In yesterday’s post, I shared some political buttons to note this is the week of the Democratic National Convention. Here are stickers I spotted in my sticker folder recently.
Sticking with RomCom Summer, last night, thanks to Debby’s Kindle streaming a movie for me, 2023’s Red, White & Royal Blue, on Prime, I got to hear Uma Thurman don a lovely accent as a U.S. president from Texas, and see a funny, sweet romance develop between the president’s son and a member of the British royal family.
The political buttons or stickers I’ve shared might not indicate this, but the late Eighties threw me into advocacy for the dignity, fair treatment, and push for equal rights for those with HIV/AIDS and for members of the LGBTQ+ community. I will never waver when it comes to justice and fairness. To those people in my life who’ve looked sideways at me for these things, I advocate for your sister. Your nephew. Your child. Your brother. Your cousin. Your mother. Your grandpa. Your grandchild. Your friend. Your neighbor.
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.
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.
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.”
Explanation: One of the roses was broken, so at the same time I was starting a meal in the crockpot, I went to get that small silver vase from a cabinet, cut another rose to the same length, and put them with water in the silver vase. However, I forgot I’d never put water in the cobalt vase before I moved it to the table. When you are older, these are the moments that make you question, Is this the beginning of [dementia, Alzheimer’s, whatever]? And hope it’s just a sign of doing several things at one time.
…I play games. It began with one game, Spelling Bee, in my news feed. I didn’t play it the way other people played it. I had a single goal (there can be several with this game), and I waited until the next day to learn if I’d accomplished my goal (you can get immediate online solutions from many sources, but for me, waiting was a deliberate exercise in patience). I thought of the game as my mental acuity test: How well is my brain working this morning?
Through my same newsfeed, I started checking out Connections, and I was surprisingly good at it and got even better over time. Occasionally, I only correctly guess all four groups because the fourth is made up of my leftover choices, but once I see the answer, it makes sense, and I realized I sometimes have to put my logic aside and try to guess the game creators’ logic.
When the online game Wordle took off in 2022, I briefly glanced at it, but it didn’t grab me at the time. I knew several people who played, including Tom, Jim, and Timmy. Then, for whatever reason, Jim, Timothy, and I began talking about Wordle since Jim played it, and the next thing that happened was that both Tim and I began playing, and he, Jim, and I began sharing our game results in our ongoing text thread.
For some reason Instagram isn’t working for me at all today. I’m taking that as a message to preserve my sanity by knowing as little as possible about how “Super” Tuesday is making people feel and behave. In honor of those who are willing to endure politics with their popcorn, here’s a wee miniature I received recently. Popcorn kernels added for scale.