Tag: photos

Hump Day

Jim left for the airport before dawn this morning for the second leg of his vacation. I missed him instantly. After he left, I ate breakfast, napped, and spent time outside with the dogs. Then I continued this week’s house and home theme by removing everything from the breakfast room cabinets pictured above, cleaning all the contents and dusting the shelves, then Windexing the glass doors. And POLISHING THE SILVER, as That Old Woman™ (Tim’s trademarked name for my mother) would have wanted. I also cleaned bathrooms, did a load of dishes (the dishwasher is probably in shock over all this attention), and a load of laundry.

It’s a LOT more fun to hang out with Jim and the Houndstoothers than do housework. I need the staff of Downton Abbey.


Me and two of my writing partners on the night Jim cooked stroganoff for us.

Tiny Tuesday!


From The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures:

Timothy, Debby, Jim, and Tom

It was the last night of Jim’s visit, so we did Thanksgiving in March for fun!

On the menu: turkey breast, cornbread dressing, fresh green beans, fresh squash casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and rolls.


I also prepared a dessert table for the pies we’ve been eating since Saturday that included apple, peach, and Key Lime, but we forgot all about dessert because of the lively conversation. Family and friends: what it’s all about.

One of my house and home projects is to clean the display cabinets in the breakfast room, including the glass shelves and doors, but especially because I’m way overdue to polish the silver. I got a tiny head start today by polishing the butter dish given to my parents on their 25th wedding anniversary by Aunt Lola and Uncle Gerald.

Mindful Monday

From “Studied Benefits Of Mindfulness Training” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, comes this perspective for nine attitudinal factors that constitute major pillars of mindfulness practice: non-judging, gratitude, patience, a beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, letting go, and generosity. According to him, these aren’t independent of one another: each relies on and influences the degree to which you are able to cultivate the others.

A lot to think about there.

On the house and home front, once we knew things were okay with the dishwasher, I finished cleaning and organizing under the sink. Some bottles and cans related more to tile, grouting, etc., went outside into our lean-to room. This is what’s left.

Since I was on the floor and had cloths and stainless steel polish at hand, I polished the dishwasher door, the front of the stove, and the trash can. Still need to do some counter appliances and the refrigerator door. Spring cleaning has commenced, though. My mother loved this stuff. I…do not. =)

Sunday Sundries

Jim is visiting, and Saturday night, after a game of cards, he retired to his guest room, Tim went home to bed, and Tom and I were almost finished washing dishes (he washed; I dried and put away) when I noticed some water leaking out under the dishwasher door. We almost never use the dishwasher, because when I cook, I wash as I go; other times, we take shifts washing up afterward depending on who cooks. It’s recommended that you DO use your dishwasher, at least once a week, but with only the two of us, it seems like a waste of water. Plus I’m one of those people who finds dishwashing relaxing.

Apparently, for some reason, water was pooling in the bottom of the dishwasher. We hadn’t had any backup into our sink and no problem with the garbage disposal, so we weren’t sure where the water came from or how long it had been there. Tom and I together used two of the small cups I save from our laundry detergent (to use as water cups when I paint) to bail water from the dishwasher into a tub, which we emptied outside twice. Then he used towels to soak up the rest and dry out the dishwasher, then threw the towels into the washing machine. And we crossed our fingers, hoped for the best, and went to bed.


This morning, I woke up to find he’d moved about half of the contents under our sink onto the kitchen counter. The rest of that stuff was in a movable rack we keep under the sink. We’d cleaned out a couple of filters inside the dishwasher Saturday night, and he cleaned out a hose that had some gunk in it this morning. Then I cleaned and partly reorganized under the sink.

Tonight after dinner, we had the real test: doing a load in the dishwasher. All went as it should normally, so we’re hoping that’s the end of the drama. I’ll finish organizing the cabinet under the sink Monday.

I suppose my theme for the week will be house and home projects: cleaning, maybe some organizing, and a few other things that have been on my to-do list for a while.

The drama


Another one using a prompt from The Magic Words. The character is not in the relationship he thought he was in. Is his perspective right, or is he only coming up with an answer that keeps him comfortable? This is the prompt.

And this is what “he” wrote.

Breakup Poem

You ask me if I am crushed.
But I am not crushed.
I swore you were the lead in my life.
I hoped you were the principal.
Now I walk out of this broken alliance
and see the play for the first time
and know that you are not the play.
I am the lead,
and I am the principal,
and I am the play.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Escape, Part 2

Closely related to today’s Photo Friday submission: One person’s escape to a place is another person’s escape from a place. This part of the Neverending Saga hasn’t been written: a character will walk away from the California dreams that came true.


©Becky Cochrane, 2025

(landscape illustration from a free downloadable coloring page; words are from my word stickers books)

Placeholder on Hump Day

Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)

In the meantime, this is Shapiro’s poem.

Your Dead Mother

Dangles from the sky
Like a slim moon
Strung on a string
Silvery blue dress
Pleated like a curtain
Shimmers in your
Room at night
As cocktail gloves
And long fingers
Reach down to caress
Your sleepy head

Composing my poem also made me think of this sculpture that was our late friend Steve’s, which always has a place in our home.

ETA:
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.

Nighttime
Darkness holds a secret.
He’s in his fourth decade of keeping it.
Less than two decades since four collaborators
joined him in the shadows.
Sleepless, he keeps vigil over her in the dim room.
He wants to whisper,
“She is the one who cradles you in the moon’s crescent.
Even when the sky is moonless, she is there.”
His silence ensures she will not become wakeful.
The black secret will not touch her.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Tiny Tuesday!

She’s like a small but deadly insect, threatening everyone this character loves and tries to protect from her malevolence. If there’s any battle in the Neverending Saga, it’s this one, between mother and son, but also the one he wages with himself out of fear he will become like her.


©Becky Cochrane 2025

These sticky poetry words and phrases include lots of given names, and when I saw hers, I knew I had to give him a poem. I’d never give her one.

Mindful Monday

I used Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words poetry prompts book to speak in the voice of a Neverending Saga character whose trust has been broken. My characters’ lives may be radically different from mine, but I think their voices come so willingly to me because we share fragments of our identities, emotions, and experiences.

This was the prompt:

This is my character’s poem. I don’t reuse the same nouns or verbs (which Fasano says is fine–better to write for the poem than to a formula).

Mistake Poem

This is how a connection persists,
by losing its expectations.
This is how a falseness roots,
by falling in middle ground.
This is how a trust erodes,
by stumbling on concessions.
I am what I am, a willing accomplice
that loses, that falls, that stumbles,
and then that rises.
Look at me. Look at my breakthrough.
This is how a connection fractures.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025