to fix it the best I can.  I did learn a lot as I dabbled with the various Procreate brushes to give each of my drawings the right feel needed and still I know there’s more room for improvement. 

A little more than half-way through the challenge I switched from referencing readers to the original pencil sketch post to using the WordPress image compare feature.  At a glance, you can see the difference between the then and now illustration.  I struggled doing my own thing so I figured others had to struggle, too.  There was no sense to force a reader to go back when this was an easy thing to do.  I probably will use this feature more in the future.

The last few days of the last week of the challenge, we had another crisis.  Our 26-year old upright freezer died.  That thing is stocked full, too.  The good thing is I now had all of my posts done but precious A2Z time to catch up with others was now being spent once more on something else.  I had to cram everything possible into the refrigerator freezer and the bottom of the refrigerator.  

I felt bad mostly for my faithful bloggy friends.  I am thankful for each of you who showed up frequently, sometimes daily to check out my newest sketch and leaving encouraging words.  I didn’t deserve it and yet you continued to be loyal.  Thank you! Thank you!  Mentally, I’m thinking “Okay, I can use the Road Trip to right the wrongs.”  But, I know I will eventually get side track like I’ve done in years past so I am not going to commit to doing that to myself but more importantly to you.  I figure, I will just do what I can when I can and look to learn from everything that went wrong and right in April.  I’m very happy that I managed to keep at this to the end with 26 fully colorized illustrations done which I can now cross off my art rework projects to-do list. 

The question hanging in the back of your mind might be, “Will you do this again next April?”  The probability of my involvement in 2023 is 99.9999% if the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise like my daddy might say. That’s an old southern saying in which I just learned what it means. 

One last time for the year, I’m heading over to the A2Z headquarters.  The challenge is through but you’ll find more artwork, great music, and casual musings on CAAC any time, so drop by any time.  A friend is always welcome!

Do you have a favorite?

1.   A Weeping Angel
2.   Weathered Barn
3.   Clearing the field
4.   Diddies
5.   Elk
6.   Picket Fence
7.   My Once Little Girls
8.   A Brown Horse with a Star Forehead
9.   As Sweet as an Iris Dancing Across a Breeze
10.   Jack and Jill
11.   Kanga and Roo
12.   A Beacon of Hope – The Lighthouse
13.   A Sunbathing Mermaid
14.   Nightingale Sings Her Song
15.   An Owl Snuggled in a Tree Ready for some Zzz
16.   Puppy Love
17.   The Evil Queen from Snow White
18.   Realistic Rabbit
19.   Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
20.   Treehouse
21.   Unicorn
22.   Victorian Woman
23.   Waves
24.   Xena Warrior Princess
25.   A Yawning Baby
26.   The African Plaines Home to This Pair of Zebra