Author: Becky

Sunday Sundries

On the first Sunday Sundries post, when I asked for suggestions for future entries, this, from A Blue Sky Boy: Open your box of Crayola crayons and pick a colour at random (without replacement so you can’t repeat it). Discuss the color!

First, I want to share the joy of a 1991 Crayola™ tin which “features some of the most famous colors in crayon history.”

The moment you open the tin, you’re greeted by that waxy smell that’ll take you right back to your first days holding your first fat crayon in your little kid fingers.

This tin has a bonus box of eight crayons.


The back of the box explains how colors in this box were retired to make way for new colors.

(The new colors were dandelion, wild strawberry, vivid tangerine, fuchsia, teal blue, royal purple, jungle green, and cerulean.)

Here is the full array of the 64 colors in the 1991 box.

This is the crayon I chose from them all.

Green is, always has been, my favorite color. The color of mountain hillsides. The color of the woods I walked in as a child. Green was the grass beneath my bare feet when I ran through the sprinkler. Green was Mr. Green Jeans, Dino the dinosaur, and Kermit. Green was the color of my first love’s eyes. Green is ocean water. Green is new, fresh, rebirth, spring. Green is limes and sour apples and many of my favorite vegetables. Green is a last name. A movement. Green is so many of my favorite stones and crystals. Green is grasshoppers, caterpillars, toads and frogs, nearly transparent insect wings. Green is my first two cars that came to me through my first marriage. Green put the initial in the rainbow’s name, Roy G. Biv.

Green is life.

This and that…


Here’s a new-to-me deck that I’m very much looking forward to exploring: Colette Baron-Reid’s The Spirit Animal Oracle. The illustrations by Jena DellaGrottaglia are superb, so you may see a lot of these on here for the art alone. I like oracle decks in general a little more than tarot. The guidebook for this one is detailed but without giving overlong explanations.

I was eager to pull a card at random. Then I had to laugh.

I write a character who often reminds others, “Two things can be true at once,” (as related to things that may seem to be in opposition). He’s just about to get a taste of his own medicine in that regard in the scene I’ve been working on. I guess Dolphin is letting me know I’m supposed to be writing–but hey, Dolphin, this AND that are true: I need to be writing, and I needed you to remind me.

What, after all, is friendlier than a nudge from a dolphin? Sometimes, it even saves lives.

Photo Friday, No. 918

Current Photo Friday theme: Coffee Shop

When I checked my photo archives and found this one, I was confused because I couldn’t find it on my website (which, back then, was LiveJournal). I dug deeper and found it in comments to what became a regular Wednesday feature called Hump Day Happy. My LJ friends gave me a page number and a second number, and I found the “answer” for them in the book 14,000 Things To Be Happy About.

On this date, I told them I’d take what was then my spankin’ new Nikon D40 and leave The Compound to shoot photos to go with the “answers” they were given from the book. Pretty sure I grabbed this iced coffee from Seattle’s Best before visiting my mother in the care home–her last Houston residence before hospice. I probably grabbed one of her crossword puzzle collections and completed a puzzle while we talked or she slept. While this photo wasn’t shot in the coffee shop, I’m glad I visited one on my way to visit Mother because it packs a lot of fun and bittersweet memories.

Tiny Tuesday!

When Tom and I took a walk through the neighborhood last week–on Day 6, when we talked to some actual utility workers in person–I found this dart without a point on the ground and picked it up. As far as Googled photos goes, I think this is a safety dart that’s part of a child’s toy set. I’ve tried in vain to develop a poem out of it, but the Muse is silent on the matter.

I even took out my 300 More Writing Prompts book in case it suggested something I could connect to the dart. No luck. However, I responded to the below prompt, a response I’ll keep private. Feel free to use your imagination as to how you’d answer this question for yourself:

You just won $100,000,000 in the lottery, what does your first day being a multi-millionaire look like?

Mindful Monday

When I can’t sleep because my mind is racing too fast over too many things, I think of it as the Hamster Wheel of Insomnia. I know whereof I speak, because I used to lie in the dark and listen to my hamster Dini running on his wheel next to my bed back in the 1980s.

When I was looking for a meme for today, I stumbled over one on The Post, a faculty and staff email newsletter from Niagara University, and it made me laugh. I didn’t expect this particular Eagles song to serve as an example for being mindful.

I’ll try to remember not to let the sound of my brain on its hamster wheel drive me crazy and, you know, take it easy.


Thank you, Jackson Browne, (the late) Glenn Frey, Eagles, and Niagara University for starting my work week with humor. I do hope it’ll be a real work week, because I very much miss my characters and want to lose–or find–myself writing. Also, I’ve said it before, but the titles of all the books in the Neverending Saga are Jackson Browne song titles.

Sunday Sundries


The wind didn’t turn our patio table over. Tom removed the umbrella and put it in the Lean To, then turned over the patio so Beryl wouldn’t flip and possibly break it. We’ll be spending time cleaning up all the different patios and sidewalks over the next week or so. Tom’s work schedule should get back to normal. Houston will hopefully start also being more normal, and OH HOW I HOPE EVERYONE SOON HAS POWER. The temps will be higher in the coming week than they have been.


As for me, I’m still working to manage my anxiety, and along with hopefully getting back to my own characters and world of the imagination, I intend to continue reading Mary Stewart, though not one or more a day as I have been. I’ll try to savor them. I might even finish up with my two absolute favorites (not pictured here) that were in my original Coping Skills Toolbox, meaning I’ve already reread them once since 2020. But they are my favorites, so…

Beryl: Day 7


Sunday, and larger trucks from GMB, the West Virginia company, began pulling into our neighborhood in the morning. We could hear them behind us and all around us. Then we saw this:


Notice that cherry picker on the other side of our back fence? Notice that now-brown tree limb that was tangled in our lines has fallen to the ground and the power lines are beginning to look normal?


Tom dragged that bad boy across the backyard, through the gate, and to the debris pile on our curb.


To keep myself from going crazy hoping and waiting and wishing for electricity, I kept reading my Mary Stewart book.

Finally, our power was restored at around 2:20 PM. I finished my book and, along with Tom, spent the day trying to get our house in some kind of order. The return of electricity comes with a dash of paranoia. Other customers have had power restored over the past few days only to lose it anywhere from two to 24 hours later. It’s hard to feel secure.

In addition, it’s thundering. It’s going to be a while before thunder stops sounding more ominous than normal. To help keep my anxiety in check, other than reading and cleaning, I began updating and revising this website throughout the day. If you’re reading this, you know I’ve tried to add something to all the days. I’ll try to compose a Sunday Sundries post after the fact, along with a Mindful Monday post, and that should give me some record of how this week has been.

Mostly, it’s been a long seven days… Thank you to people from all over the country who’ve texted, messaged, and called us. It really helps to know friends and family are thinking of us and wishing us well. I’ll also be replying to the comments left here while I wasn’t able to be online.

Beryl: Day 6

[Original post on this date: Back in May when we lost power, it was restored on the sixth day. I remember hoping we’d never be without power for six days again.

Be careful what you wish for, right? Because we have no power and it’s just about to become seven days. ]


Another strong contender for a Mary Stewart favorite, this book has so many things I love that I even forced Tom to sit and listen to me elaborate on them. It also has one of the most touching epilogues I’ve ever read in a novel.

A circus in Vienna, a horse with a great backstory, and a strong leading man with a smart, interesting wife. I remember Greg and I once discussing how easy it would be to rewrite this using the Internet in place of the movie reel that kicks things off.

The novel is much more appealing than everyone’s debris piles. Tom and I took a walk around the neighborhood today and he got some photos with his phone that will probably end up on this website one day. His photos are ALSO better than debris piles.

One street over, we saw some power guys from a company in West Virginia that travels throughout the country to help with disaster recovery. When we talked to them, they’d already checked out the tangled tree at our fence line and it was on their list. This is the first contact we’ve had with anyone about repairs. We’re reluctant to feel hopeful, though, because some repair dates in our area are as far out as the nineteenth.