Not as calm as I look

The door to my studio is actually a dutch door, left over from the days when it was a daughter's bedroom and she needed to keep our dog out due to allergies.  I generally leave the upper half of the door open and the lower half shut -- again, to keep the dog out, as he has a way of parking himself underfoot and inhibiting movement.

Yesterday I had finished this painting except for glueing down the collaged bits, and had set it down on a table to stop the drips and let it dry.  I came back in the evening to discover one of our cats (who are not in any way restrained by the threat of a dutch door) had leapt onto the table -- presumably in pursuit of food -- and landed on the painting, dragging a claw-sized streak of white across its width and impelling the loose papers off into some never-never land of paint, paper, dropcloths, towels, etc. 

I did manage to repair the damage.  But you know (and I had had ample opportunity to discover this on Saturday as well, stuck in a hellish traffic jam in full sunlight in the city until well past suppertime with no food or water in the car) that you are not as serene and centered as you'd like to think you are when such relatively small provocation sends you into paroxysms of frustration.  And, in fact, you can kind of see from this painting that my life lately has perhaps been a bit busier than I might prefer.

So please -- don't ever get the sense that I am "holier than thou."  I've just lucked into a relatively serene environment so I have the luxury of spending lots of time relaxed and calm.  I figure my job is to share as much of that calm as I can; to spread the wealth around a bit -- and to be honest about the fact that it's circumstances more than temperament that allow me to be as generally tranquil as I appear to be...