Yesterday, I crossed the threshold and turned fifty. It was a peaceful day...and perfect to my thinking with cards made by the home team, some funny and useful presents and not a big deal. Phew! That is exactly what I wanted. Onward with the next half century. Onward with the visual midlife crisis.

R.gave me two ceramic rabbits painted in blue with slightly different patterns and solids. Each rabbit was the same form with hand painted, almost majolica style painting (all the same blue). They are great...and R's idea is that I get some plates (when things have evolved) and I do some hand painting on the mommy style "paint your own" style china...creating some plates (I am thinking platters) that use the Memento Mori imagery as the starting place. Picasso did a ton of this...why not me? Mommy Mori?

Today is day one of the next Memento Mori book. I closed out the illustrations and are in the process of tweaking the layout and copy--and hope to finish it up with that today.

More later>>