I’m a couple of months late, but it works even better for January. New year, new setting boundaries?
Sunday Sundries
This week’s theme: Things that are black or black and white.
Taking a prompt from the book, here’s what I wrote this morning.
Lovely day
Today was a good day. My friend Debbie and I enjoyed a long FaceTime call. Texts from Lynne sharing her thoughts on new chapters she read from the work in progress boosted my spirits. I think I’m finally ready to take on the next chapter.
Tom and I did a bit of housekeeping and later had a nice afternoon and dinner with The Brides. (Debby and Timothy weren’t able to join us, but our four dogs did get to spend a few hours with Aunt Debby, so at least they felt spoiled and happy.) Pepper came with her moms, full of health and vigor, and I felt like it had been forever since we saw her. And once again, I got NO photos of her, especially when she was romping in the back yard. I never take all the pictures I mean to take.
Rhonda and Lindsey wanted to extend Tom’s birthday celebration with a couple of gifts. I’d made a hearty homemade soup and cornbread, and we had lemon poundcake.
To finish off the week’s blue theme, here’s a picture of a mushroom lamp Debby gave me for Christmas that will live in the writing sanctuary giving off its soft light.
Photo Friday, No. 941
Current Photo Friday theme: Glossy.
“Fresh Cuts” mason-style jar proving that I haven’t lost all my marbles as a new year begins. (For my week’s theme, the jar is light blue and contains plenty of blue marbles.)
Even websites get the blues
There’s been a lot of activity around Houndstooth Hall for the past few days: plumbers, electricians, and utility company inspectors coming and going. This has kept the dogs riled up. I did manage to make a traditional New Year’s Day good luck and prosperity meal, this time with ham, biscuits (Tom made), steamed broccoli, turnip greens, and black-eyed peas.
The dogs violently spoke out about these strangers all over the property, and my brain couldn’t possibly have written in such an environment. I did manage to get a new banner with events, people, and dogs from 2024 on here. I also did something long overdue (not done since 2022) and cleaned up the original Timothy James Beck website. There were broken links, strange coding characters messing up pages, some pages even had our OLD P.O. Box address (and I’ve had the current one for around ten years). The author photo collages were so outdated that I deleted them–basically, the site was a hot mess.
I know some HTML code thanks to this site, but there were things I had to research, and I managed to learn new tricks and fix the invasive and bad code. I hope it’s all correct and up-to-date now. There’s a page on the site with reviews and quotes from readers. I haven’t read any of that in years, and when I did, it gave me quite a lift.
I told Tim and Jim from now on, when I start feeling like I haven’t done much, I need to treat that page on the site like a scene from the movie Soapdish. Sally Field’s character Maggie, a daytime drama actress, would go with the show’s head writer Rose (played by Whoopi Goldberg) to a mall in New Jersey. Rose would pretend to “notice” Maggie and start fan-girling, which would make people in the crowd stop, stare, recognize, and rush Maggie for autographs, telling her how much they loved her and her show’s character, “Celeste Talbert,” and it would help Maggie emerge from her funk.
Since I snagged the TJB banner from one of my Flickr albums (related to book publicity), I also noticed this blue-dominant photo to share again. It includes Mattel’s Summer doll, who I bought in 2008 (on a shopping trip either before or after an amazing dinner Lynne treated me to) specifically to publicize this book. Summer (named Jandy in the novel) started a whole world of sewing, top modeling, Mattel Model Muse doll buying, and the Runway Monday series on LiveJournal.
You never know when another muse may come along, as I was reminded today. But that’s a story for another time. =)
New Year’s good tidings
Though Blue Cheetah is not a fan of new year’s resolutions, he does have some wisdom to offer for the coming year. He strongly recommends you GO WILD the way he does. Here are his suggestions, applicable to the season and where you are.
- Inhale winter air. It has a clean scent like no other and can clear your mind.
- Get your paws in soft grass. No socks, no shoes, just moments of bliss.
- Feast your eyes on the grandest mountaintop you can find. You don’t have to climb it–unless you want to.
- Get drenched in a rainstorm. Your hair will dry. Your clothes will dry.
- Bask in warm sun at the beach. (Don’t overdo it.)
- Lean against its trunk and tell a tree your deepest secret. It will never betray you.
- Cast a line into a lake without a hook to catch only a calm rhythm.
Blue Cheetah was brought to you by this coloring book along with 28 shades of blue pencils and 10 different blue gel pens. And by me, wishing you all the best in 2025.
Tiny Tuesday!
When we were out shopping earlier in December, Tom and I chanced upon these two mini playsets. (They ended up in my Christmas stocking.)
One with an RV and the other with a convertible, for ages four and up. Believe it or not, I have a couple of characters in the Neverending Saga who have become fast friends and are ages five and four; they like playing with Barbie dolls; both have fathers who go on the road as musicians; and one has a mother who drives a convertible. A perfect way for them to comfortably imagine new adventures.
Wishing all of you a safe and satisfying new year’s eve, however you spend it, and a great new year to come.
Mindful Monday
Original painting acrylic on 4×6-inch canvas, Release, 2006.
Sunday Sundries
Things that are blue.
From the book, I chose “Write a poem about A Voice.” The word associations the book provides are murmur, whisper, holler, soft, husky, sultry, conscience, instinct. Because I’d chosen blue, because of the musician I write and so many of my characters, because of how I think, I had only one direction to take. Here’s what I wrote:
a voice
it starts with a whisper
of chains and of whips
backbreaking labor
heartbreaking goodbye
it grows to a murmur
soft change, husky hope
sultry with promise
resolve to survive
makes it a holler
the:
buddys and muddys
bessies, ettas, and kokos
blind boys and sonny boys
mas and sisters
ones with initials
ones with three names
ones with last names
they never asked for or wanted
holler holler holler
to prod the conscience
of all who will listen
to all who will hear
a voice
the voices
December 29, 2024
©Becky Cochrane
Shake it up
My last snow-themed post of the week came from this coloring book and officially brings Christmas week to a close. Christmas itself hasn’t been stressful, which isn’t always the case. I managed to get everything done even though I left most of it until December. NOT Christmas things have been more stressful, but that’s just part of life. All the friends and family we communicated with in one format or another help keep things happy. We have so many and so much to be grateful for.
I hope this guy gives you a smile and serves as a reminder that shaking things up can sometimes be a good thing, and regardless, they settle down in time. I don’t know why his tree looks yellow. It’s green on the page.
ETA: I had a couple of fruit stickers I wanted to add to the page of fruit stickers in Wreck This Journal, and after I did that, I began flipping through the pages until I came to the one for “Rubbings.” It had a single entry on it (“Cowboy”), and I thought of my leather bracelet sitting just across the room on my bookshelf. So I did a rubbing of that, which seems right on this date.
