Tag: random

Find a penny….


Find a Penny, pick her up,
All day long you’ll have good luck.

I like pennies. Even ones that aren’t canine. Whenever people talk about doing away with pennies as a currency, I feel myself resisting the idea. I guess I’m getting old and unwilling to change. (Get it–change. Ha.)

A touristy thing I’ve done over the years is to drop a penny into one of those machines that flattens pennies and imprints them with names or illustrations of a particular place. So when I look at them, I can remember walking on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco with Tom to enjoy the sea lions. Sitting at Cafe Du Monde with Lynne or my Saints and Sinners friends. Going to aquariums in New Orleans with Tom’s family, in Gulfport with my sister and mother, in downtown Houston with Steve and Jim or my sister and Tim. Ordering ice cream or coffee or candy at La King’s in Galveston–on different trips with Rhonda, Lindsey, and Tom, or with my family including Aaron, who also got a penny pressed. Going to Moody Gardens in Galveston with Tom and Steve C and cracking up at penguin antics. Being on the Strand in Galveston on too many trips with my sister (and sometimes her friends) to count; with Steve C, Jim, and Tim when they all got goofy trying on cowboy hats; or with Lynne and Craig and Tom, including one December when we went to Dickens on The Strand and Craig nearly froze me to death driving home with the window open so we could all stay awake. I have pennies from Houston’s Museum of Natural Science and Johnson Space Center. From the time after my mother’s memorial service, there are memories of when I went to the Clinton Presidential Museum in Little Rock just after my sister and I met her daughter and family in Gatlinburg–not to mention the time Tom’s entire family surprised his mother on her birthday when she arrived in Gatlinburg to find us all there in a huge house we rented.

Even though the pennies commemorate the places, what I really remember are the people who shared those times with me–or Tom and me. We may be busy people, but we find time–or make it–for who and what we value. That’s not luck–it’s love.

Looking back


He smiles because it’s raining. Even the sun likes variety.

A little over a year ago (July 17, to be precise), I asked you what you wanted me to blog about. I went back and checked the list to see how I’m doing:

Dog pictures–check
Tim and Hanley–check
Hot weather–check
Pictures of things that are my favorite color–I could do more of this.
Guinness and Margot pictures–check
Houston photos and stories–check
Bike tour with photos–I’ll have to work on that one. I learned early that my neighborhood is not friendly to my three-wheeler. But I can probably take it and my camera to a better location.
Who would I cast in a Three Fortunes movie–That will take some thought. It’s more fun for me to know who you’d cast.
Photos of my bookshelves–There’ve been a few, usually as backdrops. I could do more.
Tales and photos of Craft Night–check (Even an appearance by Puterbaugh! And a spontaneous Lila Craft Night.)

I’d say my average so far is pretty good. I’m always open to new suggestions.

Photo Love

I’m never sure if it’s permissible to repost official White House photos, but I think as long as they are not for commercial or political use, it may be okay. In any case, I loved this one so much I can’t help but share it. Whenever I see a man I love–husband, friend, brother–holding a child, it makes my heart turn over at the juxtaposition of strength and gentleness. And so I think that’s what the First Lady is experiencing here. Everything about the photo makes me happy. The caption in the Flickr group says the president “soothes a crying baby on the South Lawn of the White House.”


Official White House photo by Pete Souza.

ETA: Friends told me to see this video to show President Obama’s glance at his wife when he’s able to quiet the baby. Priceless. You just know this must be a scenario that first played out with Malia and Sasha.

30 Days of Creativity 2011, Day 20

Though I’ve posted some food photos this month, I haven’t used them for my 30 Days entries. Today is different. I’m back at The Compound from a ten-day staycation at Green Acres, so I have lots of those mundane chores that take up a person’s time when she’s been out of her daily routine. Bills and paperwork and general housekeeping matters. Tom and Tim took care of things very well in my absence–especially considering that Tim had some away time of his own during those days, and that EZ came to visit, meaning that Tom occasionally had the management of four Compound dogs and beautiful foster dog Penny to attend to.

So after sleeping in–and I mean WAY in, as until noon–I decided to fortify myself with a really good brunch and some good reading before getting on with it.

Eggs with fresh spinach and mushrooms and some crumbled bacon, whole wheat toast with a dollop of strawberry jam, half an apple, and iced coffee.

I’m twenty-eight pages from finishing this leather-bound Douglas Adams omnibus I gave Tom back in June of 1991. Considering the month, I’m betting that I bought it as an anniversary present (we just had our twenty-third anniversary on June 18, which means we’re two years from silver–hardly seems possible, since I’m 35, but whatever). I never read the four books and epilogue in this collection because it got shoved into that “science fiction” room in my brain, a room that’s almost as dusty as “Textbooks for Classes You Hated With Every Fiber of Your Being, Including Biology and Educational Psychology.”

What made me start reading it? People I like and respect, including my nephew Daniel, referencing it on Twitter. And I have to say it’s been a delight. I’ve stumbled over the origin of all kinds of cultural references–for example, Babel fish–and my favorite Eeyorian android of all time, Marvin. Adams’s inventiveness is as much a part of my creative day as the breakfast. Very shortly, I’ll be telling him, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Social media weirdness

Yesterday I visited some Facebook walls that are public, and I was reminded again of why Facebook is a terrible fit for me. I expressed a mini tirade about it on Twitter (everything on Twitter being mini), mostly regarding my inability to understand why people who carp incessantly about other people’s bigotry–including hate language–turn around and do exactly the same thing to people whose beliefs and politics are different from theirs. This is not quantum physics. You think it’s wrong to be generalized, stereotyped, insulted, demeaned–then it’s wrong for YOU TO DO IT, TOO. And if you’re going to do it anyway, then you’ve lost any moral high ground in calling out other people, and you’ve lost some of your sympathetic audience. Including me.

I don’t miss the cacophony.

Conventional wisdom says that when someone talks politics on Twitter, they lose followers. Even though I hadn’t technically done so in my mini tirade, I did glance at my list of followers this morning, and none seem to have vanished. However, the number of people I follow had lessened by about twenty. Now I’m the only one who can make that choice, so it’s obviously a Twitter glitch, and other people are experiencing it, too. I’m sure it’ll all get worked out eventually. Meanwhile–boy, is my Twitter quiet.