Tag: links

Busy doin’ nothin’

What I’ve been doing hasn’t actually been nothing, but that title goes with the song I’m posting at the end. Over Friday and Saturday, I did yard work on the bed of shrubbery next to our driveway and cleaned up some more of winter’s gift of leaves and spring’s gift of other tree stuff from our front walkways.

I’ve also continued the purging and reorganizing of several bins and files. I created these two large piles of paper to go to a shredding company next week.

As for the Neverending Saga, I MAY have finally figured out an angle for the chapter I’m writing. Too soon to say, because I’ve already made several false starts that ended up deleted. Hopefully tomorrow, I’ll get on paper what I mentally wrote while I was coloring today. I finished this mandala that my mother-in-law drew as a birthday gift for me. It’s brighter than the photo makes it look, but too much flash washed it out.

Inspired by bossa nova, Brian Wilson’s song was on the Beach Boys’ 1968 album Friends. About the minutiae of a day in the life, I once decided “Busy Doin’ Nothin'” was the forerunner to Suzanne Vega’s song “Tom’s Diner” from 1987, and that song’s parody, “Jeannie’s Diner” by Mark Jonathan Davis in 1990. You can find both of those latter songs on YouTube (along with the Beach Boys, below).

Tiny Tuesday!

A few days ago, I unrolled the posters that have remained with me through the years. Goodness knows how many I didn’t keep, but I still have a few I may blog about now and then.

Among them, I found this mini poster of Jon Bon Jovi. It’s perforated, so I tore it out of something, but I think it’s too big to have been in a magazine or album. Regardless, he was a beautiful man then and remains a beautiful man today.

I never saw Bon Jovi live, but I remember one time Tom and I were going somewhere with Lynne and Craig. They had a big van, and I’d always sit all the way in the back like I was part of a band or something and needed solitude to create. This is because when I’m traveling, I’m almost always writing something in my head, whether it’s a scene for fiction, a poem, or a song. Even a single verse in a lyric can keep me occupied for a while.

On this little journey of perhaps an hour or so, I feel like I heard “Wanted Dead or Alive” more than once. Maybe I was listening through my old Walkman or something. It was not a new song then, because it came out in ’86 and this would have been ’89 or later, after we moved to Texas.

I always love songs by artists about being on the road, because they feed into the sensibility of the characters I write. (In fact, I’m almost finished with the third book in the Neverending Saga, and the next book will begin with The Musician on a mini tour.)

Out of the albums I was able to save after Harvey flooded us, I have these.

While writing this post, I listened to the song on You Tube, and one of the comments left there made me laugh:

Dr: You have 3 mins left to live
Me: Play Bon Jovi – Wanted Dead or Alive (Official Music Video)
Dr: But that’s 4 mins and 9 seconds
God: I’ll allow

Tiny Tuesday!

I feel I spend too much time looking for things and finding other things I don’t remember having even though I really like them.


I was looking in this beautiful wooden box (gift from James more than twenty years ago) for something.


Inside, I found this little gift box and couldn’t remember what it held.


Once I opened it, I knew it was also a gift from James, because the artist, Lucinda Yates, is from Maine, where James moved after leaving Houston.


A box in a box in a box. How cute is that bee?


And these are the tiny stone treasures inside the bee box.

Everything James has ever given me has a bit of magic and mystery attached–very much like James himself. Finding this has given me an idea of ways I can share a little magic with other friends. =)

Button Sunday


This is not my button; I found the photo on the Internet.

To finish 2021’s Black History Month, I colored a picture of Rosa Parks from my Boss Babes coloring book, and all the while, I had the great Neville Brothers song “Sister Rosa” in my head.

Not long after we moved to Houston, Tom and I saw The Neville Brothers Band at Rockefeller’s with Lynne. Many nights when we played cards at Lynne and Craig’s, among the CDs we listened to was their Yellow Moon. Love the band, that CD, and the song. Nothing but admiration for strong women who make “good trouble, necessary trouble,” as John Lewis said about Rosa Parks.

In my room…


On the first day I organized
These two dolls said to me
We’d like a music room, please

I was in the middle of taking so, so many photos of dolls in boxes, including Baseball Barbie here. I don’t leave her in her box; I keep her at hand when I write. I didn’t want to leave her in her baseball uniform. Since all the doll clothes are now inside the house, I searched for a dress with a 70s vibe. She looked so cute that I wanted a photo, so I lined up Guitar Ken’s instruments and shot this.

Yes, I still play with dolls, but now they, like coloring, are connected to what I write. I’ve found a free pass on the train back to childhood.

She once was lost…

Back in July 2019, I let you all know that Black Canary had escaped and was nowhere to be found. While YOU may have forgotten it, I’ve had to look at the empty box in my office every day since. You can’t just lose a superheroine without some self-recrimination.

It’s okay, though. Before the power went out and the water stopped flowing and WTFageddon hit Texas, this happened. The Bird of Prey is back where she belongs.