I don't like Mondays (tell me why)

It's been a rough couple weeks around here, and it's not looking much brighter.  Mum & Dad are of the age where their friends are getting sick and some of them have recently passed away.

Last week my sister came up from Minnesota and we attended JTMM's funeral.  Over a thousand people attended, and my Dad was an honourary pallbearer.  It's all too unreal - Jim has always been there, and now suddenly, he's not.  I painted this large abstract landscape during this last week, and although I've titled it '103 Miles to Chicago' it sorta reminds me of the autumn mornings when Jim & Dad would go out hunting.

This morning brought more news from Mum - another life-long friend is in the hospital, along with a new friend who had a mild heart attack, and my favourite Auntie needs to have an angiogram.  (sigh)

 I'm heading off in two days to Minnesota to spend a week with my sister and her kids, and in the thick of things up here preparing for my trip I've gotten a whopper of a headache and have been kinda grumpy for the past couple days.  The snow on the ground today didn't help either!

But then, just as I was planning on grumbling some more, the lady at Staples re-did my botched print order for free, along with two extra pages!  And then the guy in front of me at Starbucks bought me my Chai - and apparently does this all the time - lucky for me I was behind him in line.  So although there is a lot of clouds lately, there is also a silver lining (every once in a while).