Keeping Me Humble I gave thanks to my life today for keeping me down to earth and humble in case life ever offered enough praise for me to forget I'm merely human. Not that it's terribly likely I'll forget--it would take winning a major literary award, getting a big portrait commission and hearing a "don't you look hot tonight" comment on the same night to make me lose perspective on my "just a middle-aged mommy" status. Today was no exception. As soon as I returned from a meeting with Paul Fukui at Q Center to firm up plans for an art exhibition in December of my portraits of dykes from the eighties with an opening December 7th to include a reading from my book, and maybe facilitating a discussion with another writer later in the month, than I was stopping in at Rodda for a gallon of paint and then cleaning out the mold in the portapotty from the tent trailer, before getting it winterized tomorrow. I hadn't anticipated having another art show--it's been about eighteen years since I've shown portraits of people, and over a year since having paintings up around town of my dog portraits. The Q Center show arose after speaking to them about doing a reading, and then I mentioned the paintings (one at the top of this post), and then they struck Paul as being pertinent to the Q Center community. They are different than the majority of my work now; these days my models are always naked and walk on four legs, rather than the semi-dressed women I used to portray. But I like them. They are part of my history, and they are part of "our" history. Lesbian life in the eighties in Seattle. We were queer, we were here, and