One day recently, I went looking for something in the drawers of my kitchen island and pulled out this white tea cloth with the hippie van on it. I had no memory at all of how it came to be in my possession. I immediately began to question the usual suspects, all of whom denied any knowledge of it. I knew it couldn’t be too old because clearly it hadn’t been used, but WHEN did it get here? WHO provided it?
It had an eerie sense of magic about it, because last year, I gave a decades-long character a VW van in my rewrite of his story. His van is a sort of aquamarine color, and I’ve used that color on vans from coloring books as an homage. Did this tea towel appear from a fictitious character as a thank-you? CUE TWILIGHT ZONE music.
I posted a photo on Instagram as a long shot, and Geri, the giver, came forth and said it was included with my (March) birthday gifts in 2017. I sort-of understand how I forgot it. The flood came that year and I lost my mind for a time about what I owned and where it was, etc. Geri is a real person, not a fictitious character, and I guess the van became part of my general van-geist even though I didn’t remember it consciously. However, the reason my character’s van became the color it did was because of the color of a radio in his story, and NOBODY has given me a tea towel with a vintage radio on it. There are no flowers painted on the character’s van, but that kind of becomes a joke between him and another character in the second novel. It will be coming up again in the third novel.
What’s on the tea towel is the reason for this post. I had purchased a rose quartz facial roller from Body Mind and Soul and kept meaning to share it here.
I’m not going to list all the reasons to use a facial roller to help with circulation. Google it and you’ll find lots of information. If you’ve ever had facials or massages where the therapist paid attention to lymph circulation in your face and neck, there are health benefits. I used to make it a regular part of my practice when I did bodywork because of both its physical and stress-relieving qualities.
Using the roller is also meant to help firm your muscles, rid you of dark under-eye circles, and help blood circulation in your skin. These are all positive self-care routines.
Rose quartz is a beautiful, healing stone. It has the benefit of staying cool a long time, even when in use on a warm face. I picked up some Spitfire Girl rose water facial spray to use with it–completely forgetting I had a rose water mist at home. I also have this hemp facial mist with hemp seed and coconut oils. I have always liked facial misters, and though I haven’t used the roller routinely enough yet to notice benefits, I can tell you that if nothing else, it’s a great way to center and calm myself. That is worth everything these days.
Because of all the writing I’m doing, my eyes get tired, so I found an eye mask this weekend that contains lavender. I often lie down with cucumber slices on my (closed!) eyes when they feel strained, and that helps. (Years ago, Guinness came in and took one right off my eye and ate it, lol. Silly dog.)
I’m hoping putting on the eye mask will remind me it’s okay to do NOTHING but relax for a while. I don’t have to be reading, writing, or coloring all the time.
One word of caution, in case you don’t know. If you use ice masks or any kind of ice pack for your eyes, do NOT put anything frozen directly on your eyelids. Wrap anything that cold in a cloth to avoid tissue damage.
Rose quartz is also the friendship stone.
So, this series of novels – are they being published?
There’s no way to know if a publisher will be interested. I have to get all four written so I can go back and make sure there are no inconsistencies. Stories and characters have a way of changing things up, so I might have been writing toward one outcome and will be ending up with another.
If no publisher can be found, I will look into self-publishing them. They would be e-books, but I think most e-book publishers have a way to get a printed copy. I don’t know. It’s an all-new world to me, and probably also evolves, so by the time all four are written, everything could have changed. I know there are writers who only write e-books, because I read some of their books, but their works are nothing like what I’m writing.
I have bought books in the past which have been print-on-demand. I don’t currently have a (working) e-reader, but you know I love your work. I do much prefer a real book in my hands, anyway.