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Looking back on 2020, Episode 2: Attack of the Books
I don’t know what I was thinking when I created my first Looking Back on 2020 post and decided to riff on Star Wars movie titles. Now I feel like I’ve committed to writing 9 of these posts (or 11 if you count Rogue One, which you definitely should, and Solo, which you probably shouldn’t). I’m not sure anyone wants to read that many posts about my experiences in 2020. Maybe I can shift to the original trilogy for looking forward to 2021 (2021: A New Hope has a nice ring to it). Anyhoo, let’s move on to one of my favorite topics as a writer and lifelong reader: books!…
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A beautiful day in the neighborhood #2: Holiday Creosote
Continuing my attempt to notice the beautiful and/or quirky in my everyday surroundings. Tucson is a quirky and beautiful city, so I should have no shortage of material. I love this little neighborhood experiment–communal decorating of a creosote bush. It says so much about the kind of attitude that helps us get through tough times and lead a happy life: making due with what you have (because Christmas trees don’t really grow in the desert) and inviting others to share what they have to create something beautiful and joyful.
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#FOTD: Coke can flower
For Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge. We live only a mile or so from the Tucson Botanical Garden, and we decided to check it out during Winter Break. We had to cancel our Winter Break travel plans due to the Microbe that Must not be Named, so we are exploring our new city instead (outside only, masked and socially distanced). According to the audio tour: This shady barrio (neighborhood) garden came to life with the help of local Mexican-American gardeners and honors the distinctive gardens and yards found in Tucson’s Mexican-American neighborhoods… the distinctive decorative style featur[es] ‘found objects,’ family mementos and whimsical use of recycled materials. https://tucsonbotanical.org/tours/nuestro-jardin-audio-tour/…
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New Year’s Eve time travel
Husband: “So, what are we doing for New Year’s Eve?” Me: “Well, I hear the living room is nice this time of year.” To be fair, I’m trying to remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and… well… hmm… OK, I got nuthin’. But sometimes we do travel this time of year or do, you know, *something* that involves leaving the house, even if we are home and asleep by 10 PM. This year? Well, I hear the living room is nice this time of year. So what’s a bored blogger to do? Dig through the archives of years past, of course. Let’s climb…
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Most popular posts of 2020
I’m still trying to find my niche on this blog, so I thought it would be fun to look at my top 91 most-liked posts of 2020 to see if any themes emerge. Here they are: Post Likes #SoCS: Clearing the clutter and creating a fresh start 17 #NaNoInspo: Write Badly 12 #FOTD: Nymphaea ‘Perry’s Almost Black’ 12 #IWSG: Genre-morphing–and a question for my readers 11 #FOTD: Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleome serrulata) 11 #SoCS: A skeezy wrestler, a skeezy pickup line… and me 11 #SoCS: chirurgie 11 #SoCS: What am I attracting? 10 #SoCS: The pros and cons of time travel 10 I’m the first to admit that those…
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#FOTD: Frozen mums
For Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge. When I lived in Flagstaff, I left plants and flowers standing after frost kill, because they provided wildlife habitat and protection for the crown of the plant (and because I was lazy). I’m not a winter person, but I learned to look closely to appreciate the textures of flower heads and stalks in the snow.
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Looking Back on 2020, Episode 1: The Phantom Plans
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we all made plans for the bright, shiny new decade. New year, new you! Set some goals! Live your best life! Uh, huh. Man plans, and God laughs. In the immortal words of Aerosmith: Dream On. Or, in psychological terms, a lot of us spent most of 2020 orbiting the bottom sections of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In my case, I spent most of the year orbiting my laptop, held in place by the tractor beam of Zoom meetings. Could I strain a little harder for those metaphors? I bet I could. But I won’t. I promise. Seriously, despite what…
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A beautiful day in the neighborhood #1: desert Christmas
One of my goals for the new year is to post more consistently on here. Another one of my goals is to notice the beautiful and/or quirky in my everyday surroundings. Last April, I wrote a post, N is for Now, about how our worlds had shrunk to the size of our houses and neighborhoods and about looking at our surroundings through a macro lens, noticing the beauty in the often-overlooked details of our everyday lives. I’ve been thinking about that idea a lot as I’ve moved to a new city, and many of us, at least here in the USA, are back on lockdown (or should be–stay home, ya…
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#SoCS: What am I attracting?
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “magnet. I pondered over this week’s prompt for a bit, thinking about magnets, like the big rolling one in our carport that my husband uses to pick up nails in the gravel around our new-to-us house. The house isn’t actually new. It was built in 1946, and my husband has made a hobby out of rolling the magnet around, gathering nails and screws and other objects that might puncture our tires. He keeps all of them in an old wastebasket in the carport next to the magnet. They…
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#IWSG: Gimme that sweet, sweet deadline
Happy IWSG Day! For those who are new here, I participate in the monthly Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Are there months or times of the year that you are more productive with your writing than other months, and why? I’ve been mulling over this question for a few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more productive with my writing when a) I’m not dealing with a major life event (like moving… sigh… we’ve been here a month, and the house is still full of boxes) and b) I have a deadline. Time of year, by itself, doesn’t seem to make much…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
