Category Archives: trips

Paint Class – Done for Spring


The spring semester has ended, and with it, my art class. For now. I probably won’t sign up for the summer class until I know more about how my summer will go. Which means I may not get to go paint, if it fills up. More people sign up for the summer classes.

In a weird aside to the art class thing, I got a certificate for completing an “Intermediate Fencing” class. I didn’t think I signed up for fencing. I never went to a fencing class. I might have signed up for piano–my art teacher also teaches piano, and sometimes I sign up so she has enough people in her class to “make.” I always kinda wanted to go to fencing class–just to watch and see how it’s done, not because I thought I could do it.

Anyway, at my last painting class, I finished up a couple of pictures. I think they turned out pretty well, but we’ll see what you think. I’m only going to post one of them though. I’ll put the other one up later. Those of you who know the boy–does it look like him? If you can tell who it’s supposed to be, I’m going to assume it does. :) (A lot of the shading in the painting doesn’t show up in this photo, alas.)

The roses and the sage are blooming like crazy. They should continue to bloom all summer long, which is nice.
I may finally have enough flowers to hide the weeds in most of the front–but the burr clover in the back…I need to get busy before all those burrs stick to my socks…

Let’s see–I didn’t mention my Mother’s Day. All the kids called to say hello, and the grandboys did too. It’s a little alarming when you ask “How are you doing, sugar?” and the little voice says “I’m much better now.” Turns out the oldest had strep throat all last week. But he’s much better now. So, I talked on the phone, and I took a nap for Mother’s Day. I was very tired, because we drove down to Lubbock the evening before to watch the college baseball team in the regional playoffs, and we didn’t get home again until after 1 a.m.

That late, it’s safer to drive up through the canyon–you have to go around the Paloduro Canyon to get from here to there and back again–and around sundown, there’s a lot of wildlife on the road. It’s pretty country driving through the bottom end of the canyon–I have never seen it so green. Wildflowers and green, green grass everywhere. We’ve had a very wet winter and spring this year–for which we are grateful, after last year’s drought and fires. The average rainfall in the Texas Panhandle through this time of year is just over 5 inches. We’ve had 15 inches of rain so far this year (not counting the nice rain we got yesterday morning), so no wonder everything is so green. We’re 10 inches ahead. Anyway, we did see a deer driving back home again, but only one. I’ve been down that way in the mornings and seen turkeys, deer, coyotes, road runners and maybe wild pigs (Those pigs are sneaky) out on the road.

Oh. And the Bulldogs lost, but they were playing against one of the top-ranked pitchers in the NJCAA–a guy who usually “run rules” the other team. (“Run rule” is when they call the game after the 7th inning if one team is ahead by 10 points or more.) And the score was only 6-1. They were actually proud of holding them that close. I think they won their second game. But lost the 3rd. So the guys got to go home. And given that some of those students live in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia… You know, it was just a bit odd to hear “chatter” in those Aussie accents…

8 Things about me

Natasha Moore tagged me to do this 8 things thing. Problem is, I don’t know that there are 8 things y’all don’t know about me… Anyway…

Here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I hope my 8 people haven’t been tagged with something like this recently.
Okay, here are my 8 things…

1. Just got back from a quick trip to Galveston Island–and I didn’t even go in the water! (shame on me–but I did take a walk down Seawall Blvd…)

2. I played flute in high school and college marching band–and I doubt I could get a sound out of the sucker now. I was not very good at it because I never actually practiced. Barely good enough to qualify. One of my roomies and I volunteered for last chair and next-to-last chair in concert band while in college, and when playing the really hard stuff, we would play alternate notes. Together we made a not-so-bad player…

3. I once worked as the “managing editor” of a small town weekly–what this really meant was that I wrote all the copy (except sports), took, developed and printed all the pictures, wrote the cutlines and picked out the stuff from the press releases to fill up the spaces in the rest of the paper. All in 3 days a week. For not very much $$.

4. While in college, the university renovated some old buildings, replacing towers that had been removed years before. The towers were built on the ground before being hoisted to the roof, and they were roughly the shape of a metronome–those weighted ticking things that keep time for practicing musicians. One of my roommates was inspired to take a gang of us and climb the construction fence and spraypaint the front of the tower (the plywood undercladding) like a metronome. And nobody knew we had done it until about 30 years later when I “fessed up” to the alumni magazine…

5. I’ve been reading Tarot cards for about 9 or 10 years–and still consider myself very much a beginner.

6. I have “tilted kneecaps” which gives them a predisposition to dislocate. Because I’m not very athletic, I’ve never dislocated them, but they’re still persnickety about a lot of stuff…

7. I have 14 nephews and 4 nieces.

8. While walking down the seawall, and other places in Galveston (plus hurrying through airports for plane changes), my sandals wore blisters on both my baby toes. (I haven’t worn them much since last summer and I haven’t toughened up my toes yet…) And one of them popped. Owie! I’d better get them tough before RWA in July!

Good food and good books

Because the fella is on this gluten-free diet, I get all excited when I find new stuff that he can eat that’s really good. I have probably a year’s worth of Southern Living magazines in the house–I read them, and then set them aside to go back through later and pull the good stuff out–and sometimes (most of the time) it takes me a while to go back through. I think this particular magazine was around a year old. Don’t think it was more. (I hope.) Anyway, the recipe was sort of Italian-Southern-Southwestern, because it was browned polenta slices topped with black-eyed peas heavily laced with fresh cilantro and tomato. Basically, you slice up one of those pre-packaged tubes of polenta, brown it in olive oil (they call for a non-stick skillet and cooking spray, but since I don’t have a non-stick skillet…). Then you cook a can of black-eyed peas and chopped onion, and a little salt and cayenne, till the liquid’s almost gone, add in some cilantro and tomato and top the polenta slices with it. Very simple. Very good stuff. I don’t know that anyone but a Southerner would have thought to put black-eyed peas with polenta–but hey, fried polenta is just a fancy name for a round, flat hushpuppy! Maybe it’s Texas cuisine, since it’s peas plus cilantro and tomato, which has a lot in common with “Texas caviar.” Anyway–good stuff.

I’ve been reading some good books lately too. Picked up DARK MOON DEFENDER by Sharon Shinn. I liked it better than THIRTEENTH HOUSE–which I liked, just not as much as DMD. This one takes place in the same universe, and is Justin’s story, about how he comes into his own, and falls in love. There are TWO happy endings in this story. Very good read, IMO.

I need to make maps for Eternal Rose. I have paper and everything, just haven’t done it yet. Going to Galveston and the beach for a day or two beginning tomorrow…don’t know as I’ll take the paper with me. I wonder if I need to use the legal-sized paper for the maps… I’ll ask. Also need to write a short bio. I hate writing bios. I want to sound cute and clever, and just can’t seem to do it. At least I don’t sound clever to myself. Maybe it sounds better to other people. I’d post two bios here and let y’all vote on which one sounds best–but that would require that I WRITE two bios. I don’t even want to write one. But I will do it! I am brave.

Okay–have to share this with you. When the boy was still at home and studying WWI history, they were doing some kind of project looking up the early efforts at propaganda, and he stumbled across a cache of French WWI war posters online, the “Loose Lips Sink Ships” sort. One of these posters showed a chicken sitting atop a pile of eggs and said in large print: “Je suis une brave poule de guerre!” Which translated means: “I am a brave war chicken!”

And now, every time I think “I am brave,” I also think “I am a brave war chicken!” Je suis une brave poule de guerre!

So there. :)

Books, Books, Books

I came home Sunday evening from the 80th birthday party weekend for the fella’s dad and looked at the letter included in the second panel of Rita contest books I agreed to read…and discovered that I had until Wednesday (IOW, today) to read them all. Seven of them. By today.

Fortunately, none of them were massive tomes, so I was able to get through them fairly quickly. But I have been reading madly since Sunday evening. I read two Sunday night, two on Monday, one yesterday, and the last two today. And yes, I read them with full comprehension and can tell you what each of them was about. But I’m not going to because they are contest entries, and it’s a secret.

I think I’m kind of taking this week off from the writing, which is risky, because I really want to finish the book by the end of the month. So I’m typing it in instead, and doing my first edit/revision. I’d like to get 50-60 pages in by Friday. I’m heading to Waco fairly early on Friday, for the workshop I’m doing (finished it today) and the booksigning at Books-a-Million.

Oh yeah, I’m doing a book signing at Books-a-Million in Waco on Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. Hope it goes well. I’ve done absolutely no PR for it, but one of the other ladies participating has done quite a bit. So…

I’m ready to be home for a while. We’ve been gone the last two weekends, and the fella’s been gone for at least a couple of nights during the week for the past month.

I got an envelope from the agent with suggestings & critique about the last couple of things I’ve sent her, and now I’m going through the thinking part of my response. It takes me a while to think about what people suggest/say about my writing, whether it’s a critique partner, an agent, an editor, or whoever. Most of the time, what they ask about is something I’m aware of, and thought I had in there, but it’s obviously not clear, or not clear enough. So now I have to figure out how to make it clear.

And I have discovered that I really don’t like a lot of description in the books I read (and thus in the books I write). Sometimes I want to know about the clothes, but not every single stinkin’ time, and not in any great massive detail. Nor do I want to know about the furniture or the architecture, in great detail, which is why it’s hard for me to put in enough to suit other people. That happy medium is hard to find.

Anyway, I’m here. I’m heading off again. (The workshop is on The Plotter/Pantser Hybrid, or, Whatever Works for You is Right.) And I’ll be back again on Sunday, hopefully without a big stack of books I have to read in a hurry. (Though I still have one to read for a different contest, but I have till April on that one…which is good, because it is a massive tome…)