Tag: memories

Some celebrating on September 10


September 10 is the birthday of my friend Denece. My father taught me the value of having a Virgo in my life, and Denece and Jim have upheld that tradition. Every year when I think of Denece on her birthday (and send a card that will always get there late, because I have a bad habit of doing that), there are a ton of special things to connect to her. One of the biggest is that she brought yet another Virgo into my life: our dog Margot. Denece is the one who saw Margot’s photo on Twyla’s Friends and told us about her. Since Margot was about a year old when we adopted her in September of 2000, we gave her my father’s birthday (September 16). But I figure she’s special enough to celebrate on Denece’s birthday, too.


In this photo, Denece is squatting between Timmy and me at a signing for I’m Your Man. The photo, taken by my mother’s good friend (and professional photographer) Amber Ratisseau in 2005, is one of a group of photos that are some of my all-time favorites. That was a great signing at Borders with all the TJB writing partners, my mother, and some of our closest friends there.

Happy birthday, Denece, and thanks for all the terrific things you’ve brought to my life.

As y’all know, Friday night is usually Craft Night at The Compound, when sewing, painting, knitting, sketching, and who knows what else may happen. This week, our Friday was even better because a couple of real babes dropped by.


Lila and Hanley. They colored…


…watched a little TV…


and tried to decide who had the better toys.

I had a blast watching them and hanging out with Lynne, Lindsey, Rhonda, Tim, Tom, and the usual dog suspects. Thanks, all, for a great night.

And another one’s gone.

I can’t even begin to number how many movies I’ve seen at the Angelika. Independent films, art films, even some big releases. Tom and I used to meet James with Joe and maybe Steve V for dinner and a movie. The cafe was fun, with interesting food and good people watching. Some nights you’d spy a Houston athlete or a member of ZZ Top at another table. This is the theater where I trained myself to buy bottled water instead of Coke–but I still bought popcorn.

The hue and cry you heard from the direction of Houston this past Sunday was the shocked reaction to this note on the door:

Button Sunday

I think the first time I became aware of Gustav Klimt’s art was when I saw a print of his well-known work “The Kiss” in my friend Amy’s apartment in the early 1990s. Last night, my blogging friend Shawn posted a photo of her favorite Klimt painting, “The Virgins” (also called “The Virgin” and “The Maiden”) on Facebook. I like it so much that I decided to find a button of it. Klimt’s colors and mosaics in his paintings fascinate me; shadowboxes and collages I made in the 1990s incorporated little elements of those.

I recently acquired a work by Austin artist Cynthia Fedor. It’s a 4×4-inch canvas (tiny! part of its appeal to me). Her work is sparer but does remind me a little of some of Klimt’s paintings, and I’m completely infatuated with her theme and how she’s expressed it here.

framed:

It’s keeping me good company in my office.

Hump Day Happy in honor of Marika’s birthday

Possibly the silliest purchase I’ve ever made on eBay arrived today. I blame David Puterbaugh and his rousing endorsement of Toy Story 3. While Jim was here, we watched the first two Toy Story movies on DVD, then Jim, Tim, Tom, and I saw the new one in the theater. And YES, David, I DID need the Kleenex I took with me at your suggestion, and I wasn’t the only one. One of the themes of the movie is what happens to toys when their children grow up.

For years, I’ve mourned the disappearance of my wooden push puppet lion. He was one of my favorite toys, and if our toys remember us, he knows I didn’t lose him, discard him, or give him away. I’m sure he was stolen, and I know who the probable culprit was. I’ve never been able to find another resembling his craftsmanship and appearance, and I’ll never settle for anything less.

Along with my lion, other toys vanished along the way. I probably don’t remember most of them, but I do remember my Dolls of the World.

Dolls of the World were sold for 99 cents each with the purchase of Arco gasoline. There were twelve in all, and my mother collected six of them for me. They weren’t really to play with; they were for display. Even at that, not a whole lot of skill and craft went into them. They were basic plastic dolls–the kind often used for crafting–with hair too fine to brush, only movable at the arms and neck, and their clothes were cheaply made and not removable. Still, I liked the six I had. I learned about the countries they were from and took good care of them. Once they even helped me when I started in a new school. I took them for show and tell, and they were such a hit that my teacher took me to all the other classes in my grade so I could share them, a bizarre experience for a shy girl who normally did everything she could to avoid attention.

I know the dolls were on my bookshelves when I went away to college, but I suppose at some point, I was persuaded to let them go. After seeing Toy Story, I dreamed about them, which caused me to look them up online and on eBay. Not all of the dolls I found look like the ones I had, so maybe there were different versions for different years or regions. But I found England’s and Spain’s dolls that were identical to mine, and they were practically free, so I bought them.

In honor of Marika’s birthday, and the child who remains within us no matter how many birthdays we have, I decided to resurrect Hump Day Happy for this week. (Marika is the only one who ever expressed regret that it vanished as surely as my push puppet lion.) Anyone who wants to give me a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, can get an item from the happiness book to celebrate Marika’s special day with her. (I don’t advise picking 8/11, because I think Marika’s chosen it a couple of times, and it never changes.) Meanwhile, Marika, let’s pretend that whatever number you pick, it includes dancing naked men.