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Current Photo Friday theme: Broken
It’s hot as blazes in Houston. I’ve had to take my website private while I repair damage done to it by malicious jerks. Around 7000 corrupt posts covering 18 years. Terra cotta pottery isn’t the only thing broken around here. Technology and its villains have made me feel a bit broken, too.
Broken pottery can be used in the bottom of other plants to give them better drainage. With time and work, I’ll be useful again, too.
This site has some problems, and I don’t understand them because I’m the one with technical difficulties. It may be that I end up taking the blog private for a while until these problems can be fixed. I don’t want to lose my content. There are too many memories, too much effort, and way too many photos after 18 years for me to let it be ruined.
As I said to someone earlier today, writing is how I process things. I know not every reader is going to understand why I write the things I write–whether few words or many, and sometimes really only images. Maybe much of this seems frivolous or shallow–and visitors would like to see things of greater substance, or fewer things they have no interest in.
It may not seem like it, but there’s a discipline and a meaning to all of this (from my perspective).
I’m overwhelmed by too many things right now. Posting every day isn’t a burden, but trying to fix the damage being caused by attacks to the site is a lot, and I’m not sure I have the energy for it.
Hopefully, I’ll start getting help and answers tomorrow. Thanks for any time you’ve spent here and for reading and commenting.
Today, I was dumb and looked back at this date on the first few years of my blog, beginning with LiveJournal, which I started in 2004. I didn’t manage to get all the way to 2011, when I migrated over to this blog, before I had to stop.
Today is the date John Lennon was murdered in 1980. I posted a coloring page with some of his lyrics on Instagram and had to turn off comments because I was getting spoilers about the new Let It Be documentary. Of course I watched the original movie, but it’s been a very long time, and I’d like to see this one (which Tom and I plan to watch in segments this month, hopefully) without knowing any of the new material and having forgotten a lot of what I’ve seen before.
John Lennon was born on Wednesday, October 9, 1040; that date reminded me of a beautiful non-Beatles song I listened to again recently. “Wednesday’s Child.” I’ll link to it at the bottom of this post. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed. The year 1980 was a brutal one for me personally, and for it to end so miserably for Riley and me still leaves me raw when I think about it.
There are a lot of tough dates for me in December, and I think that’s why I finally began making a bigger deal of Christmas. The novel A Coventry Christmas starts with the main character saying, “I hate Christmas.” I once said that to my coworkers at a job, and one of the guys said, “I worry about you.” A few years later, when I was asked to write a Christmas romance, I said it again, only this time Timothy answered, “There’s your first line.” Writers… I love them, and those writers include Timothy J. Lambert, Riley Morris, and John Lennon.
Today, I added more ornaments to the tree from a bin we hadn’t opened yet. This one made me laugh when I found it. It had to go up.
The Bella and Edward ornament.
And this one. Tom was born on Christmas Day, and his uncle, who was a baker, put this on his first birthday cake. After we were married, Tom’s mother gave us a lot of special mementos like this for our holiday trees.
I’ll keep adding to the tree probably until it’s time for everything to be taken down. Because if yesterdays can make me melancholy, it’s up to me to make and appreciate better days now.
I’m Monday’s child. Riley was Tuesday’s child. John Lennon was Wednesday’s child.
Monday’s child is fair of face
Tuesday’s child is full of grace
Thursday’s child has far to go
Whoa, oh-oh-oh
Mm-mm-mm
Hmm, mm-mm-mm
Friday’s child is lovin’ and givin’
And Saturday’s child must work for a livin’
A child that’s born on the sabbath day
Whoa, oh-oh-oh
Is fair andw ise, happy and gay
Wednesday’s child is full of woe
Whoa, oh-oh-oh
Woe I know
I am Wednesday’s child
Rest in peace, Keith Allison.
In November 2007, while in the middle of a remodel at The Compound, I posted this photo on my blog (back then, it was LiveJournal). The back row includes McDonald’s Happy Meal Barbies from the early 1990s. I’m not sure who the front left is or her era, and I have no idea who front right is, but not Mattel. They were given to me by various people, including my nephew. No idea how he ended up with them, because I doubt he was eating McDonald’s Happy Meals as he was college age then and also a vegetarian. Plus I doubt a cool skateboarding kid with great taste in music was into Happy Meal Barbies.
The reason I share them again was because I found another mini set, this time Made to Move Barbies, at Ross. The only actual doll from this group I have is the Baseball Barbie, but I do like this series because they’re posable. Not really buying any female dolls right now, though the one on the right with the microphone might be interesting.
One of my LJ friends with whom I’ve remained in contact, Rio, sent me a link last week to show me some Barbies that are about to be released. I WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO TEMPTATION. (Translated: I probably will.)
Standing on the shoulders of all the Barbies who came before.
Did anyone notice that my site went down sometime on Friday and didn’t come back until late afternoon on Sunday? Thanks to Netfirms for their technical assistance.
I have no idea what I’d planned to post for Saturday, so I’m doing it after the fact and choosing to feature Monster High’s Catty Noir 13 Wishes doll since it’s the March 13 entry.
This is how she looked in the box when I got her in 2013. Which is eight freaking years ago.
Here’s her most up-to-date photo taken when I began my (still not finished) doll inventory. I need to find her sparkly pink microphone because I never know when my dolls will finish forming their band and will need more equipment. (Shhh, Catty won’t be in the band. Different universe.) =)
Current Photo Friday theme: Looking Back at 2020
This challenge will run for two weeks. This week, I decided to show you some of what I’ve done in 2020 since being laid off and quarantining at home due to the COVID pandemic.
(If you click here, you can see a larger version of this photo with more of the details.)
I have used dolls (represented by two Monster High dolls eating pizza here, my rock and roll dude and his baseball-loving girlfriend, and Summer, my Top Model) as muses, inspiration, and entertainment. Along with the small guitars, they evoke characters in my novels.
I finished a novel and began another. I finished three–maybe four?–pieces of art and sent them out. I have colored in coloring books.
I’ve eaten lots of popcorn and drunk Starbucks (but not as much as I used to).
I’ve continued to fill a Moleskine with little bits of memorabilia I find, and started another Moleskine for the same kinds of things from years dating back to 2008 (during my organize and purge efforts, which are ongoing).
I’ve blogged, Instagrammed, and even ventured back to Twitter a bit to find new authors, new thinkers, new voices for social justice, new animal advocates, and new people to make me laugh.
In the background, you see the laptop where I’ve written and the shelves that contain some of my most important tools: aromatherapy, stones, and soft candlelight.
This room and the space it has given me to think and create has been my sanctuary since March.
Next week, I’ll offer a different perspective of this year. Thank you for reading, commenting, and sticking with me. You are part of my journey whether you read silently or comment.
…I never give up on humans. Whoever thought of it, that he saw and responded to it, that they saw and responded to him. People can be so damn funny.
(I first saw the sign on a friend’s Instagram, and HE was also funny. Then saw this full thing on Twitter. And I’m sharing it on a blog. A social media party.)
Just a few things I’ve seen here and there over the past couple of weeks or so and thought I’d share.
I don’t have kids, but I have this bizarre notion that parents aren’t willing to offer their children as part of that .02%. Not once, since she was appointed, has Betsy Devos ever let me down in my initial belief that she would be education’s worst nightmare. I never thought she’d advocate murdering children, though.
Bear with me. The masthead will take a while because I have very little leisure time, and I’m not wanting to use it at a computer because I work too many hours a day here.
I have a yearlong plan for the blog that involves writing and photography. If you want to see those entries, please click on “Pet Prose” from the “tags” list.
Thanks for reading. January has been a challenging month, and I’m happy to have this outlet. Or rather, to provide an outlet for our rescue’s dogs and cats to express their creativity. 😉
Photo Friday has changed their site. I’ve done 515 Photo Friday posts; my first one was July 14, 2006. Sometimes Photo Friday hasn’t posted new challenges–usually around holidays, and most recently, as they’ve revamped their site. But I don’t think I’ve missed a challenge in all that time, not even when I went on the occasional posting hiatus. I tried to follow every theme they used, no matter what a stretch I had to make between a photo and a theme.
I don’t know where I first saw Photo Friday. I’m sure it was on someone’s blog. I know several of my other blogging friends did Photo Fridays, too, but only one or two still do, and not always consistently. Shit, for that matter, who’s still blogging? I’m barely here other than Fridays and Sundays.
The reason I began blogging was because I enjoyed other people’s blogs. Tim started a LiveJournal and I liked it, so I started one, too. That was in late 2004. In time, I realized what my other writer friends knew–keeping an online journal or blog was PUBLICITY for what we published. And readers could find us on our blogs and interact with us in a way that rarely happened in the old snail mail days. I still have friends I made via blogging. I also met some people who are with good reason not friends. It’s a weird world out there.
I migrated from LJ to a WordPress blog in April of 2011 because I already owned beckycochrane.com and didn’t have anything to put there, not having published a novel since 2009. I figured I might as well use it as my blogging platform. In time, I stopped talking politics because that became too mean and no fun. After even more time, I wrote only occasionally. Facebook and Twitter and Instagram pretty much killed blogs. Who wants to read some longass post from a stranger when you can read 140 characters from tons of strangers. After all, didn’t the Bell Companies–and by that, I mean Southern, Western, Mountain, etc. Bell who later became AT&T–teach us that a romantic story or a sentimental celebration among aging parents and their children or a girl’s idol worship of her big brother could be conveyed in 30 to 60 seconds? Who needs movies? Or even half-hour sitcoms? Those phone commercials were the forerunner of Twitter.
I doggedly blogged even when almost everyone I knew stopped because I WASN’T writing novels. The blog became a creative outlet for my photographs, my paintings, my magnetic poetry, my nostalgia, my doll fashions. When the animal rescue group began to consume my time–and you have no idea how much time that is, but all the people I never call or write or meet for lunch or email or see or travel to see or send birthday cards to: THEY know–the only things I was sure I’d make time for were those Photo Friday and Button Sunday posts. Even so, I linked to them on FB and people would comment there and never here, so my traffic must be pretty slim compared to the number of readers in blogging days of yore. A “like” button on FB is easy, and a comment there is mostly private since almost all my FB posts are friends and family only. This blog remains public, and though the dozens of comments from the old days are now only a few comments here and there, I still read them with the same interest and delight because connecting here continues to feel more genuine than on all those other quick and easy social media sites. This is one-to-one time between me and YOU, who still reads and comments. We’re not just one of a long line of tweets or FB posts or instagram photos. For a moment, we meet, just you and me, because we both want to be HERE, not just two voices lost in a cacophony of more voices than most of us, or at least I, care to hear at one time.
And Photo Friday–well, honestly, I started participating because by making the photos public in my otherwise mostly private Flickr account, and by posting them to the Photo Friday site, I could drive more traffic to the blog and therefore expose the Timothy James Beck novels and the edited anthologies and my own novels to a wider audience.
But now, as I say, Photo Friday has changed. I’ve been trying to figure out its new design, and as best I can tell, it allows us a better view of all the photos submitted on the actual site rather than clicking on the photographers’ links and going to their websites. In other words, Photo Friday has joined the quick and easy view it on your phone or tablet generation, no need to go to all those other places to see photos anymore. YAY!
Except…not yay. Because I liked clicking on those links and never knowing what I might see. A brilliant photographer from some country whose name I couldn’t pronounce? A hobby photographer who wrote really engaging stories about her crazy friends? By going to those contributors’ blogs or journals or websites, I have discovered whole new worlds that intrigued or entertained or dismayed or educated me.
And I, who am not a brilliant photographer and don’t pretend to be, am supposed to upload my photos there to be eclipsed by many far superior photos, and there’ll be no more visits from people who came to see one photo and, maybe intrigued by my tags, poked around and found other things that interested them, or that we had in common or–hey, you wrote BOOKS? Real books on paper that were sold in bookstores? I’m going to order one right now!
Anyway, this has all been WAY more than 140 characters, and thank you if you read this far as it means you are a rare and wondrous creature who still has an attention span and I probably love you more than Charlie the Unicorn. If I stop doing the Photo Friday challenges, I’ll still do something. I actually have a list in the notes app on my phone of what people told me they wanted me to blog about. It’s from July 17, 2010, and it makes me smile when I scroll down that far and discover it again.
YOU make me smile. Thank you for still reading here. I still love reading your thoughts.