Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
Tim posted this to his Instagram account today.
My comment:
I thought I’d share a few of those photos. I know how many of you have lost your own best companions. It’s a sad group to be part of, but the endings can never be as powerful as the time we get to share with our beloved dogs, cats, and other animal friends.
Today was a day of being close with friends when we said a hard goodbye. Not my place to share this publicly yet, but I wanted to mark the date.
Interestingly, a winged visitor joined us in the early evening as we sat outside (a rare opportunity this summer; shade and a breeze made it possible). I had hoped that distant cry heralded an arrival, and then a very large crow landed in the tallest tree just outside the back of our property. Some say crows are bad omens. Not to me. I think they bring a little magic and sometimes a message. I felt like he confirmed my choice to begin the next book with my “crow” character.
I want to do more thinking and reflecting–timely, as Mercury goes retrograde mid-afternoon tomorrow (thanks, Pat!). For me, Mercury retrograde provides an opportunity to pause. It also reminds me to make sure my actions are aligned with my intentions. Of course, any of us can do this any time. Mercury just makes me mindful of it.
Adding a couple of tiny reminders of a love that made me laugh.
Current Photo Friday theme: Insect
August, 2006, at The Compound. Jim was here, and we spotted this guy on the car antenna.
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.
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.
Today is National Friendship Day! Holla!
It’s also National Sisters Day. I have one by birth, some sisters-in-law and -in-love, and some friends with whom I argue and party like sisters, so a shout out to them, too!
And hey, if you don’t feel like thinking about your friends or you don’t have sisters, it’s also Psychic Day, American Family Day, Wiggle Your Toes Day, Cycle To Work Day, National Fresh Breath Day, Farmworker Appreciation Day, International Sailor Moon Day, and National Rootbeer Float Day. FIND A REASON TO BE HAPPY. I shout that because you may have forgotten it’s always Listen to An Aries Day.
Photos from my Wednesday, when I was the guest, along with Lindsey and Rhonda, of Lindsey’s father at an Astros baseball game! (Tom went with them to a game a long time ago, and it was my turn this time.)
I’ll start with some souvenirs.
Another cup! Doesn’t say “Minute Maid Park,” but it does say Astros!
Lindsey bought a couple of these little hats that were then filled with ice cream. She and her dad shared one, and I took a couple of spoonfuls from Rhonda’s, and then she gave me her hat after she finished her ice cream. I took the second photo with an official league-sized baseball to show its scale.
Took this one of Astros number 30 player, right fielder Kyle Tucker, at bat.
Yesterday, every fan at the game received a free replica Kyle Tucker 2022 World Champions ring.
Back at RubinSmo Manor after the game, Pepper stopped playing for a few seconds to admire it.
While foster cat Tofu hung out next to me taking it all in.
This isn’t my ticket; our tickets were on Lindsey’s dad’s phone. It was likely the ticket of one of several guys sitting in our row. We were seated in front of the press box, and at the end of the seventh inning stretch, members of the media tossed bags of peanuts into our area. Rhonda just missed snagging a bag when a guy taller than us grabbed it. At the end of the game, he turned to me and said, “I feel like I stole these peanuts from y’all,” and gave me the bag, which I in turn gave to Rhonda, whereupon Lindsey’s dad said, “Give them to Tom since he couldn’t come to the game!” That’s exactly what Rhonda did when Tom came to pick me up at their place later. Thank you, stranger, for the peanuts and maybe the ticket. More good baseball vibes.
This little fan sat in front of us with her grandparents and mother and was SO good the entire game.
These are some photos Lindsey took of the day.
Going to what in the pandemic would be called a “super spreader event” was something I did because I was almost always masked, Lindsey and Rhonda were masked as well in highly trafficked areas and inside our Uber rides, and all my companions were considerate of my concerns and in helping me be comfortable. Lindsey and Rhonda invited me to join them at this game around the beginning of July. They knew I’d planned to go to a baseball game (albeit in Chicago to see the Cubs play) with Lynne in 2020 before the pandemic put an end to all travel plans.
Like people all over the world, I was bummed that all the things I intended to do in 2020 never came to be, plus I lost my job, and of course, since then, I’ve had to face the fact that chronic anxiety became part of the new pandemic/post-pandemic me. There are several reasons I’m not able to travel these days, only minimally related to my health, and my family and friends outside of Houston are understanding about that. The way friends like Lindsey, Rhonda, Lynne, and Amy, and family like Tom, Tim, and Debby, help me navigate and adjust to how to “do” life, going places and seeing people in ways that make that easier, gives me a quality of life I wouldn’t have without them.
Once again, as I described in yesterday’s post, baseball has come to have wonderful associations for me. I’ve woven my new respect for the game into the lives of a couple of my characters in the work in progress, and “Papa Smo,” as Lindsey and Rhonda call Lindsey’s dad, told me great baseball trivia during the game in the name of “research.” Lynne, who has been a huge baseball fan her whole life, is glad to have me come on board and like Lindsey, Rhonda, and Tom, is always happy to help me understand the game better.
These are great memories that will carry me through the coming days when I monitor my health for any signs of Covid exposure because while, as they say, “the pandemic is over,” the virus hasn’t gone away and is having a bit of a summer resurgence, though fortunately most people are not as sick, or not getting as sick (thanks to their immunity from either having had Covid or because of vaccinations) or being hospitalized as much. This, too, is just part of anxiety and something I work to manage. Such realities are one reason writing and creating and having interactions via this blog and my Instagram account are so helpful to me. Thank you for reading here and commenting or emailing about posts; you all lift my spirits.
Happy Hot August! Today, when Tom finished work, we ran some errands, including picking up my new glasses!
New computer glasses.
New bifocals.
Now my eyes get to go through more adjusting, but I hope this will help get rid of some of the eyestrain and headaches.
Then… I picked up new Ken fashion.
Kind of cool that most of this Ken-wear is made from recycled plastic.
That sporty jacket just lent itself to this shot.
“Hi, Ken!”
“Hi, Barbies!”
Nope, haven’t seen the movie yet, so no spoilers please. Baseball, not the movie, has been on my mind, so I hark back to my list of missing things that I blogged about in December ’22. I realized that I might have a photo of one of those missing items on a different website I used to curate a long time ago. I checked my Flickr album and there it was, shot in 2007.
I know we had this cup when we moved into this house in 2015, and I think I know how it went missing. At some point when several of us were going somewhere, maybe Christmas shopping, or maybe after going our separate ways after a big dinner, someone grabbed it from my cabinet to use as a “go” cup, and it never found its way back home. No big deal, except the cup has a little bit of history; it comes from the era when what is now Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play baseball, was then Enron Park, before the collapse of Enron and the scandal that ended in founder Ken Lay’s bankruptcy and trials before he died while awaiting sentencing in 2006. Ken Lay was a huge part of Houston’s history, and I know people who worked at Enron, including one who was developing something with Lay that would have been a massive success (I say this with confidence because when things fell apart, someone else unconnected to Lay or Enron had a similar idea and it resulted in a globally successful online business that launched in 2007).
The other reason this cup is part of my personal history is how and when I got it. After the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, you may recall that a whole lot of things shut down for a while, including large gatherings, for security reasons. A friend’s husband who works in the oil and gas industry often had tickets to events that he gave to clients, but since traveling and other activities were curtailed, he ended up with tickets to an Astros game and no clients in town to use them. So he and his wife invited Tom and me to attend an Astros game with them. Baseball wasn’t really my thing, but I was happy to go for their company, and I knew Tom would enjoy the game.
That game was the first time I’d really done anything after the attacks. I was doing contract editing at that time for a financial company, and the fallout to the financial markets put a stop to a lot of work, in my case, for several years. It felt SO GOOD to be out among people again. To be doing something that felt American and wholesome (as the old jingle says, “Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet!”) with my fellow citizens. It wasn’t that we forgot the national trauma we were experiencing, but we could remember that most of the world stood with us, supported us, and believed in us, reminding us to believe in the best of us. If I recall correctly, at the seventh-inning stretch, we saw a moving film tribute to the first responders at the tragedies in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
The cup is gone, but the memory remains, and it marked a turn in my attitude toward baseball (I have deeply unhappy memories connected to baseball from the 1980s). The change in me didn’t manifest immediately, but I was reminded again of baseball’s power to heal when the Astros won the World Series in 2017. Houston was reeling from the effects of the Harvey floods in late August. When the Astros took that title in October, it was the first time they’d won the series in the franchise’s history, and they were the first Texas team to win it. The impact on Houston’s mood, and my own (as we began to put our home and property back together after being flooded), was immeasurably positive. We had something to celebrate, something to feel good about, something good, not tragic, that brought us together as a community.
To be continued…
Guess who came to brunch and afternoon social time today? Pepper, Rhonda, and Lindsey!
Rhonda has a new passion: baking her own sourdough bread. This is quite a process, and I can assure you, her devotion is delicious.
Some more of their tasty contributions to our charcuterie brunch.
Lox, avocado dip, jalapeno dip, toasted and salted okra chips, sprouts, tomatoes, salami, and four cheeses.
They also brought watermelon, and we provided carrots, celery, and berries. (Look at the yummy bread on the left, ready for its dipping sauce.)
I cut up cucumbers, bell pepper, and radishes to go with the Ranch dip.
And made some chicken nuggets, also tasty with the Ranch dip.
It was a feast and hours of great conversation, storytelling, and laughing so much. We needed this catch-up day!
I think it was Thursday night that I finished reading and editing the fifth book in the Neverending Saga. I left some places with big circles around them marked as “fix this” because I either wanted to seamlessly delete stuff or rewrite it. Which I did as I input my edits yesterday, then printed it. Weird thing; with all that cutting, I lost a page yet I added 400-ish words. Math is weird.
Taking a break before I revisit the sixth book and make decisions about the seventh. I understand blogging about this is boring. Sorry.
Today I worked on a couple of paintings, and because I was so preoccupied yesterday and today, I didn’t realize some calls or texts weren’t reaching my phone. Sorry about that, too. Tom was nice enough when he got home from his volunteer gig to take my phone to our carrier storefront (second time he’s done this; same problem), and this time, it seems to be fixed.
As is usual with me, I over-poured paint. I had too much left over to be willing to waste it. Sometimes I’ll cover my palettes with tape for later, but I finished what I was doing and probably won’t paint again soon. Then I remembered I had several packages of 2″x2″ canvases–TINY! So I unwrapped those and used all the leftover paint to lay down base coats for some future project.
Clean palettes; wee canvases ready when I figure out something to do with them.
A story about art. I only started exploring this kind of creativity in the early 1990s, first painting T-shirts, then doing ceramics. And along the way, I did some pretty awful stuff, and if I could, I’d take it back!
In time, I began to share some stuff on my LiveJournal/then my blog (which linked to FB and Twitter, two outlets I no longer really use), and people wanted to buy it, which was shocking. Then I’ve gotten some commissions over the years that I was happy to do, and there were times payments for those might be all the money I made for a month or longer. I’ll always be grateful for people who likely didn’t know they were helping me pay vet bills, power bills, etc.
I’ve also gifted a lot of my art, and that can be weird. Some people never acknowledge receiving it, and it’s awkward to be like, Uh…did you by any chance receive a package from me?
I remember the first time someone told me a recipient had thrown away a painting of mine. Yikes! I’d rather have a gift I created returned to me than go to a landfill. I could either repurpose the materials or maybe find it a better home. I’m not sharing this to shame anyone–I seriously doubt anyone who’s done that reads my blog these days.
I appreciate every kind word, every purchase, every gift acknowledged. I create because it makes me happy, whether it’s writing or painting, and while I wouldn’t have turned away wealth or acclaim, that’s never been a motivation for anything I’ve done, so that’s a good thing, right?
Anyway, as I looked at the wee canvases, I was reminded of a mixed media piece (titled “The Kids Are All Right”) I did a dozen years ago for a friend who IS one of those people who expresses gratitude and shows kindness (as well as being someone who has made me laugh my ass off since 1977). So maybe these will end up as part of a larger piece similar to hers; who knows.
They could work for either bottle caps or wee Spirograph flowers.
