01 Thursday Nov 2018
Posted in Random Thoughts
Here we go again, trying to get back to regular posting. What’re the odds? During this most fraught month of the year, pretty good. Not today, for I’ve used up my brain cells sorting through the papers on my desk. But isn’t that a good sign? Yeah.
So, for now, an image and a promise.
Watch this space.
09 Sunday Sep 2018
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Or so it seems to me. Having spent so many years in school, September is my January and I feel a surge of possibility when it rolls around. The temperatures may still be in the eighties, but I envision digging out sweaters and jeans. I can almost smell chalk in the air and hear bells ringing to signal class changes. (Or my ears are finally going the way of all flesh.)
A few ideas are rumbling through the empty halls of my brain and I’m looking forward to exploring them. All I have to do first is pull weeds and clear out our old back porch so it can be torn down. A new porch will be built after that. Strictly speaking, that means September will be filled with all sorts of tasks that will stand in the way of writing much. But, that means the beginning of this creative year will actually be in October, a month I dearly love. So, still things to look forward to.
Watch this space.
15 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted in Hope, snark, Uncategorized
…finish with a hellish cold and call it all shitty.
Nah, not all. June brought Bob’s and my fiftieth anniversary, which we celebrated by taking the train to Glenwood Springs. When in doubt, find water…really, really hot water. We parboiled our way through four days and chugged home, at certain points traveling 25 MPH because the tracks were so hot in the 90-plus temps. We couldn’t risk bending them by going fast. True story.
July brought some rain, some hail, some corn on the cob, some strawberries. Once again I managed to kill numerous plants through a dearth of assiduity. (Hah! I looked it up after I typed it and was right in both spelling and meaning–that I forgot, was gone, was too much of a jerk to follow the watering schedule.)
August brought the cold from hell, simply because my immune system was bored. I’m going to the State Fair to compete in the mucous-producing
Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com
competition. It’s gross, but the sashes are stunning.
I know it’s time to move on because I’m beginning to wish I could wear jeans again. (Aren’t these little life milestones entrancing?) I know I’ll be more creative–as in actually writing, for instance–and life will have more zing, too, when I can crawl back into the jeans.
Maybe next time I’ll torture my remaining readers…are any of you out there?…by writing a take-off on What I Did on My Summer Vacation. Snorking, gagging, and using tissues will be prominently featured.
Doesn’t the woman look cute blowing her nose? You ought to get a load of me.
Cough.
05 Thursday Jul 2018
Posted in books, Books I like, Reading
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Sunrise at Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach Oregon
I know, I know. I said I was going to get back to the regular blog posts, but then we hit June. We’re talking graduations, birthdays, anniversaries…and did I mention that my sweet husband and I celebrated 50 years and a few lousy months together? That, too.
Anyway, during all this marking of Important Occasions, I’ve come across one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Louise Perry is Canadian and writes the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries. I haven’t been this excited since I read Dorothy Dunnett’s books. Perry is a superb writer and plotter, and I’m in love with her characters. I just finished Book 9 of the series and can’t wait to begin Book 10. (I came up to my computer to pay bills and need to get downstairs to watch a movie with my hubs. Will include specific titles next time.)
One of the best things ever is to live in another world created by a first-class writer. I’m having such a great time hanging out with Chief Gamache. Come join me!
And more soon!
17 Thursday May 2018
Posted in Books I like, Life
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Just finished rereading Catcher in the Rye. I loved that book as I first read it a hundred years ago, when it gave me a lump in the throat I carried around for a long time. I wondered how I’d react to it now that I’m an old crock. The lump is back and who knows how long it’ll last.
I never forgot the hyper-awareness of Holden Caulfield. I couldn’t imagine his ever being happy. I still can’t fathom his finding a way to break through his own loneliness to bond with someone on an equal footing, even though I still hope he will. As I read this time, I kept thinking about how much grief he’d gone through and how nowadays he’d be on meds for PTSD. And I still love the lines:
And why, do you ask, would I put a photo of a Shoebill Stork cheek by jowl with Holden Caulfield? Because some things in this strange and ever-twisting life share a level of perfection. No, not perfection, which is a human concept capable of destroying lives. There’s a shared rightness to both Holden and a Shoebill, and that makes me happy.
Here’s to Spring.
24 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted in snark, Uncategorized
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I’ve been hiding in my cocoon of late. Lots of reasons, none lethal, but as spring screws around with brightening the landscape, I’m beginning to peer out at the world. I replaced my lost cell phone (see previous post) and, thanks to the help of my technically more advanced daughter, have managed to get most of the attachments I want to take up residence in the thing. Now all I need to do is to think of something to say.
I haven’t hung out at Wisdom Court much lately. There’s a character knocking at the door to my mind, but she hasn’t yelled loudly enough yet for me to pay her much attention. She’s too cheerful, and I don’t feel like dealing with that at the moment. I’ll let her come in soon, if only because I need writing to take me over again, but it’s cold again today and my study is a pit. I have years’ worth of files to subdue and slip into slots. If I could capture the cat hair festooning the furniture, I could make an afghan to keep me warm.
I need to send out a newsletter, but am missing an inspiring message. “Please buy my books,” doesn’t cut it. If Spring will finally extend herself into a hug across the land, maybe my limping brain cells will line up in formation and respond with grace instead of the post-winter whine I hear in my head every morning. My brain has shrunk into a petty nitpicker and nothing’s better at killing the creative spirit. (Yes, that’s an excuse for not writing.)
And how’s your day going?
04 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in Life, Random Thoughts
A funny thing happened on the way to walking my dog: I lost my phone. I can still almost feel its weight in my jeans pocket, have looked everywhere inside the house and out, and it’s definitely gone. That little contraption of metal and plastic that holds more info about me and my life than should reasonably be carried around has escaped into the world.
Well, shit.
I’m not even one of those souls who constantly carries a phone with me. Can’t count the times I’ve left it on the table and then needed it while I’m out and about. But slowly, over the years, I’ve become dependent on the thing, have gotten sophisticated enough to connect to some apps, have begun to feel the migration of brain cells to pocket or bag.
And now it’s gone. 
I called the company, suspended the line, ordered another phone, knowing full well that when it arrives, I’ll be bitching about the set-up hassle. And I’ll go back to carrying the thing around, fitfully, and missing the pictures I took with the old one. Feeling stupid for not protecting my property. Hoping no villains have absconded with bytes and bits of my info for their nefarious ends.
Maybe I’ll use the event as a plot device in the latest book. Maybe I’ll come up with a clever bit of business that’ll make the whole experience worth while.
Not bloody likely.
I’ll go through the drill, replace info and leave some hidden. And this time I’ll buy one of those signal finders that locates the errant phone. And I’ll try not to take the technology for granted.
Right.
26 Monday Feb 2018
Posted in books
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Don’t miss the Colorado Book Festival on Saturday, March 3, 2018, at the Central Denver Library, Broadway and 14th Avenue. The authors will be waiting. See you there!
06 Tuesday Feb 2018
Posted in Writing
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It’s February and the ground is brown. Leaves left in piles for critters seeking refuge are dry (isn’t the whole state dry?) and they whisper as roaming breezes search for somewhere to hide. It’s February and the air is hard and cold. A few creeping myrtle leaves in a rock garden, liverish green and curled into commas, hint at new life. Nobody’s buying it.
My imagination, some call her Fancy, is perched on a headstone just inside the cemetery, throwing pebbles at a crooked row of markers. She hasn’t hit any yet. Her knees poke through her jeans, and her mud-brown jacket is threadbare. “I wish you’d come up with a decent idea,” she mutters when she runs out of ammo. Her chin jerks toward the pathetic line of crosses. “One you can’t bury in ten minutes.”
She throws rocks at everything I come up with. “The sun’s going down,” I announce. “We ought to go.”
She shoots me such a look. “It’s one-thirty-two, you dork.” Her arm lifts to point above us at the shrouded sun. “We’ve been out here for less than an hour. You can’t hole up all day and let Nostalgia get in your head. She’s deadly!”
I hunch my shoulders and turn away. “I need to get the tax prep done.”
“There’s a creative idea.”
Fancy brushes past me and I smell cloves, her signature scent. Maybe I should dab clove oil behind my ears. It might jump-start some brain cells.
“Come on, then,” she calls back to me from the gate. “While you work on taxes, I’ll watch old movies. It’ll give me something–anything–to think about.” Her tone is grim.
“Bitch,” I whisper as I follow her. She always grabs at fun while I get stuck with the humdrum. And image floats into my mind. A man humming as he cleans a gun. He has blood on his hands.
“Hmmm.”
26 Friday Jan 2018
Posted in Writing
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Yeah, I guess so. Thanks to the world’s longest-running respiratory crap, the death of our beloved dachshund, Riley, and a generally bad attitude, I’ve left you all unburdened by my jaundiced point of view for far too many months.
Riley the WonderDog
“Self,” I said to the blurry shape in the mirror this morning, “it’s time to climb back onto the horse.”
“Trite,” whispered Self.
“Self-righteous, critical bitch,” I muttered.
“I’m more of a pedant.” Self wrinkled her nose at me as I switched off the bathroom light.
Here’s the problem: My imagination has been lying in a bone-dry arroyo at the edge of a desert for a while now. Not even vultures fly over the spot anymore. But, I keep having these bizarre dreams and my long-suffering husband has described some of the things I’ve been saying while I sleep. The least embarrassing was my rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at about three in the morning. (I got all the words right.) You can take the creativity out of the writer but you can’t take the patriotism–oh, never mind.
The upshot of this situation is, I have to write whatever comes to mind, as sparse as that might be, until I stop these serenades. It’s too unsettling to think of some of the things I might say while under the influence of sleep. Hmmm, there’s the germ of a plot idea in that. Okay, I might give that some thought.
I hope all of you–the eight regulars who breathlessly await my ponderous insights–have launched upon a shiny new year. Really, I do. I’ve been in a funk long enough not to expect that for myself, but I genuinely hope you are finding life fruitful and absorbing. I hope the writers among you are producing vast quantities of clever words and compelling ideas. I hope kindness and reason fill the spaces among our thoughts so we might foster creative ideas.
My sentiments may be overdue, but they are, nonetheless, heartfelt: Happy New Year.
