Tag: compound

Red Monday

Today’s post is brought to you by the color RED.

  1. Guinness is lying on a blanket given to Tom and me by Tim at Christmas. She’s currently on antibiotics and wash for an ear infection. She’s gone deaf, and we’re hoping that when the infection clears up, she’ll get some of her hearing back. We’d noticed some behavioral changes–that she seemed to sleep more, and when we’d call her outside, even though she’d be looking at us, she wouldn’t come, almost as if she were suffering dementia. The sleeping is because noises are no longer waking her, and she will have to learn a new system of hand signals and rewards if she is indeed deaf. For food, Guinness will prove that an old dog can definitely learn new tricks.
  2. This is a painting I did for Timmy and Paul at Christmas. It’s called “Heart Fall,” and I think it was 6×6 inches (I forgot to write down the canvas size)–acrylic on a back-stapled canvas.
  3. The number of Starbucks holiday beverage cups I spied in our recycle bin was ridiculous. In our defense, there were six of us in and out of The Compound during the holidays, and we all have gift cards!
  4. The silly clown dog is too busy to stop and smell the roses. But Margot’s back paw seems to be healing nicely from the lick granuloma, thanks to her collar and the steroid cream being applied twice daily.
  5. Another gift from Tim, The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs is a terrific collection of articles, fiction, humor, poems, cartoons, cover art, drafts, and drawings from the magazine’s archives. Some of my favorite writers are reprinted in its pages.
  6. This is an old Draw Something sketch I did for Timmy a long time ago. I still love playing this on my iPhone.

I leave you with one of the New Yorker cartoons.

It’s as if they know me…

Taking a break from editing, taking down Christmas decorations, cooking the traditional New Year’s Day meal that will include greens and black-eyed peas. Poured a fresh cup of coffee in a mug from Tim. Showing off my fabulous lunch box from Geri and David–and a new ornament from Lynne. I may just have to take that coffee to go as I sail up to the sun… Are all my friends on board?

Legacy Writing 365:338

This is a new photo, taken in the wee hours of Monday morning when I went outside with the dogs for a few minutes. I could feel EYES watching me; usually that means a rat is lurking somewhere, or a cat has interrupted some good old-fashioned rat stalking to stare at me. I don’t know if this is the same visitor I photographed in March of last year, but I was lucky to get one good photo this time.

Though it’s a new photo, I have an old story to go with it.

There’s a 1967 Canadian novel by Margaret Craven that was published in the U.S. in the early 1970s titled I Heard the Owl Call My Name, the story of an Anglican vicar who goes to live with Native Indians in British Columbia. I’ve never read it–now that I’ve remembered it, maybe I will–but my father was reading it one week when my mother was out of town. The phrase that gave the book its title comes from a Kwakiutl legend: When you hear the owl call your name, death is imminent.

When my mother returned to town, she or Terri brought Daniel for a visit. He was probably around this age.

While she was unpacking, Daniel did reconnaissance of the house–as I’ve mentioned before, she was always changing things. He came into her bedroom and said, “Grandmother, why is there an owl in the living room?” She pretty much ignored him, as adults are wont to do when children say foolish things. When he persisted, she said, “I have a lot of little birds all over the house, Daniel. [true; she collected wooden and ceramic birds and owls] Which one do you mean?”

He took her hand and led her to the living room, the least used room in the house. Then he pointed to a real, live owl who had somehow found its way inside and blinked sleepily at them from its perch.

I’m not sure how they got the owl out of the house–except that I know it wasn’t harmed.

Daddy was grateful that he didn’t hear the owl hoot in the night while he was reading his novel, because as he said, the title might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I learned that it’s always a good idea to listen to Daniel.

Legacy Writing 365:334


This photo is from when I was seven, and what I like about it is that Mother posed me as if I had anything to do with wrapping all those presents. This is how I know I didn’t: they look pretty good. I was, and continue to be to this day, the worst wrapper of gifts. Mother was adept at it. Lynne is amazing. So was Steve R–his gifts were wrapped like little works of art.

When I sit down to wrap gifts, it becomes The Christmas Moron: A Comedy in One Act. I’m sitting in the SAME spot. How do I repeatedly lose my pen, the tape, and the name tags? Why is all the paper I cut the wrong size even when I’ve done all the tricks to make sure it’s right? Why, when I’m cutting the paper, do the scissors take on a life of their own, weaving and bobbing like Otis Campbell the Mayberry Town Drunk? And why, when I thought I picked up the brand new roll of tape, does it turn out to be the one that runs out? Or the one with the defective jagged thingies that mangle and twist the tape?

By the time I’m through, I’m all MERRY FREAKING CHRISTMAS.

Today I received a catalog in the mail from Home Decorators Collection. (This is NOT a sponsored post.) As I was idly paging through it, I spotted this little darling piece of furniture:

The one in the catalog was a color called “Rhododendron Leaf,” but no matter. For a moment, I might have drooled. I imagined a life of wrapping gifts and packages to be mailed with everything right at hand, all organized and pretty. I understood why Candy Spelling had one room just for this purpose in her 123-room mansion.

Then I remembered I didn’t win that stupid Powerball, and I went in search of another roll of tape while a dog hair tumbleweed drifted across the floor.

Legacy Writing 365:331

It’s time once again to break out the story of the Angel Books.

I first became acquainted with these through my friend Steve R in the early 1990s. Though I’d been a fan of Christmas in my younger years, the luster of the holiday faded for me after my father died. My two biggest Christmas advocates, Lynne and Liz, lived far away from me, as did most of my family. It really took Steve, whose excitement about Christmas never wavered even when he was sickest, and our friend Tim R, who went all out for the holiday with his decorating-passionate mother, to melt the holiday icicles encasing my heart.

Steve had found, at Bookstop, one of these books of angels, based on women in Renaissance paintings, to color. That was a period when I’d developed a passion for Renaissance art, thanks to Houston’s museums and a past-life regression I experienced. The angels intrigued me, so Lynne and I bought a few books and began coloring, painting, and otherwise decorating angels. After Steve died, the tradition continued. Though the books are out of print, one year Marika found several and dispersed angels among some of our friends to color and surprise me. I was thrilled to receive new angels from around the globe, and they’ve joined the many angels that Tim arranges throughout the house each Christmas season.

Thank you to everyone who’s ever colored one of these angels for me. There are still angels left to turn into art if you’re interested in contributing one to this festive band.


Dining room windows.


Living room window.


Double windows in living room.


Angels now spill over to nestle among stones and crystals.

State of The Compound

We are enjoying a “cold” front–and I realize cold is relative, but 56 degrees is a welcome relief in Houston. Except my flowers looked sad about it this morning. If they survived summer, they need to plant up and endure this, too.

It’s the perfect weather to break out the iron skillets. So, this:


Homemade chili and cornbread. Add our tossed salads, and Tom, Tim, and I will be fixed to gather ’round the TV and watch “The Young and the Restless” on Tivo tonight. It’s just like a heartwarming scene from “Little House on the Prairie,” isn’t it?

You know what else it’s a perfect night for? For Tom to come home from work with THESE for me!

I’d forgotten that Stevie Nicks put out a new CD last year until Greg reminded me of it. And today, he also helped me remember that she had a song on it inspired by Twilight. I love Stevie.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know why the soundtrack from Breaking Dawn Part 2 has me all worked up, just scroll to the bottom of my blog to remind yourself what Tim laughingly told me to upload many months ago. Indeed, it has made me giggle every single day that I’ve seen it there–even days when I didn’t much feel like laughing. For future generations who may stumble onto this blog by accident, because my countdown widget will be gone, here’s a screen cap:

This year, only Lindsey, my Vampartner in Crime, is willing to go with me to the first night of the new and final (?) movie. But LUCKY FOR US, they are starting showings at ten PM Thursday instead of the usual midnight, giving us a better chance of seeing ‘tweens and teens sparkle on.

Then it’ll all be over and I have to be a grownup human again. Or build a new world in a novel of my own…

ETA: Also added to Numbers Photo Series No. 3.