(sometimes) sadness

https://www.wikiart.org/en/pierre-auguste-renoir/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir

For the month of April I read one of my local libraries art books about Pierre Auguste Renoir. To be honest his artwork - paintings throughout the book as well as descriptions of such paintings caught my attention more than the first half of the book about his life. His art is stunning and so realistic I felt like I was looking at paintings. Again, he's another artist I haven't heard of before. So this was a nice treat to learn of him and see his paintings. HIs work felt familiar but I'm not sure why, maybe it's similar to other art I have seen over the years at different art museums.

Pierre Auguste Renoir was born February 25th 1841. He lived to be 78, passing away in 1919. Which I feel was pretty good for those times. He practiced in impressionism. A-lot of his art has beautiful woman and children in them. Truly some lifelike works. With his art he uses a fine range of colors in some paintings and others he uses few - which I think takes a certain amount of talent and skill. I find it interesting that a few of his children grew up to be well known film makers and in related films. And in later years his grandson became a famous artist.

Have any of you heard of Pierre Auguste Renoir?

Again I've taken some days away from getting on my laptop. Sometimes it is just difficult to get up and turn it on and get away from my comfy couch. But in the last week there has been some good news and some not so good news. I'm starting to feel this is normal anymore. For awhile things were really looking up and nothing too bad could happen but I know bliss never happens forever. And that's okay. I guess it makes me appreciate when good things do happen and come around. I'll be checking my reading page this morning, I hope you all have been doing as well as you can be.

So the good news is work has picked back up again. We've been getting more patients and my coworkers and I have been able to stay all day. Finally it feels like it's gotten back to normal. A scare just enough I think to make us appreciate us for job - the other day - Wednesday I think it was we were talking about it. Just at how comfortable it is to work there and how bad some of our past jobs have been.

Animal crossing has been a nice distraction. So far my island has seven villagers. Anicotti, Bam, Bertha, Lucy, Mira, Moe and Shep. The Able sisters shop, Timmy and Tommy's store has expanded. I have the campsite now. I'm working on getting my star rating up. Currently I have one star :-p But I'll get there. After Mike moves in we'll get the online membership together and if any of you would like to come to my island we can do that. I still need to get all of the fruit trees. So far I have oranges and peaches. And my island already produces pears. I had to look up the list of villagers just now and there are sooo many: https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Villager_list_(New_Horizons)

I finally got all my stamps sorted into albums. This means my extra stamps to trade and my current collection! I'll be posting photos to my stamp groups on FB and see if anyone is interested in trading. I have quite a few extras I would love to get rid of. :)

The bad news: My mom's health has taken more of a drive again. I won't go into much detail but it's been painful to see. She dose have an appointment to get a scope done later in the month and I'll be taking her to that. But lately it's gotten to the point where I often wonder how happy she is.. getting older and having all these health problems - yesterday on the ride home from the library she had trouble taking because of her dentures and she got so upset with herself. :( My dad's health has been much better in a sense but I worry about him at times as well.

I am somewhat stressed about the trade war happening and the state of things here in the U.S. as well as worldwide. There isn't much I can control or do to change things other than change things in my own life and circle. But again - I'm trying not to let the stress and worry get to me. I had a feeling things would get bad but this is a new level that some days can still be hard to get a handle on. I haven't been to stores yet since the tariffs have gone into effect.

Somewhat good/bad news: The Ohio libraries had one heck of time this past week (honestly for a bit longer at my local library due to budget cuts already) due to fundraising being cut with a vote that happened yesterday. Luckily the vote didn't cut funds completely but there will be some cuts - we found out last night at our pot luck that next the vote goes to the senate and then we will see what we can do from here. But currently it looks like this issue will come up every year - two years and it'll have to be voted on. Before all of this happened we had the option of sending out emails to our local representatives and house speakers - which so many people did! I think more than they expected which is why their original cuts to funding didn't happen. Originally it was going to reduce the funding by $100 million. One important fact I learned from all this is that every dollar spent by Ohio libraries Ohioans receive $5 in economic value. So within the next few weeks we should be learning how we can continue this fight.