Fire and rain

I’m determined not to obsessively check weather updates over the next few days, but it’s hard. Hurricane Hilary seems pretty nasty and could bring flooding along the south Pacific coast and also to several western states that normally don’t deal with this kind of weather event. It could also exacerbate the excessive heat the southwest and midwest are experiencing, AND ultimately contribute to the wildfire issues the northwest coast is grappling with. We’ve just seen how hurricane-spawned winds can impact an area as it did with Hawaii.

Since I’m still not ready to jump into writing the seventh book of the Neverending Saga, I’m continuing my binge watching of “Suits.” I spent a goodly portion of my adult life working with and for attorneys in many settings: family and probate, corporate, environmental, commercial real estate, and financial. Still, I can’t say how accurate “Suits” is in matters of law–I’m watching for the characters, narrative arcs, and witty banter. It’s been a good diversion throughout August.

Watching television always comes with a sense of guilt for me. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because many years of my adult life were spent without even owning a TV. I was never one of those people who turns on a TV as soon as I got home or woke up or settled down for the night. I watched sitcoms in the Nineties so I could join in “water cooler” conversations at work. I’ve rarely been able to adhere to a weekly schedule to watch shows, so streaming services are ideal for me. There are some shows Tom and I have watched together in the evenings. “Downton Abbey,” “Yellowstone,” “The Crown,” and “Bridgerton” come to mind in most recent years, and also a few comedy series, but even with all those, I tend to watch them either when the entire series has completed or at least when a season is complete. In years past, I did that with “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Sex and the City,” and “West Wing.”

Maybe to offset guilt, when I’m watching shows solo, I often multitask by doing something creative at the same time. This morning, I washed a quilt we throw over the sofa in the office and call “the dog quilt,” since it’s mostly to protect the sofa from the dogs. It has lots of worn places and dog-gnawed places, so I’ve brought out the plaid and patterned cotton fabric to begin cutting squares to start patching those spots today while I watch “Suits.”

The mending doesn’t have to be pretty–the dogs won’t care. This will give the quilt a few more years of use, which is better than letting it end up in a landfill.

In the season of “Suits” I’m watching now, a new character showed up and I kept wondering why I immediately liked him and felt like I knew him. Finally I looked him up and realized the actor, Dulé Hill, played Charlie Young on “West Wing” and was one of my favorite characters.

Another character showed up played by an actor who isn’t familiar to me, Scott Lawrence. I looked him up, and he’s been in lots of movies and TV shows, some of which I’m familiar with but never watched.

In researching him, I discovered that a LOT of people think this actor could portray Barack Obama. I see the similarities, but to me, he looks more like one of my Action Figure Obamas–this one:

That’s the 2007 candidate Obama manufactured by Jailbreak Toys®. I prefer the 2018 Factry© President Obama (also manufactured and distributed by Jailbreak Toys®). His hair, like many presidents, shows how the responsibilities and gravity of the office aged him.

Enough playing around. Tom just brought me the clean, dry, folded quilt. Time to start cutting fabric then sewing to the accompaniment of characters who can give me a refreshing break from the ones who live in my head without paying me a dime, despite the wealth several of them enjoy.

I know, I know

I previously posted a photo here of a painting called Piano Man. It looks like something I’d use for Mood Monday, but music I’m listening to made me look up art with pianos. The red guitar was a bonus. The painting is oil on canvas done in 2019 by Adriaan Lotter.

I need to leave the names below so I can find them again later. They’re helping me start the seventh book. I’m hoping their mid-century, easy-listening instrumental music is what I’m looking for.

Les Baxter
Ray Conniff
Martin Denny
Percy Faith
Heinz Kiessling
Sven Libaek
Henry Mancini
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani
Piero Piccioni
Tito Puente
Nelson Riddle
George Shearing
Werner Tautz
Cal Tjader

Since I gave you something pretty to see, I’ll leave you with something pretty (titled “It Never Entered My Mind”) to hear. =)

Inspirations post (delayed)


I keep several of my journals handy in case I want to use them for different things, and among those is a journal I labeled “Inspirations.” I created that one quite a while back, and here’s what’s in it.


The inside front cover page decorated with these stickers, because various birds in the corvid family are part of my inspirations.


The first page has this postcard of a Rothko painting. Seeing Mark Rothko paintings in person, reading books about his life, and collecting art books with photographs of all the paintings I haven’t seen all fall under the category of “inspirations.” I put a Rothko painting in Three Fortunes in One Cookie as an homage to Rothko’s work.

A couple of weeks back, I ordered some stencils with small patterns or shapes that I wondered if I could use on some of the wee canvases I paint, and I practiced with a couple of them on this page using gel pens.

That’s it! Those are the only pages with material in the “Inspirations” journal after all this time. Recently, as if I needed another one, I picked up this journal that appealed to me, also with the theme of inspiration.

The gel pens weren’t working that great, so I decided to try my fine point Sharpies.

And use the new journal to organize all the various creative projects I have in mind to do, working them into my writing schedule as well as other non-creative activities I need to take care of.

I knew Sharpies would bleed onto the following page, so I put a plastic sheet between pages. I don’t care if the ink shows on the page backs, because I’ll probably use those pages for mini collages that provide visuals of things having to do with characters or plot lines in the Neverending Saga.

Time will tell if this more disciplined approach toward balancing my creative projects works. I have lots of ideas of things I want to write, paint, collage, etc., and one thing I know about myself is that creativity begets more creativity. For example, there’s a project I began in 2021 related to one of the books in the saga. I’d put it aside to do other things, and this week, two years later, I finally finished it. I can’t share it because it’s a gift (as yet ungiven).

I can share this. Last Friday was Marika’s birthday, and since the first Spirograph painting I did (using INXS lyrics) was for her birthday in 2021, I was game to do another. When she asked about a possible painting using lyrics to “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I decided to do something similar on a couple of small (3-inch by 9-inch) rectangular canvases.

I really enjoyed painting those.

I like the way so many of the things I attempt: doll fashion or dioramas; painting, coloring, and collaging; and the journaling, fiction, poetry, and lyrics I write, can all blend and overlap to inspire me.

Tiny Tuesday!


Trying to decide if there’s something crafty I can do with my Magnetic Poetry tin, which was damaged in the Harvey flood of August 2017.

Especially the interior.

When Tom took it down off a high shelf for me, he could tell something was inside it, and it turned out to be magnets that were once on the refrigerator inside the Doll House at The Compound. I’d forgotten all about my David magnets, which I think were from our late friend Jeff. After my mother moved away and the Doll House was empty, it became a guest house, as well as a place where my business was located, my dolls were in display cases, and it was available for friends and me to use for meetings and social gatherings.

Later, when Timothy moved to Houston, the Doll House became his home, and I think he may have added the magnetic words that were also in the tin.

For your Tiny Tuesday regard, here are some of David’s fun fashions. I guess I’ll leave out the unclothed version, since exquisite art seems to be labeled as X-rated by people who see only through the lens of sexualizing all things.

Inspirations (a blog post on hold)

On Saturday, like many of us, my eyes have been on the news about Hawaii. I just read that the death toll has risen to 89, and that number is expected to increase. The property damage is extensive, some of it to historic places.

Earlier in the day, I spent a lot of time writing a blog post and inserting photos, and when I went to do some editing, changes to the blog host’s features caused me to lose all my work. I was upset for a while and decided to take a break before I rewrote it. Now I know it can wait until next week.

I’d rather acknowledge that our fellow citizens in Hawaii are suffering. I know people who live in Hawaii, and I hope to figure out something I can do, or where to donate, instead of focus on things that don’t matter a lot in the scheme of things. This link to a Washington Post article provides links to reputable aid efforts.

Much love to our beautiful state of Hawaii and its residents. Aloha.

Thursday is for thinking

Yesterday was a little bit of a challenge because of come-and-go headaches and not enough sleep. Think I’m getting too much screen time. Though I managed to fall asleep around midnight (last night), I woke up at four AM, drank water, took something for headache and muscle pain, and probably fell asleep for another three to four hours, which to me is a WIN.

So today is a day of trying to stay comfortable (the heat wave continues, and the headache does, too) and away from the computer. I colored this.

This is very much in line with characters in the Neverending Saga. Maybe one of them has had a period of “finding herself,” and I think that’ll happen later for a male character in crisis, but most of the characters have an ongoing process of creating themselves and building their lives with purpose and deliberation.


Thanks to thinking while coloring (this is my writing journal, after all), the left side of those pages is now filled with ideas and possibilities for book seven’s first chapter or section. I’ve paid some bills, responded to calls and texts, and have a dinner menu planned.

It’s Zen time.