The beautiful room is empty.
Current Photo Friday theme: Thirds. The challenge was to shoot a photo using the “rule of thirds.”
“Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off!”
A valiant warrior quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The squirrel remained in the tree.
Sending a greeting on the smoke of Nag Champa incense to the Full Buck Moon tonight. Gifts, from upper left clockwise: a carnelian heart, natural black tourmaline in a quartz crystal sphere with a long piece of kyanite in front of it, a moonstone heart, a blue moon made of glass, a tiny wand of black tourmaline, incense, and along the bottom cradling it all, tiny flowers from our crape myrtle.
…that I finished her today (two days of coloring). I had a lot of downtime between taking care of business kind of stuff and mostly stayed far away from news and social media.
Nicole wants you to know that tomorrow, Thursday, is the Full Moon.
Here it is, my new and small friend.
This electric sharpener is hardcore. I don’t know what its lifespan is, but it’s adding more enjoyment to my coloring life since its arrival.
Notice the dull and broken points on many of these pencils before Afmat came to stay. (I say that mimicking the duck on the Aflack commercial, btw.)
Here’s a lovely after-Afmat shot, and it took SO LITTLE TIME to get this full case sharpened. That’s 274 fresh points. Notice the short pencils on the bottom of these two sections lacking sharp points. They’re too short to make it all the way down the chamber to the blades. I never get rid of pencils until they’re worn down to nubs, and my tiny hand-turned sharpeners can handle these until they’re depleted.
Even if you don’t color, you must have jobs of your own that benefit from the right tools and supplies. And full disclosure: coloring and rereading Kimberly Frost’s Southern Witch series is keeping me going these days. I’m on the third book now.
Since we’re talking witches…my next coloring project will be this lovely woman. In honor of Frost’s badass Texas witch Tammy Jo, she’ll have fiery red hair. I know a couple of red-haired Texans–in life and in my fiction. Maybe I’ll use one of their names for her.
Coloring page from Kaleidoscope’s Coloring Unicorns And More box set.
From Zen Color’s Super Flora coloring book, this is one of the pages I mentioned coloring last week.
Today, I was thinking again about MFW Gina’s advice to “Ground Yourself in Reality (Literally—Go Outside!).” I’ve been overdue to tend to Aaron’s Garden for quite a while. The heat keeps me indoors more than it should, and it’s certainly hot out there today. But this is July in Texas. It won’t be getting any cooler in Houston until… October, maybe?
Despite the heat, it does relax me to clean the entryway to Houndstooth and make sure the plants are pruned and watered, the vines aren’t taking over, and the lizards’ pool is available for them to drink or cool off. As I worked, I thought how grateful I am for all the years we had Aaron in the world with us and how much joy he brought. The tragedies in the Texas Hill Country have left a lot of families, friends, and communities grieving. There will be many stories shared as people remember and mourn. I hope they’re met with patience, kindness, and quiet support by those who hear them. The listeners for our memories matter so much always, and most particularly after a tragic and unexpected loss.
Saturday was back to business as usual. It IS a holiday weekend, mandating another trip to the ER for someone.
Jack looking moody and downtrodden. He’ll be fine. He had a bad day.
To cope with Jack’s misadventure, Anime chose her upside down dog yoga pose.
Delta refusing to look at the camera. (Nobody photographed her routine vet visit a couple of weeks ago. She feels wronged.)
Eva minding everybody else’s business, a job she does so well you’d think she’s being paid.
Current Photo Friday theme: Sharp.
For drawing, sketching, and coloring, these are maybe a third of my colored pencils. Keeping them all sharp is an ongoing task. I have two electric pencil sharpeners–both old and exhausted (somewhat like me), and at least a dozen little pencil sharpeners split between my pencil cases and other pencil containers. I just ordered a new electric sharpener, hoping it will help keep sharp pencils at the ready.
From July 3: Space reserved for an entry I’m too tired to write on Thursday as bedtime looms. I’m taking the stuff I need from the writing sanctuary to the home office, getting on the daybed with one of my current reads, and waiting for Pollock to join my slumber party.
Stay tuned.
–Continued writing the post on July 4–
I’ve never in my lifetime been more saddened by my country, and I’ve lived through some stuff–Vietnam, assassinations and assassination attempts, race riots, conventions that ended in violence, Kent State, a disgraced president who resigned, wars we’ve waged in the Middle East, homegrown terrorists, school shootings, Three Mile Island, the AIDS pandemic, September 11, scandals in churches, sports, politics, show business–but somehow, even when I disagreed with a president or Congress or the Supreme Court or governors, I always believed we’d eventually find the best in ourselves–because there IS SO MUCH MORE BEST THAN WORST. The worst is just noisier, demanding attention like toddlers, frustrated by not getting their way, as toddlers can be. Being a toddler is meant to be a phase, not a lifetime vocation.
The outrage in my heart and mind yesterday… When people smile for photo ops after stripping away medical care for the poor, children, and elderly, and FOOD for children and their families–all to satisfy one man’s ego and make wealthy people wealthier, what have we become? The cruelty, hubris, posturing, and hate felt so overwhelming to me.
I did a lot of deep breathing. I did a lot of reflecting on the advice of one of my “resistance” mentors, My Favorite Witch, Gina (the reason I don’t link to her is that she hasn’t asked to be associated with me, and I’m no shining testament to her philosophy, her humor, her helpfulness, but if you want her info, ask me and I’ll email her links to you):
Three Tangible Ways to Rebel Softly (Starting Today)
1. Call One Thing by Its Real Name — Pick just one thing—big or small—that everyone around you seems to be glossing over, and name it out loud. You don’t have to post a manifesto on Facebook (unless you want to!). Maybe it’s telling your partner, “Hey, the news is making me anxious today, and I just want to be honest about that.” Or maybe it’s writing the truth in your journal: “This isn’t normal, and I feel it in my bones.” There is real power in naming what’s true.
2. Ground Yourself in Reality (Literally—Go Outside!) — When the world feels surreal, get out of your head and into your body. Step outside, barefoot if you can, and let your feet touch the earth. Dig in your garden, water a plant, or just sit with the sun on your face for five minutes. This isn’t just woo-woo—it actually resets your nervous system and reminds you what’s real.
3. Create a softness ritual. Choose one small thing today that brings you back to yourself—something comforting, intentional, and gentle. Light a candle and breathe for three deep counts. Make a cup of tea and really taste it. Write down three things that are actually true for you today, even if nobody else sees them. Soft rituals are tiny acts of rebellion in a world that wants you to go numb.
Among other things, I surrounded myself with soft ritual possibilities.
I still plan to rewatch Almost Famous and start rewatching “Absolutely Fabulous,” but not today. I have my next coloring page chosen, but no coloring today. I had another Beach Boy collection to listen to for a while, but my mind couldn’t settle down. There’s a book I downloaded on my iPad, nonfiction, that’s very good, but I knew I didn’t have the focus for it today.
I did finally begin delving into a book Debby gave me at Christmas: The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies, but this is what happened with my brain: anxiety and unease at work. We need to look more to nature for ways to maintain good health. Not to replace medicine, which I still trust more than the self-annointed experts who will…no. Don’t go there. But maybe for some of those who’re losing their healthcare benefits, these ideas might help. Of course, books are expensive, herbs and how to grow and care for them and what they’re good for need to be balanced with each other and with everyone’s particular needs and health challenges, but there is the Internet–and all that’s expensive, too, and maybe out of reach of the very people who need them. But we still have public libraries for consulting books and being more informed, and anyone can go in for free, be out of the weather, and make use of that for no charge… At least for now, because that’s on their agenda, too, taking away learning resources that are available to anyone, at no charge. After all, an ignorant population is on their GOALS LIST, as anyone paying attention instead of playing ostrich (“if I don’t see it, hear it, acknowledge it, it isn’t real”) can conclude. For all I know, our future library shelves will contain only one continuing series called “MY BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL,” “MY BIG BEAUTIFUL NUCLEAR WAR,” “MY BIG BEAUTIFUL REWRITE OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE,” “MY BIG BEAUTIFUL PRISON SYSTEMS FOR ISOLATING AND EXPLOITING ANYONE WHO DISAGREED WITH ME, INSULTED ME, OR DIDN’T BUY MY BIG BEAUTIFUL IDEAS, BITCOINS, AND CHANCES TO MEET ME…”
I remember reading “A Christmas Carol,” and Scrooge demanding to know, “Are there no prisons… Are there no workhouses… Have they no refuge or resource?” Does anyone know how to hire a few nocturnal ghost visitors? Clearly, we have plenty of Bob Cratchits and Tiny Tims, along with the children “Ignorance” and “Want” to show us how humanity is suffering from greed, indifference, exploitation, division, and hate.
You can see why I was doing a lot of breathing. Ultimately, I chose starting my reread of Kimberly Frost’s Southern Witch Novel series, with the first: Would-Be Witch while our four hounds slept quietly with Tom, and Pollock curled up next to me: my comfort, my protector, my link to Tim while he’s away at work. Our friends, family, and animals soothe our restless souls, and Kimberly provided my soft ritual. I laughed, and kept turning pages even when I was tired. I’m so grateful for writers who give us other worlds to escape to.
The other day, I was flipping hurriedly through my Animal Mandalas coloring book, and I thought I saw a page go by that had a bunch of bats. As the pages kept turning, I thought, Yeah, that’s what I want to color. A big colony of bats, but in very cool, psychedelic colors. Pre-goth bats! Only, when I went back, it was a single bat. It didn’t feel as fun to turn one bat into some hippie throwback. Some of us remember that hippies usually hung in groups.
As I went back through the book, I spotted an orca. Though s/he, too, is solo, I felt strongly this orca deserved to be one who believes in peace and love and music and maybe occasionally going one toke over the line. S/he’s on the way to meet friends and eat frozen Mini Reese’s Cups, play some game that ends up with everyone laughing until their stomachs hurt, smoke Kools or Marlboro Lights, and listen to Vanilla Fudge, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. I didn’t make the rules. P.S.–My title is a tribute to The Temptations’ song “Psychedelic Shack.” That could be an entirely different blog post in my “legacy writing” category.
Feel free to name the orca.
