Tag: novels

Tiny Tuesday!


This is a bird house I painted and decorated for a little girl in 2011. I called it a Fairy Roost in my blog post back then. I’m sure the bird house is long gone, but I’ll always have the pleasant memory of creating it.

That tiny bird house was on my mind lately because my most recent completed chapter in the Neverending Saga had fun information about birds and bird houses. In this case, though, the houses belonged to a family with the last name of Bird. Since I’m trying to gently redirect my focus back to writing, I chose this more literal concept of bird houses as my coloring page on Saturday and Monday.


The birds on the houses are more fun than realistic, so I looked at some California birds before I chose their colors.
Upper row, first house, the bird has the colors of a Stellar’s Jay; middle house, the bird on the roof has the colors of the Oak Titmouse, and inside the birdhouse, the bird has the colors of the Cedar Waxwing; third house, the bird has the colors of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
Lower row, the first house bird has the colors of the Mourning Dove; middle bird on the roof has the colors of the Yellow Warbler, and on the porch, the bird has the colors of the Loggerhead Shrike; third house, the bird has the colors of the House Finch.

I still have a page I colored this past weekend to share, maybe tomorrow. You know, I have an abundance of coloring books. Anything you’d like to see?

What’s up, Thursday?


Same old thing. Not enough sleep. Should have eaten breakfast sooner. No interest in reading all the post-mortems because everybody’s a political genius after the fact. Mopped the library. Finished a coloring page from that book on the right. Thinking of a woman I know who loves horses. (A real person I used to work with, not a character.) Suspect there’ll be a lot of coloring in days to come.


Must sleep. Perchance to dream. May it be something to inspire my writing.

words for today

I will now get to learn how to manage depression and anxiety. I’ll be seriously curtailing my online time. This morning, I read the social media post of a personal friend. He’s a really good human. A gay man. Gifted. Smart. Compassionate. He was being encouraging to people who feel wounded by the election results. Reminding his readers to take the long view, knowing there are still ways we can make our world a better place for ourselves and the marginalized. There was nothing hateful in his words. Nothing objectionable. But his comments began filling up with people mocking him, verbally attacking him. Gloating. Even low-key threatening him.

I’m sure he’s not surprised. I’m not surprised.

I’ve never tolerated hatefulness on this blog since I began it in 2004. I will ask you do not comment here or speak to me elsewhere and tell me ALL [fill in the blank with whatever descriptor you identify as] are not like that. I know. I’ve been around a while. I’m not the one making hateful generalizations. In so many places in my life, I have to choose my words and remain kind with people I know, people who are friends and family members, who vote in ways that literally threaten the health, peaceful and full life, and happiness of people I love. Their choice.

But never try to justify to me that chaos, division, demonizing, mendacity, and mental, emotional, and physical cruelty are okay. Hide yourself in a cloak of something abhorrent to me, and know that even then, I will listen, for a while, anyway, to all the things you say and all the things you don’t even realize you say, and the only, ONLY, point when we are done is if you begin to insult and demean me or the ones I love. If you don’t like me, respect me, or love me, for who I am, step off. Find a better way to fill your time than wasting it on me. (I have people in my life who build me up. Who comfort me. Who started bright and early this morning sending messages of love and commiseration, and the reminder that I can breathe with them. We can speak frankly whether we’ve been friends since we were eighteen, or since 1989, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’97, 2005, 2007, 2011, or 2015, I’m there for them. They’re there for me. We connect in so many ways.) To them (or you if you need to hear it) I say:


And to the others of you…
If your candidate won, celebrate. Sit at home with a big smile on your face; have some champagne. Crack a beer. Grill your favorite meat. Call or gather with your likeminded friends and repeat all the things you’ve been saying out loud since 2016. Actually, since 2008. You’ve gotten what you wanted. You’ve taken the White House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, (as of this writing, the jury’s still out on the House), and you’re already anticipating how all your “enemies” will be punished, controlled, vanquished. Do that instead of traveling social media and finding the accounts of strangers (and celebrities, because they are your very favorite targets) to pester them. Go and live the idyllic life you’ve been promised.

Today, I’ve spent lovely hours with my dogs. (Starting at about 4:30 am, when they began nudging Tom and me to GET UP. He took them out but then made them come back to bed and wait for breakfast.) They’re all a little crazy in all their different ways, but they have so much love to give. I don’t mean to aspire to craziness when I try to be more like them. It’s just a bonus, I guess. I showered, dressed, left the house to wash my car (the weather is lovely), make a bank deposit, and grab Starbucks.

My heart hurts. I want to be nice to myself. I’m not sure if I have the focus to write. There’s so much I’m unsure about. But I sure am grateful for the love in my life. I’m grateful for the values and strength I was given by my family, and the family I’ve made since. I feel far away from and lonely for many of them, but I also feel the love. Thank you.

Tiny Tuesday!

I’m keeping a running account of moments in this day. Will I post it? If you’re reading it, I guess I did. I think I got maybe six hours of sleep last night? I always look at the time stamps of the last things I did on my computer or phone to recall my “lights out” moment, though that doesn’t really indicate when I fell asleep.

Up well before six, dogs not having heeded the time change memo, I quietly doom-scrolled on my phone for a bit. The last things I saw last night were some of the thousands of messages from women all over the world expressing their love and solidarity for the women in the U.S. on this election day. Their words were profoundly moving. In my morning news feed, I read that all U.S states except Alaska and Kentucky are in drought–just as I heard the sound of thunder, promising more of the much-needed rain we’ve been getting over the past few days.

Among my early morning activities are the online games I play for later comparison to Tim and Jim’s game results. One that only I play (though sometimes Tom does) is Spelling Bee, and I got what I thought were two difficult-level pangrams. I told Tom maybe I should stop after my success and play no more games today. =) He was busy trying to put an “I Voted” sticker on the top of Jack’s head. I suspected that would prove less successful than my Spelling Bee results.

I was wrong. Tom posted this on his Instagram account.

I showered and washed my hair; have had the dogs outside a few times. For Tiny Tuesday, I’m wearing a few of my favorite necklaces: one with heart-shaped, good-energy stones; one with brass musical charms; one with amethyst and quartz crystal pendants; and a wave-and-whale-tail ceramic pendant.

I’ve eaten fairly nutritiously today and taken my meds on time. Blood pressure and blood glucose all good. Tom picked up protein-packed takeout on his way home from work. (I’ve read protein can help regulate stress responses.)

And I have written. And written. The imaginary world is stressful, too, with characters in conflict and many unknowns ahead, but I’m sure it’ll all turn out okay. I’d like to take that attitude into real life.

And now I wait, with everyone else. Hours? Days? Unless something extraordinary happens, and then I may add to this post.

Mindful Monday

Wishing you all peace of mind. Happy Monday.
For me, I hope it’s writing, home, husband, dogs, music, and nourishment. For you?

Was sad to hear about the death of Quincy Jones today, though he lived a long and eventful life. What an impact he had on music and culture. Someone in comments to the obituary I read strongly recommended Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, and just like that, it’s in my Kobo ebooks. Research!

All Hallows’ Eve

I hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday, however you celebrate. It’s raining here (which we GREATLY need; Houston is under a drought), so even if we were giving out candy (we’re not), I doubt there’ll be many children trick or treating. Behind the cut, I’m sharing the last days of my skeleton photos posted to Instagram. Y’all get a lot more details here than I provide on my Instagram posts. I had a little help today thanks to posters from the coloring book pictured above. It’s always a party if there’s music!

Continue reading “All Hallows’ Eve”

Almost that time!


Last year in September, I left Debby at the grocery store while I ran some other errands. She was still deep into shopping when I got back. I’d been doing a lot of coloring that month, so I grabbed a Halloween-themed cat coloring book I found inside the grocery store and colored in the car while I waited. I think the page (above right) is the only one I colored from it, not even another one in October. I posted the page only on Instagram.

Today, I enjoyed an incredibly productive day, and I think that’s because I’d had eight solid hours of sleep with no interruptions, which is kind of a miracle. Along with three rounds of dog and dog-waste policing I did on the grounds, I dust-mopped the house to get up lots of dog hair, dust, and leaf bits, mopped the library, cleaned both bathrooms, ate all my meals and took all meds as scheduled, washed up the dinner dishes (Debby cooked the meal she shared with us), and most of all, I FINISHED THE CHAPTER that I’ve been working on since the seventeenth century. It needs a reread and no doubt some edits, but now I can move on, and hopefully the next ones for the remainder of this novel will go more quickly. Nothing would make me happier than to have a full draft of Book 7 before New Year’s Day.

To celebrate, I took a break to dig out that 2023 coloring book and color a Halloween page. Tomorrow will be my last skeleton-music-homage photo for the season on Instagram, so I’ll devote Thursday to posting those here before we officially close the Halloween season by sundown (no trick-or-treaters this year).

Sunday Sundries

When I started the Sunday Sundries theme to replace Button Sunday, I didn’t mean that each Sunday would have a grouping of sundry items that had nothing to do with one another. Each Sunday may have related items*, but most Sundays will introduce some new and random thing. If you read here (THANK YOU!), you can always suggest something, and I’ll see what my home or environment provides.

This week, the group is PIGS! I’ve had to purge them periodically through the years, because they were given in such abundance, but here’s a good sampling of what’s around. These don’t include the holiday ornaments that are packed away.


A few Piglets from the curio cabinet in the writing sanctuary–this is the cabinet the Harvey flood didn’t get. A couple of the Piglets are Hallmark ornaments, gifts from Lynne.


Some of the stuffies from a cabinet also in the writing sanctuary. That very large pig on the left used to grunt “Jingle Bells” (and may still). It was a gift back in the early ’90s from Christine and John. Christine was another assistant manager at the bookstore, and if I’m not mistaken, I wrote this pig into A Coventry Christmas because whenever I got called to the cash wrap area, I took it with me to make our shoppers smile and reassure them the line was moving fast. At least a dozen times, men offered me ridiculous amounts of money for the pig. THAT is what comes of husbands and fathers shopping on Christmas Eve.


These are pigs who live in the toy chest that’s under the dining room window. I adore them, and most all of them are gifts. I found Miss Piggy at a thrift store to use back when I did Runway Monday, because Miss Piggy had been a client on “Project Runway.” Lynne once appeared in a home movie back in the Seventies as Miss Piggy. She was fabulous.

The living room display cases that came with our house at Houndstooth Hall (thank you, Mr. S) needed two photos to get them all in. These include pigs I’ve had the very longest. My original six to a dozen pigs all had names and stories, most of which I’ve forgotten, except for Jimmy Hogga and his wife, Mrs. Hogga. If any of these pigs happen to be excessively ugly, they probably came from Lynne and later her granddaughter Lila. Finding them to give me has been a holiday hobby for them.


These are the pigs who guard the pantry. That paper towel holder is from my brother. The cross-stitched pig is from my mother. The little quilted pigs were made from vintage quilts and purchased from an antique store in the Houston suburbs where Lynne, Tom, and I used to shop every Christmas for unique gifts for each other and family. I miss that store!

There are likely more pigs here, but these were the easiest to find.

ETA: GASP! How could I forget sweet Olivia who has her own shelf in the library; two bag clasps that hang out in the pantry; and the pencil holder that resides on my big office desk?

(Previous Sunday Sundries posts have included shells, bookmarks, Mary Stewart books, crayons, old blog features, oracle animal cards, romantic comedy DVDs, political buttons, items related to The Netherlands, random small boxes, bracelets, writing research aids, DVDs I’m watching, comics I’ve read through the years, Eddie Van Halen paraphernalia, Mary O’Hara books and some plastic skeleton photos, books to donate and some local Little Free Libraries.)