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Check out my second journal: https://www.blipfoto.com/ArtistAnnAI

September 2020

I started on Blip on January 10, 2010. For quite a few years I blipped nearly every day. Now I am being more relaxed about taking a daily photo. I also have done quite a bit of back blipping so that I could look at my lifetime before I joined Blipfoto. I got back as far as 2005 and have more to do when I get some time and am in the mood.

In the beginning my journal was more about my photographs and less about my life. I took many photos of the beautiful Pacific Northwestern part of the US where I live and of the birds and animals that live here.

In 2013 my life changed and I became a caregiver. My husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we faced that life together. While I was caring for Arvin my journal became the story of our journey together as he slowly lost himself to Alzheimer's.

Move forward to 2017 - filled with more than a human being should experience in one year...

January - I planned to travel to Belize and to place Arvin at Silverado as I could no longer care for him at home. Before I left I got a detached retina. I was still able to go and Arvin settled in uncomfortably while I was gone. His daughter Helena and I visited him regularly after I returned.

February - I signed up with Overseas Adventure Travel for two back-to-back trips to Africa in the summer of 2018. Because it was so far ahead I was able to reserve a solo spot at no extra charge.

May - After Arvin realized he wasn't coming home, he moved quickly down the Alzheimer's slide. He passed away on May 14th. We had a small, beautiful ceremony of green burial a week later.

June - We had a celebration of life for Arvin. His daughters lost their mother, Arvin's first wife, exactly one month after he died.

August - I downsized and moved from a 3000 square foot house into a 1350 square foot house-like condo. This was a huge endeavor choosing what to keep and what to let go in a home we had lived in for 27 years.

November - I went to Paris with my good friend Helen to celebrate the nomination of her daughter's wife's book in the Paris Photo Exhibition. Four artist ladies and four young women spent a week together and it was a blast.

December - I had signed up for a group from the college to travel by bus to Seattle to hear the symphony. A man sat next to me and we began to talk. By the end of the trip I was enchanted. This was the last thing I had on my mind at the end of this very taxing year. Lucky for me the attraction was mutual and we are now a couple. I moved to a condo in his complex in April of 2019. We are right across the driveway from each other and it is wonderful being so close while each having our own space.

Who knew 2020 would be such a strange and dangerous year. Shelly and I traveled in February and March to Florida and New York City. We flew home on the 14th a week after the first cases of COVID-19 showed up in NYC. When we got home we self quarantined and we've stayed home since. We are so lucky we live so close and have been able to go through this time together. It's also an election year here and our disgusting president has been doing everything he could to scare and shame everyone into voting for him. Meanwhile our country is doing the worst of any during the pandemic. I've been keeping an art journal since April 5, 2020 to document these strange and terrible times.

I call myself ArtistAnnie because I am an artist and show my work in the city where I live. I paint in oils and really enjoy making a blank canvas become a new world. You can see my paintings and my journal at http://www.annchaikin.com/.