Tag: numbers photo series

Pick One, No. 11

Question 658: Rubik’s Cube or Magic 8-Ball? (and why…)

Goodness. I could never solve a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not sure if I’m spatially challenged or impatient, but my first efforts took too much effort and thought. (I do a word puzzle among several other online games every morning and compare the results with Timothy and Jim, who do the same games. One of those word puzzles requires more strategy than the others, and isn’t my strongest game.)

So of course, I’m choosing Magic 8-Ball. What exactly is it that I use my most creative time for? I choose words from millions of words and string them together into stories that bring people and events to life all by means of ideas in my head. Is it not in the very NAME of the object: MAGIC?

Let’s put that question to Magic 8-Ball.

The answer?

I rest my case.

ETA: Later edited to add this to my Numbers Photo Series as No. 11. Also it’s Pick One No. 11. See? Magic.

Tiny Tuesday!


Last year in October, I got Paulus, pictured on the left, from Body Mind and Soul after their buying trip to Denver. They made the trip again this year, but I’m not sure that Bard, on the right, came from that. I picked him up last week. After looking at the differences between their tail feathers and sizes, I’ve decided Paulus is more accurately called a crow, and Bard is the raven. (I have a compulsion to repaint Bard’s eyes. ETA: I have modified the eyes since this photo and this post.) Either way, they’re corvids and fit right into my imaginary world as discussed in last year’s post. I also finally have a name for the house that could soon make its first appearance in the novel I’m working on.

More than ever, my imaginary world is a lot more pleasurable than the one we inhabit, though (a) I’m very fond of the people in the real world, and (b) I’m at a frozen point in writing. I’ve revised and inserted change pages into all the drafts of the first five books, so maybe I’m thinking Mercury needs to get out of retrograde for me to resume new writing. At least I’m THINKING, all the time!


Since I’m heeding a message from my coloring journal, I’m also trying to do more, which probably explains all the organization projects that have been happening around the Hall.

Two surprises: Not reading at all this month. Thinking of a possible novel outside the Neverending universe and wondering if I should start simultaneously working on it when winter sets in.

ETA: Added to my Numbers Photo Series, No. 10.

Fortunes

It’s funny, but putting this post together led me to check when the Cochrane Lambert novel Three Fortunes in One Cookie was published (is it bad I couldn’t remember?). I stuck the title in Google and it took me first to the Amazon page. I don’t think I ever read but maybe a couple of the reviews, and it was heartening that the ones there are positive.

Timothy and I did the research in Mississippi in 2004, the book came out on September 1, 2005, just after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the coastal towns, homes, and businesses we used in the novel. I always felt like we captured a place that vanished and wish the novel had been marketed better because of the time of its release.

All that aside, I’ve posted this box before.

It’s overflowing with fortunes.

Always happy to pull one for any of you and share the front and back.

I got another Piccadilly book.

It had this task in it: Go to various Chinese restaurants and ask for fortune cookies. Then tape all the fortunes you collect to these pages.

We rarely went to Chinese restaurants even before the pandemic because we love Chinese takeout. I found a few fortunes from past meals that were dropped in a basket in the kitchen. So I used them to begin this task. Let me know in comments if you can’t read any of the fortunes or the numbers–and want the numbers to play the lottery.

That last one says, “You will be spending some time on the water soon.” No, thanks, really. During hurricane season, that doesn’t sound at all appealing.

ETA: Added to my Numbers Photo Series as No. 9.

Break on Through

Today I planned my activities to be sewing and writing. I’m making a three-piece outfit for a character doll with which I hope to surprise a friend. She gets neither the doll nor the fashion! But she gets to see my doll version of a character she likes.

The sewing took longer than I intended because SEWING IS HARD. Also, it’s not perfect. Nothing I do can be, I think, because I’m not. Never said I was, never thought I was, never wanted to be. “Perfection” in my world is a highly overrated concept. Like one of my characters would say, “I’m not looking for perfect. I’m looking for real.”

Real is hard, too, because it can require tough decisions. About what we want to show and who to show it to. About the things we’re able to see and hear, and the things we can’t. Or won’t. Sometimes that’s self-preservation. Sometimes it’s a choice. I have a character (in the current chapter I’m working on) who’s spent her life grappling with it. I understand her well.

Whether or not I’ve had past lives or will have future lives, in this time, I have one life. We all do.

All that was part of what I was thinking about as I sewed, and I was accompanied by a most persistent ear worm: The Doors’s “Break On Through (To the Other Side).” Oh, that charismatic Jim Morrison. There is a Doors reference in the Neverending Saga because I always love a musical bad boy.

Mr. Mojo Rising, or whoever is tapping on my psyche, from this world or another, I think I’ve been dealing with over a year of breakthroughs, some good, some not so good. It all finds its way into all I do.


Here’s another of the posters I unrolled back in March. I was an assistant manager in a bookstore in 1991 when Oliver Stone’s film The Doors was released. An associate on the staff, Dorrie, also worked in the theater in our same complex. I put together a music display (I BEGGED to do it, and my manager knew my band-loving ways and okayed it) to help promote the movie, and Dorrie gave the store a theater poster to hang above it. When the display came down, the poster came home with me.

It was two-sided, which made it that much cooler.

Here are some photos of the display.


The tie-dyed fabric covering the cubes behind the books in some of the photos was a joint effort by Tom, Lynne, and me. I don’t think I still have it.

And here’s the song if you need a breakthrough, too.

Thanks, Tom, for being tall enough and also willing to climb a ladder to get photos of the movie poster back when the house was a wreck and we were still recovering from February’s snowy, icy storm.

ETA: Added as No. 8 in my Numbers Photo Series (because of the number ten over one of the displays).

Tiny Tuesday!

Sometimes when people ask me questions, I like to give them Magic 8 Ball answers.

While in a local Target, I asked a manager if they sold Magic 8 Ball and he and another associate had to do some searching, but they found one for me. So now I’ll be able to actually consult it before I give my answers. But they’ll never be as good as this made-up answer for dating sites:

ETA: Also added to Numbers Photo Series, No. 7.

Numbers Photo Series, No. 4

…if you were behind a closed door and I heard your voice, I would know it was you without seeing your face. But can you imagine if sound is that identifiable–more than your face–that’s fantastic, right?

When you put your sound or your idea into an arena mixed with other things–if what you’re saying has a valid place–it’s going to find its position in that total thing, and it’s going to make that thing much better. You don’t have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don’t have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

I think that every person, whether they play music or don’t play music, has a sound–their own sound, that thing that you’re talking about. You can’t destroy that. It’s like energy. Your sound, your voice, means more to everyone that knows you than how you look tomorrow. You might grow a beard or shave your hair. They say, “I can’t recognize you.” But as soon as you talk, “Oh yeah, it is you!” It’s the same thing. If it’s that distinctive, then there must be something there.


It’s amazing that everyone has their own sound.

Quote from legendary jazz musician Ornette Coleman, interview by Michael Jarrett, November 8, 1987, Atlanta, GA, published in Cadence magazine, October, 1995.

I started shooting photos for this series in late April of 2011. It’s my second post with this tag. Apparently, I became distracted. (And later, I retagged a lot of photos with the numbers tag, so this one became, by date, number 4.)

State of The Compound

We are enjoying a “cold” front–and I realize cold is relative, but 56 degrees is a welcome relief in Houston. Except my flowers looked sad about it this morning. If they survived summer, they need to plant up and endure this, too.

It’s the perfect weather to break out the iron skillets. So, this:


Homemade chili and cornbread. Add our tossed salads, and Tom, Tim, and I will be fixed to gather ’round the TV and watch “The Young and the Restless” on Tivo tonight. It’s just like a heartwarming scene from “Little House on the Prairie,” isn’t it?

You know what else it’s a perfect night for? For Tom to come home from work with THESE for me!

I’d forgotten that Stevie Nicks put out a new CD last year until Greg reminded me of it. And today, he also helped me remember that she had a song on it inspired by Twilight. I love Stevie.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know why the soundtrack from Breaking Dawn Part 2 has me all worked up, just scroll to the bottom of my blog to remind yourself what Tim laughingly told me to upload many months ago. Indeed, it has made me giggle every single day that I’ve seen it there–even days when I didn’t much feel like laughing. For future generations who may stumble onto this blog by accident, because my countdown widget will be gone, here’s a screen cap:

This year, only Lindsey, my Vampartner in Crime, is willing to go with me to the first night of the new and final (?) movie. But LUCKY FOR US, they are starting showings at ten PM Thursday instead of the usual midnight, giving us a better chance of seeing ‘tweens and teens sparkle on.

Then it’ll all be over and I have to be a grownup human again. Or build a new world in a novel of my own…

ETA: Also added to Numbers Photo Series No. 3.

30 Days of Creativity 2011, Day 28

I started working on today’s Bottle Cap painting this past Friday at Craft Night, but I was missing its key components. Today I swung by Té House of Tea to pick up these:

Tom and I forced ourselves to drink their Imperial sugary goodness. Then I was able to finish my Day 28 creative project.


“Rhonda and Meesh hang out at the 10-2-4 Club”
mixed media on 8×10-inch stretched canvas
Bottle Caps and Friends series

ETA: Also added to Numbers Photo Series as No. 2.