Thank you, Julie :)
It feels good to be painting again!
I've been busy with other creative things, knitting woolen jumpers for instance.
But painting is different :)

I'm not sure I get the OP's question as it can be interpreted in plural ways.

As for Arab in their own country, I don't know as I don't live there.

As someone said, it varies per Arab country.
I remember watching a docu on Afghanistan shortly before the situation got bad again. I think this was in the 90s.
Women had gotten a lot of rights, could drive cars, go places, study, and so on.
I clearly recall as I was so happy about this!

I've had highly educated Arab women in my coaching classes. They had reasonable freedom, working in corporate etc. But they still had to fight the patriarchal unbalanced regime and society.

So I think level of education makes a difference for sure.

As for Arab women in my country...
Also depends where they're from.
What I have noticed is that many of them stick together. Maybe they're not allowed to go out alone.
When you then come across such a group in town, shopping centre, market place and so on they're not friendly at all.
Power in numbers, right, and they just barge into you, push you aside when it suits them, and so on.

So in that sense I do not have too high an opinion of them as I don't like such rude behaviour.
In spite of they themselves being oppressed at home they act towards us -in OUR country- as if we are less than they are.
And to be brutally honest, I effing hate that attitude.

Now I think these are more lower or not-educated women.
But those are the ones we get most of. The highly educated ones can lead a good life in their own country, no need to come here.

In short: there is no default. Too many factors at play.

You leave out that marriage as what we (and you) understand it to be is an invention of church and that church wasn't founded yet when Jesus was on Earth.

You also conveniently forget that Jesus DID have a wife: Mary Magdalene.
Both were highly educated Essenes of higher descend.
They were equals and she was part of his work as such. The then rising patriarchal shizzel changed that and she got demonised as that was easier for men to stomach.
According to church she was a wh*re, according to Jesus, his mother, the Essenes etc. she was his beloved equal.
Meaning that everyone who takes on church's view on Mary Magdalene doesn't follow Jesus' teachings at all. Yet they claim to be.

Another thing you leave out is that Adam had 2 wives. The first -Lilith- didn't want to be inferior to him as he demanded. Both were created simultaneously by the Divine, and were equal, just different genders. Because of his behaviour she left him. After which she was demonised by religions.
Then he was given a 2nd wive, Eve, and she was obedient and submissive.

I'm not sure how this story truly was construed & presented -in some scrolls prolly- as the whole Adam & Eve story and demonising of his 1st God-given wive is meant to convey that woman must be subservient or else!! (else you get demonised, cast out, not accepted and so on)

I've started painting again on Boxing Day!
I had found a painting from 2015 that was kinda finished, but not really. I didn't like the way it'd turned out. So it had been sitting somewhere upstairs for 9 years, I'd totally forgotten I had it!!

Finishing it properly did mean going back to oils as it was done in that. I haven't used oils in nearly 2 years, works entirely different.
So it's a bit of rediscovering it, haha.

***Colour differences (grass, sky etc.) between photos from 2015 and now are caused by different camera***

This is what it looked like before I started:




This is what it looks like now, I'm NOT finished yet.



This corner annoyed me the most. I just couldn't get the bit with greenery to come out right. The bushes ended up looking like a long stretched out green blob.
Now they have way more definition and much darker as they should be in that area.

THEN:



NOW:


You can see that I've also worked on the largest shed, AND the small one in the background is completely re-done as the perspective was all wrong.
The front shed will get rooftiles as well :)

Not done yet, but already happy with it!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Gia, sounds like a great dinner!
Happy Christmas!

If we would live from the heart instead of being driven by the (hurt and fearful) ego, an open relationship wouldn't mean sexercising as many as we could.
Not at all.
It only seems that way now because we're still expected to be monogamous, either by society or by ingrained norms & values or the partner.
Most are quite sexually oriented as opposed to 'love' oriented and then an open relationship automatically would mean 'lots of sex with different people'.

If we would live from the heart this would be different. I think many would choose to remain monogamous as they'd love their partner so much and their intimate life was good because of that. They wouldn't feel the need to stray.

It's human nature to want to go where we're told to not go. When we're being told "You can live in this house, but you're NOT allowed to go in the room with the blue door!! Not ever!"
Everyone wants to go there and find out what's in that room.
It's the same with not being allowed to have sex with others. It makes people curious what it'd be like.

Open relationship is only strange because we've been brainwashed by thousand of years of patriarchal society.
Our cell memory still holds pain and fear of what happened when you did't obey, especially women.
Men could stray, have mistresses and liaisons.
Women could not.
We would (and in still countries still get!!!) stoned for (allegedly) being intimate with another man...
Be dumped in the street, reputation ruined, forced into a nunnery, and so on and so forth.
While we had to live with the heartache of our husband straying whenever he wanted.

But that's all because we haven't lived in a society that was based on love.
Because of that our views & feelings concerning an open relationship and what that means are seriously skewed.

Thank you for bringing my thread up, JaanDoh!

I currently use acrylics, but have painted with oils for years. At first the turp version but I quickly switched to water-soluble oils.

This is the last one I have done this year, August, called "New Love"

That is a huge lump of money!! I would settle for a quartre of that, hihi.

Kitkat, hi!!
Sounds like you're preparing for a whole lot of people, hihi.
That is a lot to eat!
Do you make all that yourself or can you buy that over there?

Enjoy your Christmas, hope you have a lovely one!

Thank you so much, Jim!

Ace Ventura When Nature Calls was hilarious.

The Ugly Truth (rom com, but the absolute best out there!)

Nothing wrong with that. One year we did fries & snacks with the kids.
I'd decided I preferred spending time with my hubby & kids instead of being in the kitchen most of the day to prep things.
It turned out to be one of the best Christmases we ever had!

Merry Christmas, Cat!

Oh, that sounds grand! Enjoy it, Christi!
And Merry Christmas :)

You gotta treat yourself :)
Have a good Christmas, Motown!

Doesn't sound bad to me except for your starter, hihi.
Have a great Christmas Jim!

Hi Cathy

That sounds good and like a lot!
But I love the variety.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!

Thinking bout it... best would be a man you love, your own age...
And a younger man to satisfy you sexually.
That'd be brilliant!

Did you know that women need to have 9 orgasm in order to be fully satisfied?
All different ones, women get 9 different types of orgasms.
There are some men who can please a woman that way, usually when they've learnt how to hold their own horses so to speak with tantra and the like.
Then he can give a woman 9 different orgasms :)

As it is we have to make do with men of 40+ who can no longer properly get it up, and can barely give a woman 1 orgasm. And we need way more than 1 in order to be truly satisfied...

Sad but true.

In all honesty I prefer a man my age, maybe 4-5 years older.
But then the big but... many men of 40+ have problems when it comes to the intimate part.
That only gets worse as they age.

Meaning if you want to be certain you're going to get great passionate sex the way it should be, you need a younger man.
Someone in his 30s.
Problem is that I do not generally feel romantically attracted when there's such an age gap. Sex is one thing, falling in love, having a healthy decent love relationship is another.
Phases of life you're in etc. are too far apart.

What's for dinner on Christmas & Boxing Day?

I'm celebrating Christmas with my mum this year and food for dinner is slowly coming together.
We're going to have...

entree; salmon carpaccio

Main:
lambs rack
Hasselback potatoes
green asparagus with slice of bacon around it

Desert:
a sorbet, I think closest is a sundae (?): ice-cream with lots of fruit and lot of whipped cream on top.
I may get some strawberry sauce to add to it.

Can't wait!! Hihi.

Most Dutch people have raclette dinner. Lot of fun with a somewhat larger group. But because we'd done that for years on end I got fed up with it.
Plus all the greasy stuff indoors with my crystals and paintings...

What are you having?
Please don't tell me everyone is having turkey? Hihi.