Lazy weekend

I'm finished with all the Teen Summer Reading illustrations, and my first thought was an ambitious one: Go out all day on Sunday and paint en plein air, picking one of the locations I'm forever driving by, but stop, park, draw, and paint the way I am always longing to. In fact, there was actually an urban sketchers group I was planning to join in this endeavor this morning.

But...I'm tired this weekend. In addition to making the paintings, there has been the tension of coming up with the ideas and putting them together in my head, which always happens over a period of days of near-obsessing over all the details. I don't sleep well for thinking about it!

Plus, I've been working hard all week getting the other elements together for summer reading--deciding on and starting to buy the prizes, finding volunteers to stuff the "swag bags" for sign-up giveaways, soliciting the other library staff for donations of miscellaneous junk for our "makerspace" crafts, emailing the principals at the middle and high schools to beg for five minutes to promote teen summer reading at their assemblies, bugging the publicity department to print my posters...the details go on and on. And that's on top of all my "regular" librarian duties.

So, instead of leaping out of bed, gathering my kit, and jumping in the car, I made a strong cup of coffee and "the sandwich" for breakfast, which I enjoyed on the patio, after having sketched it in pencil (adding in a couple of ingredient elements for fun). And, after consuming it, I painted it.

"The sandwich" is what my cousin Kirsten calls it--with the accent on THE. Both of us are vegetarian, and one of the things many vegetarians seem to miss most is bacon. The "facon" (fake bacon) out there isn't the best substitute, but when you put it into a sandwich with all the other ingredients of a BLT, or, in this case, a BAC (bacon, avocado, and cheese), it does well enough. Add a little mayo and enclose between two slices of a good, slightly toasted sourdough, and you have yourself the perfect weekend breakfast.

So...this one's for Kirsten. I decided to draw in pencil today instead of pen, for a more natural look, and I included my book and glasses because those are always required elements with breakfast home alone. (Also, I have to finish this book for book club by Wednesday!) Kirsten, don't you wish you were biting into the real thing right now?

In case anyone is wondering, the full saying on my coffee mug is "Do Something Creative Every Day." Done!