Qualities of Your Significant Other

As the deadline for this week's challenge neared, I was really nervous, mainly because I do not have a significant other. I was creatively thinking I would do it for the qualities I hoped to find in my SO, and then something magical happened - I reconnected with a friend from more than 38 years ago, and we are dating.

I've been divorced for 15 years and have not really dated. I've been super busy raising my four kids and working. Nine years ago, I made a list of the qualities my perfect mate would have:

• Available
• Attractive
• Accepting
• Seamless Union with Me
• Honest
• Emotionally and Intellectually Intelligent
• Funny
• Fully Self-Expressed
• Passionate, Slow and Observant
• Connected to me, and others
• Open to Learning 
• Generous
• Patient and Loving
• Forgiving
• Immense Amounts of Integrity

No small order, right? Between January 3rd, when I contacted this old friend on Facebook, just to say hi, and middle of last week, I went from zero to girlfriend.

We are taking it slow, and when I found this list and read through it, I realized he meets EVERY SINGLE QUALITY I want in a mate.

This weekend, I was at a workshop at SCRAP in San Francisco doing recycled glass collages with Reddy Leib. It works this way: make a paper collage, sandwich it between two pieces of used glass, solder around it to secure and adorn it with more small pieces. SCRAP's resources of all kinds of cool buttons, paper, and other objects make it fun to go find things to then use in your art.

I made this piece to honor this new relationship. The one quality I was concerned about was a feeling of having a wee bit of a wall up. That's actually a pretty normal thing in a new relationship so I was working within myself to not sweat this too much. 

Vac Tube Symbolizes "Him"

I picked the vacuum tube from one of the bins to represent my SO in the collage. He's very techh-y and works with electronics so this was the perfect piece to symbolize him, but the glass around him bothered me. I want to see inside him and not have that barrier there.

As we were working, I turned around and the tube fell to the floor without me realizing it. I stepped on it and broke the glass. When I picked up the tube, I realized that the barrier can come off and I needn't worry about that with my SO. It will happen in time. And when it does, there is so much fun juicy stuff in there that will be revealed.

Here's the piece, still needing the final soldering together.

Mended Hearts - Happy Valentine's Day Terry xo