LYNCR8MO

Sometimes when I’m off the “grid” and I have been for a while, whether intentionally or not, I feel a sense of peace within. I realize the Internet is the way to communicate these days and I do email regularly, but everything else I have stayed away from pretty much this month. Granted, I was out of town a few times, and any spare time I had I’ve devoted to illustrating my book—which is my own rendition of NaNoWriMo.

I’m calling it LynCr8Mo. Lynn Create Month. I looked at my schedule, decided (realistically) how many hours a day (that were available) that I could draw and used that as my overall goal. I had 20 days—turned that into 20 hours—an hour a day.

I originally thought, Easy-Peasy, however, I was surprised how difficult (this month anyway) it was to do an hour on those days. Eight of my 20 days, I logged in a zero. I’m still on target with my goal since on the days that I did draw, I drew more than the one hour goal. Maybe because I was ahead, I didn’t stress about getting an hour in on the other days. Or I was lucky to be ahead because something came up needing my attention more than the drawing. Either way, it’s all good.

I’m going to create a goal every month. December is going to be a challenge, but I’ll keep the numbers low, and who knows, I may surprise myself. At least there will be some sort of goal.

In light of the world’s current situation, I send out love. I sing HU daily, for God’s will to be done.

Now I’m off to bake…

I’m grateful for all the love in my life—thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

EXCLUSION

Exclusion of the heart is most painful. That sentence may not have made sense. In other words, when someone doesn't want your love.

  

food for thought: “He drew a circle that shut me out.”—E. Markham

Singing HU

I'll be going to a spiritual seminar soon. One thing that is always special for me is singing the love song to God—HU. I sing this love song to God everyday, but singing HU with a group—a really large group (like thousands of people)—is incredible.

Why do I sing HU everyday? Because it helps center me. It makes my connection with God stronger. It opens my heart.. and the benefit of that in itself is, well, beautiful.

You can experience singing HU for yourself, if you’d like, by visiting HearHU.org

 

Some of you might remember my drawing of HU when I first started my sketching.

COMPOSITION

When it comes to art, I don’t know much about composition. I fear if I do, I may not draw again. And I don’t like fear. 

food for thought: “I’m much more comfortable with a composition book.”—me

MULTIPLE FAMILY GARAGE SALE

One man's junk is another man's treasure... so whether you're looking for junk or treasure, you'll want to hit this multiple family garage sale.

When:  Friday, October 10 at 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM and Saturday, October 11 at 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM (and if there's a crowd, we'll linger past 1:00 PM)

Where: 2132 Krause Hill Place, Florissant, MO  63031 - google map it for directions, but look for the yellow signs and maybe yellow balloons. From Howdershell Road (near Koch Park) you'll turn on Riverwood Trails and then you'll make a left on Riverwood Place and then you'll make another left on Krause Hill Place and it's the first house on the left... white two story with gray trim. There's also a "tiki dude" in the front yard that my brother-in-law carved out of the tree trunk... that in itself is worth the trip.

Why: My family decided to do a "September Minimalist Challenge" where on September 1st, you would get rid of one thing and on September 2nd, you get rid of two things and on down the line for the entire month. By the end of the month, you will have gotten rid of 465 things, thereabouts. And what better way than to have a garage sale to rid the things you no longer use. I know I have more than 465 items... and all the money that I may take in is going to my favorite non-profit. I'm not sure about the other families that will participate... that's up to them.

What: There will be a little bit of everything from small kitchen appliances (bread machine, pasta maker, deep fryer, turkey fryer) to other kitchen items (platters, glasses, etc.) to children's things (books, toys, stuffed animals, games) to clothes (coats, jackets, scarves, ear muffs) to miscellaneous items (two for a nickel - includes craft items, hair barretts, golf tees) and other "more expensive" miscellaneous items, ranging from 5 cents to 5 dollars [at least what I have priced]. I can't speak for the other families. Some of the items are outdated, however, I thought they would be great items for theatre props... or for little kids to play with and use their imagination... and for the price, how could you go wrong?

Guess that covers it... hope to see you there!

INCOMPLETENESS

There is incompleteness to my drawings and that’s okay by me. I don’t want that haunting curse to bother me. I’m having too much fun.

food for thought: “Artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete.”—Browning

PART

I apparently skipped the 51st thesaurus word, so here it is. Don't know what this is about, look at some later posts and you'll get it... maybe.

Part of my problem is I can’t seem to make the book into a reality. Which is why I’ve been taking a break from blogging and working on my books to make them a reality.

(I felt like I had blogged about this and perhaps I did, but just in a different way.)

food for thought: “Fools! They know not how much half exceeds the whole.”—Hesiod

Here’s What’s Happening

It’s about another month since I last posted a blog… still off the grid a bit. For one thing, my computer was acting up and running so slow, I thought I’d lose my mind. I finally got the computer cleaned up, but still stayed off as I’ve been cleaning out closets and drawers while doing the September Minimalist Challenge. September 1^st you are to get rid of one thing, September 2^nd, two things, etc., and by the end of September, you will have gotten rid of 465 things. That’s some cleaning out, let me tell you. My little sister is going to have a garage sale on Friday, October 10 and Saturday, October 11, where I’m hauling all my goods to her place to sell. Any monies made I’m donating to my favorite non-profit. I’ll post more details later.

If you’re looking for some old time fun, my little sister is participating at the Family Music & Heritage Festival on Saturday, October 4, in Washington, MO where she will be demonstrating spinning yarn on a spinning wheel and other things that have to do with fiber. Her and my youngest daughter are Fiber Freaks. Seriously, they sheered a sheep just for fun, with a scissors!

Next on the list, if you’re a writer and in the St. Louis, MO or surrounding area, you may want to attend The Write Direction Conference on Saturday, October 18 in Columbia, MO. I’ll be there with one of my writing critique friends.

The weekend following, I’ll be heading to Minnesota for a spiritual seminar.  It will be totally awesome and I can’t wait.

I’m still drawing, still illustrating my children’s book, still writing, still taking care of cats, still thinking of everyone, still… being every day… because I’m a

It's Official

I decided to wait until the 30^th of the month to post—that’d make it official that I hadn’t blogged in, well, a month. I stepped off the grid for a while. I’ve put my attention on other things… like people. I write letters, you know.

I just read a really good book called The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes. It only inspired me to write more letters… not necessarily love letters, but really, aren’t all letters a type of love letter? You are giving of yourself and that’s love. I could go on and on about that, but I won’t.

The next word in my thesaurus, along with my drawing is number 52, Completeness and I thought I’d continue to share, just not every day.

I feel a sense of completeness when I’m coloring my drawings. It really is meditative.

food for thought: “What do you do that is meditative?

Fruit Smoothie Anyone?

I’m trying to eat a little healthier. I’ve been making my own fruit smoothies with frozen bananas, frozen strawberries or any other kind of frozen fruit I have on hand. Anytime I have excess fruit that I can’t eat, I’ll put it in a freezer bag and freeze it and it makes really yummy fruit smoothies. I’ll add whatever fruit juice I have and a little bit of water and blend away.

My daughter Rita recently gave me some kale that I juiced. I then froze it in individual containers and I plop that in my smoothie.

The other day I asked my husband if he’d like a fruit smoothie. He said, “Sure!” I put bananas and strawberries into his with a little juice. I decided to skip the kale juice after he saw me eating kale chips and wanted to know if I got those out of the compost pile. He walked away that day and mumbled, “My wife eats yard waste.”

I added kale to my smoothie.

After I asked him how he liked his smoothie and he said it was good, I asked if he wanted to try mine. I thought if I didn’t tell him what was in it, he wouldn’t even notice and tell me how good it was and then I’d surprise him and tell him he had some yard waste!

He took a sip, jumped off the couch gagging. “Egads, what’d you put in that thing?” Only ‘Egads” wasn’t really what he said.

“I added kale to mine.”

“That’s awful.”

“Oh no, it’s not. It’s good. You can hardly taste the kale.”

He was in the bathroom coughing and gagging. I sat on the couch rolling my eyes because really, you could hardly taste any difference. Then again, I might be used to green stuff in my drinks. He gags when he sees me stir Superfood in my juice. I guess it could be an acquired taste.

He sat back down on the couch. He shivered watching me sip on my smoothie. I said to him, “Really, it’s just like yours, only mine has a little kale added.”

He scrunched his face and said, “That’s like saying your chocolate malt is the same as mine, only yours has a little turd added.”

We both laughed until tears ran down our cheeks.

I'm Here To Tell You...

The event on Not Your Mothers Book… On Family and On Being a Mom…

was cool, but also on this mid-July evening in St. Louis the weather was cool - as 20 local contributors (Candace Carabus, Cathi R. Lamarche, Donna Volkenannt, Ellie Grossman, Jenny Beatrice, Laura Graf, Marcia Gaye, Mary Horner, PatriciaWahler, Renee Hughes, Sioux Roslawski, T'Mara Goodsell, Sheree Nielsen, Jamie Krakover, Laura Ray, Verna Simms, Melissa Fuoss, Victoria Nichols and myself) to the Not Your Mother Book series (On Family and On Being a Mom) gathered with co-editors, also local St. Louisan’s – Linda O’Connell (On Family) and Dianna Graveman (On Being a Mom).

Dianna and Linda

The book launch/signing/reading took place (7/15) at STL Books in Kirkwood, where owner, Robin Theiss talked about her store—a huge supporter of St. Louis writers and anything St. Louis, along with used, new and rare books. She introduced John Heithaus from Family Resource Center. Ten percent of all sales that evening were donated to Family Resource Center, an organization for abused and neglected children.

In addition to the local contributors, there were other local writers giving their support (Kim Lehnhoff, Teri Sanders, Lou Turner to name a few). I was happy to see my friend, Nancy. Her son recently opened a pharmacy in Kirkwood. My sister Sue and my two daughters, Jessica and Rita dropped in. I have such a good supportive family… as my cousin, Linda also stopped by.

Turns out, my sister Sue went to grade school with John (Family Resource Center) and after speaking with him, I realized he taught a PSR class one summer that my BFF and I attended. Small world.

That world got smaller when I realized Linda’s sister, Janice, used to work with Donna (contributor). Donna is also a great aunt to my daughter Rita’s boyfriend. Just goes to show, everyone seems to have some sort of connection with someone.

Linda, Dianna and Robin (along with other ‘behind the scene’ helpers) outdid themselves with tons of treats to eat and drink, and attendance prizes. Funny stories were shared and the event was a big success.

Be sure to stop in at STL Books anytime you’re in Kirkwood. If you have some spare change you’d like to donate, I’m sure Family Resource Center would love it if you helped their worthy cause.

Thanks Everyone!

Here I am in the middle of my two daughters (Left: Rita, Right: Jessica)

And the Winner is...

The winner to receive Well Versed 2014 signed by the infamous WWWPs is:

LISA

Congratulations! Send me your address via email at: lober13(at)gmail(dot)com

This time, what I did: I folded each name on a piece of paper and instead of picking them out of a hat, I flung them up in the air and said, "whichever one lands closest to my feet, will be the winner."

And don't forget to waddle on over to the book launch/signing event tonight, see previous post!

Tuesday, July 15th Mark Your Calendar!

Here's an event you don't want to miss... and just an fyi, I have a story in "On Family" so come by and see me!

Want to Win a Copy of Well Versed 2014?

 About a month ago, there was a book launch for Well Versed 2014. Now’s your chance to win your very own copy, signed by the infamous WWWPs (my critique group – we are all in this book).  Oh, and how do you win a copy? Just comment below and your name will go into a drawing and I’ll announce the winner next week! 

Seriously...

For those of you who have been so kind to be tortured fulfilled in viewing my sketches every day for the past three months, I'd like to thank you. Yes, I blogged every day since April… I wanted to hold myself accountable to someone so that I would sketch every day. I’m pretty sure I got it down. So much so, I’ve decided to illustrate my own children’s book. I'm not sure if I have what it takes, but I'm willing to try. Oh baby. Since blogging daily and drawing daily takes up a lot of time, the only way I’m going to tackle illustrating a children’s book is by doing it. Something has to give. I’ll post once a week just to show you my progress… with drawing. Oh, and I still plan to tackle the thesaurus and drawing to the words, I’ll just be on a bit of a break from that for a while... I only have some 700+ words to go.

Until next week, enjoy and wish me luck!

Happy Birthday All June Babies!

I have been drawing birthday cakes for family and close friends for their birthdays. If you’ve had a birthday this month and you weren’t mentioned, and feel a little sad about that, then consider this yours!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERYONE!

Happy Birthday Mark!

Mark is another grade school friend. There’s a group of us who have managed to stay in touch on a pretty regular basis. In grade school, I always thought Mark would be some kind of actor or in the movie business… and I was right. He’s made movies and writes screenplays and writes for television. And it hasn’t gone to his head… he’s still nice. Happy Birthday Mark!

WHOLE

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Have you ever looked at the word whole and really thought about it? And if you took off the W, you have a hole. Is there such a thing as a whole hole?

Now that’s a whole donut.

food for thought: “The be-all and the end-all here.”—Shakespeare

DECOMPOSITION

Did you know that the decomposition of raw potatoes will happen in water, in the fridge? They virtually disappear.

food for thought: “It went to pieces all at once,— / Just as bubbles do when they burst.”—Holmes

Happy Birthday Sophia!

Sophia is my great niece. She’s a spitting image of her mother when her mom was her age. Since I don’t get to see Sophia too often, I can remember one of the first times, I was so impressed because she was like a little adult, carrying on a conversation hundred times better than I could as an adult. She raises goats, takes them to fairs and wins! And with the winnings, buys another goat and starts all over. I’ll show my ignorance about goats, but I think a baby one is called a kid. And the first time I heard a goat ‘whining’ I seriously thought it was a human kid having a fit. Scared the crap out of me as I thought they had some poor child locked up in the barn. Turns out it was the goat. Go figure. I can’t wait to see what Sophia will grow up to be… Happy Birthday Sweetie!

COMBINATION

The combination of drawing and writing is working for me.

food for thought: “Great is the strength of feeble arms combined.”—Homer

INCOHERENCE

Go see yesterdays post… it’s just the opposite. I’m coming unglued. But here is my blind drawing of Jessica’s ukulele

and then me looking at the ukulele.

food for thought: I’ve got nothing.

COHERENCE

The coherence of all these words in my brain might be pushing the envelope. But I could lick it shut, which might help.

food for thought: “Only throw dirt enough and some of it is sure to stick.”—T. Hughes

Happy Birthday Zack!

Zack is my nephew… I haven’t seen him in quite a few years. Gosh, it’s probably been about ten years now. The last time I did see him, he was so tall. Prior to that he was a little tiny thing. They do grow fast. I think he has to be somewhere around my daughter’s age. Seems like when they were all little and played together, he was in that age bracket somewhere, so I’d guess he’s early-mid 20s by now. I don’t know if you’ll see this… I have no address to send a card… but you’re thought of on your birthday. Hope it’s a good one.

BOND

There’s something quite satisfying when you bond with someone, especially with someone you just meet.

 food for thought: “Blest be the tie that binds.”—Fawcett

DISJUNCTION

There’s been many a disjunction in my life. But I’m better for it.

food for thought: break all to smithereens…

When my girls and I went to Joplin for my friend Geoff’s memorial service, Jessica made a CD with a variety of songs on it. One was “ Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox. Jessica said she remembered when they were all little and I drove them to school, we’d all rock out to this song. I couldn’t remember. Surprise.

But tell me what you think when you hear this song…

JUNCTION

One of the words listed in the thesaurus is “hookup” for the word junction, and so this one is for you Casey. I’ve used the term hookup loosely telling Casey that maybe he and his friend could hookup. He’d roll his eyes at me and sigh, “Mom, please. I won’t be hooking up with her.”

 

And what does the locket (below) have to do with anything? Well, it came 'unhooked' and I lost the little handmade book inside that my daughter Rita made me. Wah.

food for thought: “Seas but join the regions they divide.”—Pope

SIMPLENESS

The thesaurus also says: ‘See mixture’ and then states: Freedom from Mixture. – This to me seems odd. I guess if something involves simpleness or simplicity, there’s no need to stir anything in to the mix. Unless you make rice krispie treats, but those are simple, and simply good!

food for thought: I’m sure I’m giving a glowing look at how unintelligent I am. Dur. However, I never did claim to be a genius. But now for the serious business: do you like rice krispie treats?

MIXTURE

 I am a mixture of all my past lives and I want to learn from them all.

food for thought: “There is also a mixture of good and evil wisely distributed by God.”—Atterbury

REMAINDER

 For the remainder of my life, I hope to always give with love.

food for thought: What would you like to do with the remainder of your life?