Van Gogh!

We have had a busy week!

On Friday I had a fall at work. One of the workmen left pipes across the office floor and I tripped over them and fell to the floor. Sigh. A few hours at the hospital waiting to see the doctor, just some swelling and muscle spasms. Forms were completed and signed, and prescriptions filled. I have been taking the medication and it seems to be working. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.

Earlier in the week Attila and I had purchased tickets to see the Van Gogh exhibit in Ottawa on Saturday. For us this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. We do not often spend money on entertainment, but this, we both agreed, was something we did not want to miss! There are no refunds, so even though I wasn’t feeling my best due to the fall… off we went to the gallery to see Van Gogh’s paintings! I took lots of meds and managed to enjoy myself. Well, really, I would have had to have been on death’s door not to enjoy standing in front of Van Gogh’s paintings. How wonderful!

Pictures of paintings are pleasant to look at, but to see the actual work is a different experience altogether. It was amazing to stand in the middle of one of the galleries, to turn slowly, viewing one original after another. My eyes were shown doors and windows into light and line and colour, doors and windows that I had not been aware were there, let alone closed. No two paintings dealt with subject matter in the same way. For instance, I could stand looking at the way trees were painted in one painting, turn slightly to another painting to see them treated in another way, turn slightly again to another painting to see them treated in yet another way… Every painting I viewed was a fresh and new delight.

One painting stood out for me:

Painting, Oil on Canvas
Arles, France: April, 1889
Private collection
France, Europe

The added bonus was that the National Gallery of Art was really helpful in assisting us with planning our lunch, we got to sit together and eat a leisurely lunch in the group lunch room. We left the cooler, in which we had packed our lunch, with the coat check when we arrived and picked it up at lunch time to eat our lunch, then took the cooler back to the car. Very simple.

The rest of the weekend was truly pleasant. When we arrived back, from the National Art Gallery, Terra and Lares were at our little house in the city, leaving a note for us. We had a nice little visit with them.

Lares brought our attention to a broken plate on the kitchen floor. Chippy! That is what I’ve named our unwelcome-housemate chipmunk. We are still battling to evict Chippy, so far with no success. We left for Ottawa right after breakfast that morning, and I guess Chippy wanted to lick the plate on the counter clean, lost his grip and dropped it on the floor.

After Terra and Lares had left we sprang into domestic actions. Attila cut the lawn, front and back, finishing just as it got dark.

I did the dishes and cleaned up the mess around the planter, left by Chippy who had been digging, and searched for the missing mouse trap. I had set a mouse trap in the living room and left it last weekend. There is no sign of the mousetrap anywhere! Finally I settled down to read for a while. I glanced up from my book to find Chippy on the chair opposite, watching me read!

I moved to get up and he was gone in an instant!

Time to do more research on how to evict chipmunks!

We had a lovely weekend and are both refreshed and ready for another work week!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

12 °C
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Pressure: 100.5 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 12.0°C
Dewpoint: 9.4°C
Humidity: 84 %
Wind: NW 11 km/h

Quote

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Vincent Van Gogh