Friday was meshugg.

The three paintings that I drove down to a Columbus gallery on Wednesday for a show called BE SQUARE in October got this in my email... (I gave them to a friend to drop off to her when she opened on Thursday.)

>Jon,
Franco dropped them off yesterday. He is such a sweetie! Boy, I am just
not sure about them and how they fit into the theme of the gallery. I want
to wait until everything comes in to decide and order the frames. I had
hoped for your aspen trees to be honest.<

Me again... I did the three barn windows because the format was so small. She wants tiny canvases, which rules out the tree paintings. Just too difficult to do trees and limbs with teeny tiny brushes for a 70 year old painter who must use his left hand now.

So, Soon as she rules on whether my three get in the show or not, I will probably frame them and put them out for sale. I am sure they will sell.

My eye infection is back. I had a bad bout of this last winter, if you recall and treated it after an MRI showed a kind of Staph in my eye socket and that the drain in my left eye is blocked. Only surgery would unblock it and that is chancy. I need both eyes as an artist, so I went on Augmentin and knocked out the infection.

It is back. I think it was a bug bite on the eyelid that started it.I used Neosporin and kept it under control until I could get the prescription refilled.

Augmentin does crazy things to you. It is probably the strongest antibiotic,but it does the job. It is a combo of Clavamox and Amoxycillin.
This time it is giving me the "itchies."My entire skin surface feels like I have ants crawling on it. UGH.

Last time it caused awful intestinal difficulties that are unmentionable.

And, yesterday afternoon I stepped on Rinpoche's tail coming down the stairs from the studio. I fell sideways trying to avoid crushing it and smacked my left elbow into the sharp corner where the vertical stairwell wall meets the first floor ceiling. OUCH!

In about an hour it had swelled and I could barely bend my arm. The bruising was almost immediate. BTW: Rinny is just fine.

I decided to have it checked. I drove with one arm to Urgent Care. They do not do X-rays, so I skipped them and went to the hospital ER.

Five hours later (X-rays, etc.) I came home with the news that no bones were broken. I have a serious contusion and bone bruise. But my arm is near useless, even today. It is bent right now so I can type but it is still painful. I can't paint (I have to paint left-handed since the onset of my right hand tremors last decade.)

Can't take Percodan for it because of the Augmentin. That really sucks.

It got hot again this week. yesterday it was 100. Today about 95 or 96. The last gasp of summer, the hottest summer on record here. By Monday it will top out at 70 degrees F. Whoopee! Time to go shop for Roma tomatoes so I can make my canned sauces.

Elbow permitting, of course.

I think when I heal I will start looking for my next wife. She will have to be a Registered Nurse who likes cats, single malt Scotch and whining.