Tag: memories

Mindful Monday

When I can’t sleep because my mind is racing too fast over too many things, I think of it as the Hamster Wheel of Insomnia. I know whereof I speak, because I used to lie in the dark and listen to my hamster Dini running on his wheel next to my bed back in the 1980s.

When I was looking for a meme for today, I stumbled over one on The Post, a faculty and staff email newsletter from Niagara University, and it made me laugh. I didn’t expect this particular Eagles song to serve as an example for being mindful.

I’ll try to remember not to let the sound of my brain on its hamster wheel drive me crazy and, you know, take it easy.


Thank you, Jackson Browne, (the late) Glenn Frey, Eagles, and Niagara University for starting my work week with humor. I do hope it’ll be a real work week, because I very much miss my characters and want to lose–or find–myself writing. Also, I’ve said it before, but the titles of all the books in the Neverending Saga are Jackson Browne song titles.

Beryl: Day 6

[Original post on this date: Back in May when we lost power, it was restored on the sixth day. I remember hoping we’d never be without power for six days again.

Be careful what you wish for, right? Because we have no power and it’s just about to become seven days. ]


Another strong contender for a Mary Stewart favorite, this book has so many things I love that I even forced Tom to sit and listen to me elaborate on them. It also has one of the most touching epilogues I’ve ever read in a novel.

A circus in Vienna, a horse with a great backstory, and a strong leading man with a smart, interesting wife. I remember Greg and I once discussing how easy it would be to rewrite this using the Internet in place of the movie reel that kicks things off.

The novel is much more appealing than everyone’s debris piles. Tom and I took a walk around the neighborhood today and he got some photos with his phone that will probably end up on this website one day. His photos are ALSO better than debris piles.

One street over, we saw some power guys from a company in West Virginia that travels throughout the country to help with disaster recovery. When we talked to them, they’d already checked out the tangled tree at our fence line and it was on their list. This is the first contact we’ve had with anyone about repairs. We’re reluctant to feel hopeful, though, because some repair dates in our area are as far out as the nineteenth.

Tiny Tuesday!

During May’s power outage, I colored every day during the sunlight hours. Coloring gave me the opportunity to think of my characters and what I wanted to write when I could get back on the Internet and my computer.

I was feeling way more stress and anxiety during this weather event and its power outage. For the first time, I decided to take my anxiety meds, though only in half-doses. Just an attempt to take the edge off.

I also opted to read instead of color, choosing comfort books. I stuck with one of my favorite authors since I was a teenager (my mother, sister, and I all shared and devoured these novels). I’ve reread my favorite Mary Stewart books many times, so I decided to begin with books I don’t remember reading at all, but if I did, it was only once.


First up on Tuesday: Thornyhold. Not so much her usual romantic suspense, this one had a little more magic, a fun change from a small paperback.

Sunday Sundries

Today I hope to conclude the bookmarks discussion prompted by Mark L. It’s a shame he’s unable to see these posts at present due to various technical issues. I miss his comments and look forward to interacting with him again soon, both here and on his online journal.

These are the rest of the bookmarks I found inside books on the living room shelves. The first batch includes books I shelved unread (I don’t actually keep a TBR pile because I wouldn’t know where to stack it). I put bookmarks in them as little flags to help me find them when I’m looking for something to read. These are on my music shelves.

Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. I very much look forward to reading this when I’m ready for another biography. (I think the most recent three I read are on loan to Lynne: one each on Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen.) Willie’s bookmark advertises the animal rescue group Scout’s Honor Rescue. This was the organization to whom Lynne turned over two dogs she found tied to a fire hydrant on her way home from work one night. The poodle mix, Curly, was adopted immediately. When she took the chihuahua, Paco, to an adoption event, she realized she couldn’t let him go and adopted him herself. He was part of her family for years before crossing the Rainbow Bridge. I adored that little guy.

More Scouts Honor memories: Tim fostered many dogs for the group (Tom and I fostered less than a handful). Pixie was Tim’s first foster fail and became Rex’s “little sister.” Later, someone reached out to Lindsey about a stray dog living in a parking garage and being cared for by several people. The property owner was going to call a kill shelter to pick her up. Scout’s Honor agreed to take her into their adoption program if Lindsey could catch her, and Tim agreed to foster her. That dog was Penny, who became Tim’s second foster fail and Rex’s second little sister. All three lived great lives with Tim, bringing much joy to friends from The Compound, Doll House, Houndstooth Hall, RubinSmo Manor, Fox Den, Fairy Cottage, and Green Acres/Half Acre Wood. Rex, Pixie, and Penny are reunited with one another and all their dog and cat buddies at the Rainbow Bridge.


That’s a bookmark for the Timothy James Beck novel I’m Your Man in George Plasketes’s biography Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles. It’s not his only  bio waiting for me, and I suspect these were moved to the pile after I read Crystal Zevon’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

 

 

The other bio is Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon by C.M. Kushins. The bookmark inside the Kushins book is from Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans. I didn’t buy the book there, but I’ve purchased others from them during various Saints and Sinners festivals, and anything New Orleans-related seems like a good bookmark for the untamed spirit of Zevon.

Somewhat related to New Orleans (if you read long enough, you’ll get the connection)…

I initially became aware of writer Mark Doty thanks to my friend James, who gave me one of Mark’s memoirs and invited me to attend  a Mark Doty reading and booksigning with him back in the mid-nineties.

I continued to go to appearances Mark made in Houston. From one of those, there are two bookmarks in this copy of My Alexandria: Poems By Mark Doty. One is from Brazos Bookstore, which is almost certainly where I went to hear him read from the book in 1998 and had him sign it afterward.

 

 

 

The second bookmark is from Twelve Voices: University of Houston Creative Writing Program & Imprint, Inc. Doty was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years.

Above are more books from his appearances. All are signed, and some are inscribed with specific messages based on our conversations.

Once, I admitted to Mark that a few years earlier (before he was part of their faculty), I’d applied to U of H’s MFA program in Creative Writing. I felt driven to do so by my late friend Steve’s plea that I create fiction from my experiences with the HIV/AIDS community and not let my friends’ stories be forgotten. I’d tried, with very little success, to do that, and wondered if a writing program might help me find my voice.

I knew what a longshot it was. From their own site, the program advises, Admission to our creative writing program is extremely competitive, with up to 20 new students across the two genres selected each year from the hundreds of applications received from around the world. I’d long been out of the academic world, and I had no outstanding writing samples to submit with my application. I was disappointed, but not surprised, not to be accepted into the program.

From then on, my inscriptions from Mark in his books always included encouragement and best wishes for my writing. And then, in a most unexpected way, I did find a voice for telling those stories when I began doing a fun writing exercise with my friends Timothy, Timmy, and Jim. I could recognize the spirit, humor, and sadness of the friends I lost and their larger community in what I was writing with them. When we had a draft of a first novel that grew out of that exercise, I began sending it out and got dozens of rejections. I shared that information with Mark at a signing in 1999 for his memoir Firebird, telling him I was happy to be writing but sad that the writing wasn’t finding a home. This is what he wrote when he signed his book that night.


Mark Doty. For Becky, who will be persistent–9/99 Houston.

Because of that, I decided not to give up on behalf of the entire TJB team. Timothy and I both read a first novel by another writer and agreed that his tone and subject were similar to what we were writing. It seemed worth reaching out to that author’s agent, who submitted the manuscript to Kensington, and all that writing and submitting ultimately turned into the five Timothy James Beck novels. Persistence can definitely pay off. Thank you, Mark Doty.

I’ve also had the pleasure of interacting with Mark at Saints and Sinners literary festivals in New Orleans. At one of those, I went to a panel where he had his attendees do a writing exercise by giving us a prompt. What I wrote gave me a scene I hoped to use in a Becky Cochrane contemporary romance novel if the publisher wanted a third, but my editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my third Coventry idea (I believe it was titled A Coventry Homecoming). Last year, I modified what I wrote during Mark’s panel and included it in the sixth novel of the Neverending Saga. Hold on to your scribblings, writers, you never know when you may find a place for them. And published or unpublished, NEVER STOP WRITING. (I have to remind myself of this constantly.)


I know with certainty that I’ve read this Louise Penny book, although it has a bookmark in it. I think that little angel was probably another bookmark that belonged to my mother and remained tucked inside the novel even after I finished reading it. Louise Penny is among my favorite authors and I’m up-to-date on all her novels. Except…

Recently, Tom and I were talking about the novel Bill Clinton cowrote with author James Patterson. I bought it, read it, liked it. (They wrote a second, but I don’t have it. Yet.) Tom asked me if I’d ever read the novel Hillary Clinton cowrote in 2021 with Louise Penny. And I said, “I’m pretty sure I got it from Murder By The Book, but I haven’t read it yet.”

 

Sure enough, there it was on the bookshelf with its “flag,” a bookmark from Detering Book Gallery, a fantastic bookstore, now closed, that was managed by our friend Steve V. No bibliophile who experienced Detering could ever forget what a joy it was. This political thriller would be a strong contender for my next read except that every.single.day, I’m heartsick because of politics.

The Clinton/Penny book is on what I guess could be called my executive branch shelf, where I spotted another book with a bookmark.

Both books were published in 2005, and I don’t remember if I read President Carter’s, but I definitely know I purchased, read, and relished all of Harley Jane Kozak’s Wollie Shelley mysteries after I got them from Murder By The Book.


Sadly, I just missed a booksigning at Murder By The book with my friend Dean James, writing as Miranda James, for his latest Cat In The Stacks Mystery, Requiem For A Mouse. You can bet I’ll be getting it from MBTB soon and adding it to his shelf, where here, you might spot a couple of bookmarks. I must have been reading the Southern Ladies Mystery Dead with the Wind at Mister Car Wash, judging by the bookmark. On the shelf in the background, another Murder By The Book bookmark is tucked among those Cat In The Stacks paperbacks.

I believe this concludes three Sundays of Bookmark Inventory. Thanks for following along. Sometimes, this site contains the only writing I can find the heart or energy to do. These three posts gave me a chance to express my deep regard for other writers and their work, my commitment to my own writing, and my gratitude for readers, including those of you who read here. Writing can feel like hollering into the void sometimes, so thank you for when you comment here or email or text me to let me know you’re still out there reading me.

Tonight, we’ll start seeing the impact of Beryl on our side of Houston. Possible street flooding, trees down, power outages. We’re preparing as best we can. I’ll update when I’m able. Everyone stay safe.

Saturday Storm

Back in the pre-pandemic days, when I still had a job and also went to lots of appointments or took Debby to hers, I spent a lot of time in my car or waiting rooms coloring. These small coloring books (about 5×7 inches) were often in the magazine stands in checkout lines at the grocery store, so I’d grab one to keep in the car. I haven’t used them in quite a while. The cover of the one with the ice cream cone had a glass of water spilled on it, which is why it’s missing.

Yesterday, I was thinking before I wrote, and I began glancing through these. A few of the coloring pages made me feel nostalgic for things from my childhood, like Uncle Gerald’s weeping willow tree and ice cream cones (I rarely eat ice cream these days). So I chose these two to color. (I took the ice cream cone from inside the coloring book; the cover’s still on it.)

Back in my younger days, when at Baskin Robbins, I’d get a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge and a scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip on a double cone. On my coloring page cone, top to bottom, I imagined the flavors as: blueberry, cherry, orange sherbet, chocolate, orange popsicle with red sprinkles, bubblegum, strawberry, lime, banana popsicle, grape popsicle, mint chocolate chip, raspberry, and chocolate fudge ice cream–sort of like frozen Skittles in a cone. Today’s the first birthday of our grandniece. We were just texted a photo of her eating a giant ice cream cone that looked as wild as this one (and lots messier!).

We’ve had a storm today, with thunder and a couple of power flickers. Right now, the dogs have calmed down as the thunder has let up, and so far, the power’s still on. I’m not even sure this is related to Tropical Storm Beryl, as we should be getting the brunt of that in our area on Monday. This could be outer bands, I suppose? [ETA: Today’s was a different system. Beryl’s outer bands begin arriving tomorrow around noon.]

Coastal friends, stay safe, dry, and air conditioned. I’ll go back to writing as long as the electricity still holds.

Tiny Tuesday!


In April of 2020, I posted about this idea I found: The Coping Skills Toolbox. I shared the above photo of the box I put together to help me with quarantine anxiety (not only was the world gripped by a pandemic with no preventative medication and few effective treatments for some populations, including my own, but I was laid off from my job of six years due to the pandemic).

Looking back at that post reminds me that I’ve been forthright on this site for at least the last four years about how anxiety has been a lifelong struggle for me. I was prescribed medication for it when I was eighteen that I never used. In 2022, I was prescribed medication on an as-needed basis, which I used very little of. I will occasionally take medication to help me sleep.

Medications are rarely my first option. What I have to take for my physical health, I take. But I’ll always try to manage anxiety in other ways. This is not in any way a judgment about people who manage their physical and emotional health through medication. For a variety of reasons, it’s simply not my first choice.

I still have that “toolbox.” I’ve long-since rewatched the comfort movies and reread the comfort novels that were in it, so they’re no longer in there. It still holds my Magnetic Poetry Journal that I sometimes put poems in, along with the magnetic board I can use to arrange words. It still holds a small coloring book and two tins of coloring pencils. The toys–Superman, Batman, and the tiny plastic cars–are still in there. The bottle of bubbles is not.

After looking at the book I often use as ideas for my Tiny Tuesday posts (shown above, on the right), I decided to add to the box again because of two things I found listed in the book.


This morning, I added my Magnetic Poetry Haiku Kit and a movie. I don’t know if Sliding Doors is a classic at twenty-six years old, but it’s a comfort movie for me. I watched it earlier, and it inspired the haiku I created which is now written in the journal, too. As you can see from my photo below, all the words I wanted weren’t available to me, so I added them to the photo. The haiku goes with the theme of the chapter I’ll be writing when I can get my brain directed that way again.


There is a quote from the movie that’s one of my favorites, when one of the characters says, “I’m a novelist. I’m never going to finish the book.”

Hope you’re all having a good Tuesday and being kind to yourselves.

Sunday Sundries

This is a continuation of last week’s post, suggested by Mark L, wherein I’m sharing photos of the physical bookmarks I’ve found around the house. As I was looking for something on my bookshelves after I did the first post, I realized I have books with bookmarks still in them. I thought it would be fun to share those, too. I’m starting with those found on the library shelves. Next week I’ll go to the living room shelves and be finished with this particular sundries subject. Unless I get more bookmarks. =)

I ordered this book back in April as explained in this post.

I don’t remember why I might have been rereading or referencing Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (a favorite poem), but that’s where I found another Murder By The Book bookmark on that page with the poem’s delightful illustration. Appropriate bookmark! If you aren’t familiar with the poem, the speaker had his “last duchess” murdered. It’s the kind of thing a duke leaves off his online dating accounts. Duchess wannabes, you have been warned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I spotted a bookmark in the second volume of Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past, reminding me where I left off. And that I left off, and when the heck do I intend to finish reading this and the third book? Who knows, but Half Price Books will be happy to alert me, the next time I glance toward that shelf, that I’m on page 80, and time’s a’wastin’.

Ralph Waldo Emerson looks none too pleased with me. Is it because I haven’t read my Proust, or is it because of the bookmark tucked into his book on page 30?

It’s an advertisement for Lisa Alther’s novel Original Sins. I suspect the very serious Emerson knows that’s not a treatise on the concept of original sin, but hey, it’s probably not as racy as Alther’s first novel I read, Kinflicks. Count your blessings, Ralph.


I’m hoping Henry David Thoreau is not as upset about the bookmark I found in his tome. At least it has a somewhat more religious theme, with references to Psalms and Proverbs. I think this bookmark came from my mother, and the full text is, Becky, “Close To God,” “…Thou art my God, and I will praise thee,” Psalm 118:28,” and “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches…” Proverbs 22:1.


The quote marked on that page is most likely because it was cited in a lecture in a college class (RIP, Dr. Beidler, who changed my life in so many ways): “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is…” Thoreau would no doubt be pleased that I take this to heart. I do love and appreciate my life. I might fault-find technology, but I suspect the original Mr. Live Off The Grid might be of a similar disposition.


This copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was a gift from old LiveJournal pal and composer Jeff Funk. It’s full of index cards with notes made by him referencing certain passages. The first card reads, “Becky, if you’re ever feeling caught up in chaos, I hope these beautiful words will bring you comfort. All my best, Jeff Funk, 12/18/09.” I often take dives into Whitman, and one of my long-term goals is to take a free online course on Leaves of Grass. I have several copies, but this one will always be special thanks to Jeff.

I also spotted something sticking out of the pages of the biography Virgina Woolf, by Hermione Lee. I’ve mentioned on here before that I’ve never finished this biography. It’s not from lack of interest and it’s no reflection on the biographer, I simply forget about it, despite recurring reminders of Woolf (just this week, Timmy posted a drawing on Instagram from his sketchbook with Woolf as his subject).

As Jim always says before he visits us and we talk about movies he wants to watch with us, meals he wants to eat with us, and places he wants to see with us, “Put it on the list.” Coincidentally, what was the perfect “bookmark” of what page I’m on?  Two photos sent by Jim, one of Jim, one of his ex (I don’t show that one because I didn’t ask permission of the ex. Jim, on the other hand, is used to me sharing images of him on this site). No idea how long ago these photos were taken, but I think he’s at his family’s cabin, and I like that he’s in front of books. Holding what appears to be a glass of wine. What a distinguished gentleman!

ETA: I don’t know how I missed this photo when I created this entry. I was riveted by this Joan Ashby novel and definitely finished it. I don’t think the bookmark is there to note any particular passage, but I’m sure it’s from Brazos bookstore because I bought the book there and used it while I was reading. (It’s a long novel.)  Wolas has only two published novels. As soon as there are more, I’ll read them.