I have gained a huge amount of respect for nursing. What, you may ask does nursing have to do with art? This is an art blog you know. Well, my dad is an artist and a nurse. Since my time spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (8hrs a day for two weeks) I have been thinking a lot about the links between health care and art. I have a lighting fast reaction to anyone who finds themselves in pain, the reaction is to quickly pass out. For this reason I have had to forgo my career in medicine. At times an artist will be fooled into thinking that they are doing something noble by making art, but spend any amount of time in a hospital, around nurses, and you will become quickly humbled. Our Hospital has some of the worst art around, prints of ballerinas with gel slathered around to make it look like paint. The art is easy to overlook because the staff is just so unbelievable.

Have you ever been to the NICU? If your baby weighs 3 pounds and is cut out of her mommas belly two months before her due date, then you too will visit the NICU. What can you expect? Lots of bells going off, telling nurses who is breathing and who is not. Plexiglas cases sometimes called cages but only by mistake. Quiet mothers and sometimes fathers who always give you a sideways smile as if to say "you too ah". You will sometimes see a doctor, sometimes social workers and always nurses. By the time we leave I'll bet we could run the place, or at least our part of it at home in her own bed next to ours.

Thursday morning Shannon called me at work and said that the doctors were inducing labor. It would take twenty four hours for the baby to be born but I should come up to the hospital. One and a half hours later I had a baby girl. What a ride!

I have been longing for a cultural night on the town. I missed Pavarotti, never saw him in concert, my chance is gone. Still there are great things to be seen in the country.I saw a huge bear walk down the driveway while shipping packages at work. Turkey's drop by all the time, and my chickens I see everyday. I just planted a perennial garden and can watch it grow unhindered by city smog. I have always been torn between the urban life and the country. Which do I really prefer teriyaki chicken or peeing off my front porch? Lately I have been missing the chicken, sold on every corner in Seattle. I was considering going to Art Basil in Miami this year but because Maisy will be born in November and it is held in December I think I will wait until the next one. In the meantime surfing the Net and my De Kooning book will have to get me by.