Janet Member since October 2005 Yahoo ID: opheliabummps Location: Maine Personal website: N/A Contact email: KRay690387@aol.com Ummm, where to start, where to start.... birth? I don't think so..... Ok, I got it! (Press the PLAY button, now...) As a little girl, I saw my mother drawing at the kitchen table. She was good, and I wanted someday to be as good as she. I think that was the moment I decided that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. Fast-Forward to art school, the first time. No, art school, the second time! I was a two-time college dropout: the first time to get married and move out west, the second to come back east and have my first child. Three children and a divorce later, there was factory work, and part time college -- again. However, in my early thirties I took it all much more seriously than in my teens, and had more self confidence. Maturity happens, hopefully. It took me five years going to a community college to get a two year degree, but I did it! Then I jumped right into a bachelor's degree program at the local university, and took another four years to finish that up, taking art courses again at last. Art school, the third time!!! HA! Third time's the charm, right? Janet the painting major, sounded good! Finally finishing college was one of the best things I've done in life (next to the kids, of course!) and it's a solid feeling that will never leave me. Fast forward to -- what, Maine? My guy and I moved to Maine ten years ago, and I adore it. We've an old farmhouse (Needs work! Want to come help? There's a lobstah in it for you, Ayuh!) and my gardens are spread out all over the yard, all around the house. There's never enough room for all the new flowers I seem to come by each year. The cry each spring is "I need more garden space!" And then, "I need more plants!" It never ends... thank goodness. I guess this brings us up to the present, doesn't it? And the present involves revisiting the past. (Rewind a bit, back to the part about wanting to be an artist, and the art school scenes.) I have found an old new love: not so much painting, but sculpting! The polymer clays and air dry clays currently on the market are delightfully responsive -- and I am so ON FIRE about doing figurative work with them! My farmhouse is getting populated with tiny new 'people' now, and I have so many ideas! I'm loving it... and I love my life. STOP. Be Kind, Rewind. Janet