Song Challenge: Day 7

I had an appointment to go to so I turned Thursday into a day of errands: dropping off clothing donations, making a rare visit to the wonderful Texas Art Supply (it used to be so convenient in the old ‘hood, and today they gave me a bunch of help) to buy a couple of gifts and goodies, filling up the car with gas, and grabbing Starbucks along the way.

I have a car playlist called “Driving,” and since today’s song challenge is “a song to drive to,” I switched to it. Songs include Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” U2’s “California (There Is No End To Love),” Jackson Browne’s “Chasing You Into the Light,” One Republic’s “Come Home,” Paul Young’s “Everytime You Go Away,” Wesley Dean’s “Hello, I Love You, Goodbye,” Gladys Knight & The Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider,” “Multi Colored Lady,” and “Please Call Home.”

All excellent songs and fun to sing with as I drive, but for this challenge, I’m sharing what may be my favorite song to drive to or even think about driving to. I love to hear it, sing it, and make up stories to it and have been doing so since I first heard it in 1971. I made an entire video in my head to accompany this song before videos were a thing, and I still remember my mental video all these years later for Carole King’s “Carry Your Load” from the great album Music. Give it a listen if you haven’t heard it or want the nostalgia of remembering it.

I have two of those Barbie convertibles, one from Margret via Lynne, and one from Nurse Lisa. THANK YOU!

Song Challenge: Day 6

Today’s challenge, “a song that makes you want to dance,” reminds me that I’m a person who wants to dance WHILE no one’s watching, not LIKE no one’s watching. I wish I still had access to my family’s home movies that I lost in a computer meltdown, because I think there was footage of young Becky dancing, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

I never went to school dances and even at the mandatory “proms” my last two years of high school, I didn’t dance. My girlfriends and I didn’t dance at slumber parties. I don’t, for example, think I’ve ever seen Lynne dance, and we’ve been friends since we were twelve. During our teen era, kids I hung out with were “too cool” to dance, which was fine, because dancing just wasn’t my thing.

Photo © BoDogVintage

In the 1970s, I did go to bars/clubs during the height of the disco era, but I didn’t dance. In the 1980s, when I finally DID dance at clubs and bars, they were usually slow dances, though I absolutely do remember finally dancing to the songs of Prince and Michael Jackson. Resistance was futile. Then, under the influence of my favorite enabler, Kathy, I learned to Texas two-step at country/cowboy bars. My footwear was red ropers like these, which oddly, I donated to Goodwill when I moved to Texas.

So probably the only time in my life when I danced without feeling self-conscious and awkward, I looked a little like this.

And I absolutely know what I danced to. And I always will. When no one’s watching.

Tiny Tuesday! and Song Challenge: Day 5

For some reason Instagram isn’t working for me at all today. I’m taking that as a message to preserve my sanity by knowing as little as possible about how “Super” Tuesday is making people feel and behave. In honor of those who are willing to endure politics with their popcorn, here’s a wee miniature I received recently. Popcorn kernels added for scale.

Since today’s Song Challenge is “A song that needs to be played loud,” I will handle that immediately as I get back to my writing (I don’t know if this song is referenced in the Neverending Saga, but Led Zeppelin is, more than once). “Stairway To Heaven” has meaning in my life, but I feel no compulsion to elaborate. (It’s fine if you’re glad about that.)

What do you like to listen to LOUD?

Mood: Monday and Song Challenge: Day 4

Photo of painting previously posted here was of Morning Guitar Painting, oil on canvas, date unknown, by artist Elaine Fleck.

Riley, date and photographer unknown

From my earliest years, I liked the Beatles, as I like many artists and bands, but because of Riley’s talent for playing their songs on guitar and piano/keyboards, I learned to love the Beatles. I could listen to him play either instrument for as long as he’d let me, or until my parents made him leave. =) (And with that memory, let me note that today is my late mother’s birthday, and Riley was one of the few boys I knew who she kept liking through the decades.)

No matter how many songs Riley played, there would always be one for me, every time, on guitar. Though in this photo, he’s performing on keyboards, my mind will always go to that one song, one guitar, one boy. Any time this song (and a few other songs special to both of us) comes up in my Instagram feed, whether or not those are accounts I follow, I think of it as a message and leave a four-character comment on the post that’s meant to convey, Yes, my friend, I’m thinking of you, too. Riley’s birthday is in four days. How I’d love to be able to say those words in person or even on the phone. I will never stop missing him or appreciating everything we did and said and felt and wrote and listened to in all those years of friendship. I will love him always.

Today’s challenge is “a song that reminds you of someone.”

Book your appointment at The Zen Goat

Before Janna Rollins’s debut cozy mystery An Escape Goat: A Zen Goat Mystery begins, Callie Haybeck, a young woman living in Seattle, has never quite lived up to her older sister’s life choices. The one thing Callie’s proud of is her certification as a yoga instructor, but the Covid pandemic derailed her career, leaving her to daydream of one day having a yoga practice on a tropical beach. After learning about long-lost members of her family and meeting them, an idea was born: Callie would move to Haybeck Farm in New Hampshire and open a yoga studio, The Zen Goat. Classes would include adorable baby goats and lure tourists from their hectic city lives to the bucolic countryside.

From the moment the book opens at the start of Callie’s first four-day yoga retreat, things go awry. Though she loves the baby goats, she’s fighting an unexpected allergy–to goats. Along with the babies, she also rescued an adult goat, Bugsy, who always finds ways out of his enclosure. Her first clients, a group of four affluent women from Boston, including a social media influencer and her best frenemy, along with a ballerina and a medical student, all accompanied by a male driver/assistant, have arrived ahead of schedule with enough tension among them to defy even goat yoga. The influencer’s chihuahua, Matilda, immediately darts away to face off with Bugsy. When Callie hurries from the farmhouse to rescue the dog, her clients aren’t impressed by her frazzled appearance, especially when she falls and gets goat “raisins” caught in her braids. Matilda takes an instant dislike to her and bites her. After she finally gets the women and dog ushered into the guest cottage, Callie learns the massage therapist and esthetician she’s booked for the spa day that her clients requested during their retreat can’t make it.

From those opening minutes, the book offers mishaps, mayhem, and murder with a lively range of characters; an abundance of motives and secrets; relatives from both sides of the Haybeck family who want Callie off the farm; an adventurous great-aunt; and a handsome veterinarian who thinks Callie’s the last person who should have goats in her care. It’s all set against the kindness of family and a charming small town that may make Callie’s dream of a tropical escape fade a little more each day.

An Escape Goat, available March 12, 2024, from Level Best Books, checks all my favorite boxes: snappy dialogue, engaging, layered characters, a good mystery, and funny situations. I look forward to reading future books in the series. Who wants to book a retreat at The Zen Goat with me? I promise to leave my own neurotic chihuahua at home.

Read and reviewed from an ARC and cross-posted to Goodreads.

Button Sunday with Song Challenge: Day 3


In honor of today’s song challenge, what song reminds you of summertime?

Bet you thought I’d choose a Beach Boys song, but no, here’s a deep dive from Mungo Jerry in 1970. You’d have to work hard to feel unhappy when this came over your transistor radio.

Challenges yet to come.

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.