color recall

 

It was so warm yesterday, I cut my sun time short. A scorch was setting in. Mid 70s? The frogs and the other singers around the pool have been tuning up. 

But today, it's gone back to the typical cold and damp of a Georgia Spring. Soon.

This whole week has been a slog of graphs, numbers, and waiting. In other words - book marketing. The necessary evil. Took a lot of notes. Learned a thing or two. There is no formula for breaking in with a novel that does not stick strictly to genre norms. It's going to be 90% hard work and a stroke or two of luck. One thing for sure, I won't be doing another promo week until book four is born.

Summer is coming and I'm going to make the best of each day.

I'm not a believer in that sense of the word. To whom does one pray for Karmic destruction to visit greedy, evil, old white men?

This bit of thread presented itself yesterday. Turquoise and gold.

Ukraine. Be strong.

belly laugh

 Laugh until tears from one end and pee from the other. That's what I got this morning. 

I've been killing curious about what some neighbors are up to behind their house. Where I lived in NY, you had to have a building permit for every damn little thing. Down here, maybe if you wanted a helipad, you might have to grease some palms. It seems like every other house has some kind of shed, shack, or granny pod behind the main house. I have a pool that takes up most of my backyard.

After dark, from my bed, I can see some very strange goings-on a few houses away. As soon as I borrowed Charlie's telescope - yes, I'm going that low - they doused the lights and fires. Away on vacation perhaps? The place is normally lit up like a gas station, but the past few nights, nothing. 

So, I thought I'd google the street and get the birds-eye view. I plugged in my own address first to orient my search and this image filled the screen. I laughed out loud and called Colin in for the spectacle. We both couldn't stop laughing.

In all its glory, Jim's '99 Ford pickup loaded down with a bunch of crap waiting to go to the dump. It was loaded like that for about two weeks, but only on the street for a day so the rest of us could come and go in the driveway. So, of course, the Google snooper drives by, snaps a picture, and uploads it. 

At least I don't have couches and washing machines on the front porch and meth labs in the back yard.

Not a week after this, the poor truck had a serious transmission issue and sat at the bottom of the driveway (blessedly empty) until Jake produced a cure. One of the last coherent concerns my husband had was that I should not sell the truck. No darling, it won't be me.

turning in

 

Somehow I will slip under that heap of pillows and comforter. They will grumble and shift around and purring will put me to sleep.  Outside, moonrise, lamplight, and dandelions. Even as I tried for another shot, the clouds swallowed the moon and we will be in the shit all day tomorrow, tornado watches and all.

stretching

It has been a very long time since I've picked up a brush.  I have brushes that I skipped lunch for a week to buy in the late sixties. The Golden fluid acrylics were speculative sometime last year. Untouched until this morning. I dug them out of the closet when I was putting away the little river basket. A whim.

Acrylic paint. The perfect medium for people who are in a rush for results. Why am I in such a hurry?

Like cloth, paint on paper can be cut up when it goes wrong. And a lot of it went very wrong. 

 Dismembered. Repurposed. Like cloth. but faster.

What is my rush? Spring?

Something to consider.

Then, in the rush, the hurry, something emerges. A way of moving the paint. an attitude.

Something that might have spirit. Direction. 

I need to remember that I'm still only cracking my knuckles. 

Playing it safe

 

This, I could do.