Mood: Monday, and Song Challenge: Day 18


Garbage Patch Artwork

Mixed media, sculpture on plastic, date unknown
©Simone Spicer, US

Today, March 18, is Global Recycling Day. The link gives a lot of information about the day and about recycling in general. This paragraph in particular stood out to me: Before throwing something in the trash or even in the recycling bin, first think of ways the item could be reused. Perhaps it would be a good idea to wash out a plastic carrier bag or a zipper closure bag and use it a few more times. Or maybe it would be possible to use those plastic containers from the grocery store in the kids’ lunch boxes. And also try using that piece of aluminum foil again. Anything that can be used just two times essentially cuts the waste of that product in half!

That made me feel a little bit better that all the things I reuse at Houndstooth Hall can actually be having an impact on reducing waste.

Today’s song challenge is “a song you know all the words to.” And while I sang one word of the lyrics wrong for many years, I finally allowed myself to be persuaded that Mary’s dress SWAYS instead of WAVES in Bruce Springsteen’s carpe diem song “Thunder Road.” (I still like the visual and implication of “waves” better than “sways,” and I still disagree that we can’t say fabric “waves,” since somewhere every day someone is listening to or singing our national anthem which asks the question, “…does that star spangled banner yet wave?” It does.)

Here’s an acoustic version of the song, because I have no idea which video on YouTube will eventually be pulled due to copyright. My blog has become littered with those over its twenty years–a different kind of waste.

Song Challenge: Day 2

Delta and Anime are waiting for a call from the 1980s.

An ear worm has been on my mind for a few days, since I used the music on an Instagram post with that photo and caption. From 1982, when phone calls were still a dime, I bring you Tommy Tutone.

Here are all 30 days of challenges if you want to play along somewhere or in my comments with a song title containing numbers.

Song Challenge: Day 1

Think I’ll try this here this month (I’m not active enough on social media to do it elsewhere). Here’s a list, because I can’t possibly pick one. All of these songs are available for listening on YouTube or most of your favorite online music sources. Do you have a favorite song–or MANY–with colors in the title?

Baby Blue–Beach Boys
Behind Blue Eyes–The Who
Big Yellow Taxi–Joni Mitchell
Black Magic Woman–Santana
Blackbird–Beatles
Blue Bayou–Roy Orbison
Brown Eyed Girl–Van Morrison
Deacon Blue–Steely Dan
Gold Dust Woman–Fleetwood Mac
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road–Elton John
Heart of Gold–Neil Young
Little Red Corvette–Prince
Li’l Red Ridin’ Hood–Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress–Hollies
Mellow Yellow–Donovan
Nights In White Satin–Moody Blues
Orange Crush–REM
Pacific Ocean Blue–Dennis Wilson
Paint It Black–Rolling Stones
Purple Rain–Prince
Sister Golden Hair–America
Tangled Up in Blue–Bob Dylan
Yellow–Coldplay
Yellow Submarine–Beatles

Something I liked

There’s an account I follow on Instagram and every week in her Instagram stories, she publishes “Things I liked this week.” I’ve commented to her before that more of us should follow her example.

I just saw this reel on Instagram (not the same account as the one above, but a similar concept), and I don’t know if this link will work, but I want to try. (Click the little x on the bottom right if you want to hear the music.) Someone wonders in comments, “At what point do people lose the instinct to give unselfishly?”

I don’t know.

Late but sweet

Yes, it’s been two weeks since Valentine’s Day. Yes, I understand the perspective that it’s a manufactured holiday meant to make people spend money on flowers and candy and jewelry and dining out and trips, etc. And it makes some people feel lonely and alone, or resentful for being expected to feel lonely and alone, when they are actually quite content with their lives. So here’s a message from the bottom of my heart–or the bottom of my Hershey’s Kisses.

Love is love. Celebrate it any day or every day with friends, family members, family pets, and romantic partners. Or just celebrate because Snoopy was created, and he’s amazing.

I can’t write

Credit: CSA Images/CSA Images
Copyright: ©CSA Images/CSA Images

ETA: Before I woke up Sunday morning after I posted this, I dreamed. In the dream, I saw this typewriter and what was on the paper, then I saw that I had 30 comments. I was so shocked! It was like the days of yore either on LiveJournal or when I linked to my blog from Facebook and Twitter.

When I read the first comment, it said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. It happens to me, too.” It was signed with one of my character’s names, but in my dream, I knew it wasn’t my character. Just a coincidence. I woke myself up and thought, Not your character and not a coincidence. You know who it was.

I do. ❤️

Button Sunday

An acquaintance was messaging me recently about being ghosted by a friend. I usually think of that happening more in dating/potential dating scenarios, though I did once have a friend ghost me. In fact, the ghosting was so thorough, and we had such a complete lack of mutual friends or acquaintances (by that time, and we lived in different cities), that I still have no idea what happened more than thirty years* later.

Have you ever been ghosted? Did you ever get an explanation or apology? If not, do you still wonder?

*Since this was in 1988, it pre-dates social media, the proliferation of cell phones, etc. Much easier to ghost people then.

Mood: Monday


Sidewalk Penny Painting
oil on canvas, 2017
©Judith Rhue, USA

Today is National Lost Penny Day, and I started my online search for art with pennies. I was mostly scrutinizing paintings of fountains, and in my brief quest, I noted that artists who paint fountains seem not to include coins in the water.

This observation led me to the realization that in life, I don’t trust fountains that don’t have at least a few pennies thrown in. Do all the humans who look into that fountain lack the urge to make a wish, express a hope, dream the impossible? That fountain must have an off-putting vibe.

Along the way, I found the above painting. I always like abstracts, because they give the viewer so much space to see and feel what’s true to their nature or experience. Also, I liked what Rhue wrote with this painting: “I pick up pennies that I find on sidewalks. Do you?”

Yes. Yes, I do. I have great affection for the simple penny and oh, my, the places it may have been and the hands that might have held it. A penny is full of endless stories and connections.

I say a penny is never lost, merely on a journey we don’t know about… And just like that, a character is tapping on my brain.

Photo Friday, No. 895

Current Photo Friday theme: Insomnia


Essential oil blends: Inhale, Exhale. Breathe Blend. Anxiety Release. Relax. Panic Button. Peaceful Blend. Sleepy Time. Chill Pill. Mellow Mix. Sleep. Along with Rescue Remedy, incense, worry stones, stone facial roller, eye mask… I’ve put a lot of thought into insomnia. At 1:45 AM and 3:30 AM and 4:50 AM and…

I do not use all these at once!

Wonders of the world


Another little journal I found last year sometime and plucked off the shelf today, having forgotten it. This one I’ll call “Hey Thanks” is a guided gratitude journal. There are some exercises provided to help the journal keeper record what s/he’s grateful for, and sometimes topics are given.

I flipped the book open at random and did this one. I mean, there are a ton of wonders in the world, and most of them I haven’t seen. So I tried to come up with a geologic feature that stirs me emotionally, and animals in general and one specific, and then something purely selfish that might not seem like a “wonder” to others, but would open new worlds to me and help me write.

Hope this is readable. Any wonders you’ve dreamed of experiencing?