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Saturday, December 17, 2011

Therapy in a Can

Good morning faithful people who still check this page after a five month hiatus! After busyness, two computer break downs, and simply having nothing to say it's good to be back!

Today's story starts at lunch hour a month ago, when, after eating, my friends and I went to wander around Coles because we simply had nothing else to do. While perusing through my favourite aisles, my friend Judy came up to me greatly excited; she had found something amazing. Grabbing my hand and dragging me to the non-book part of the bookstore which I usually skip, she showed me what all the fuss was about:

DoodleArt.

For those of you who were not alive in the seventies, this probably means nothing. DoodleArt was a fad back in the day. You would buy a poster, usually quite detailed in content, and colour it in. It's like a colouring book for adults that you hang on your wall after.

Judes, who was by this point jumping up and down in her excitement, explained we could get together and have a colouring party at her house. The fever caught, and the two of us began debating which poster we wanted. Would sea creatures be more interesting than bugs and birds? Would butterflies look better on the wall than sea creatures? Finally, we settled on fairy tales, because it was interesting, had variety, and would look cool on the wall. With a special promotion for surprise discounts if you spent $30 or more, we pooled our bookstore finds and made the impulse buy, and on the walk back to the office, it was decided; one colouring date would not suffice to do our poster justice. Friday lunch hours would now be devoted to this craft.

The next Friday, Judes, Candy, Maddy and I all packed a lunch, and after checking schedules and realizing which board room would be available over the lunch hour, we set up over the empty table, claimed dibs on our favourite elements, and got to work.

As our poster making has become a regular thing on Fridays in some lonely boardroom, we met with mixed responses to our project; those who think it's strange and childish, those who think it's a wonderful idea because they did DoodleArt in the seventies, and those who just like to stop by our lonely little board room and make witty comments. Our favourite is still the partner who announced he expected it down by the end of the day. We've also discovered after an entire lunch hour is spent on a peacock's tail or a handful of dragon scales that our perfectionism is going to make this project take the whole year, or maybe last till our retirement, but we are more committed to our DoodleArt than ever, and here's why:

Colouring is actually a wonderful destresser.

Yesterday morning, I was feeling overwhelmed and cranky. I'd been working longer hours than usual and my head was feeling fuzzy. I was tired, starving, and ready for the weekend. Judes was slightly worse. We pulled out the poster and continued our work on dragon scales and peacock feathers. Suddenly, we both just felt so much better. We didn't even remember what we had to complain about, life was just better with a little bit of colouring.

To check out DoodleArt, click here.