Bull saved from bullfight

such a beautiful video...

Something Old... Something New

 Last month hubby went grocery shopping, since I was up to my eyeballs in book writing. He came back with something old that was new - potatoes.

Old?  Well these are Peruvian potatoes, not a man-made invention.

New?  Certainly new on our supermarket shelves and...

...they're blue.

We were all keen to try them and I, used to Rooster potatoes with their bright red skins, but ordinary potato innards, was expecting the colour to go no further than the skins.

Wrong! These guys are true blue all the way through!

I made mash out of them the first night. Here's the photo...

What were they like? Oh gosh... if you closed your eyes they tasted like... mashed potatoes. LOL BUT... if you looked at them, it was super weird. My eyes and my mouth had several arguments and hubby is adamant he is NEVER eating them again. It felt like I was eating play dough with my gravy. Just a little too odd for me.

I tried roasting them the next time, but a crispy blue potato just... well too weird for me! I think they'd be fun in a potato salad, but I'm not sure I'd buy them again. I've realised that I like looking at my golden browned potatoes as much as eating them.;-)

Done

At 11:55 today I wrote the last word of my last chapter of the book that is sequel to FIRST LIGHT. I looked down and saw the time on the edge of my computer screen and thought "that's a fun number." :-) Especially since today is the 7th of the 7th.

Now comes the less thrilling part of checking for errors, but hopefully it will be a real book fairly soon. It has been quite an adventure, more than I ever expected. I am DONE, in more ways than one! 

 And now I am going to leave my computer and go enjoy the sunny summer day out there.

See you soon! ;-)

It is Finished in Beauty

Two years ago, on the 30th of June, I wrote this post below. I've copied it here again for a special reason...

With beauty may I walk

This last post in my Beauty series is also the first one I was inspired to write. It started with a photo, but came together through a news article and the shared words of friends and family. 
Here’s the photo:

This is Judith, she’s one of my internet friends. :-)

It’s a beautiful photo and it’s pretty clear to see that Judith is a beautiful woman. She really glows, doesn’t she? Her friends and family can all vouch for the fact that she’s just as beautiful in character too. Judith is my inspiration for a third reason too, but I’ll explain that further on. First I need to get back to that news article.

It was a fairly regular news item about the dangers of everyday things and how to avoid them in order to live longer. I’ve been sent dozens of things like that in emails too. You know the thing – don’t eat this, don’t expose your skin to that, watch for this, be aware of that… they make living start to sound like an ongoing battle against ageing and dying. And the fear doesn’t stop there - there’s also the other fears of being too fat or too old, not smart enough or not pretty enough. So much fear and so many people spend their lives worrying, or working frantically on staying alive, that they forget the far more important issue of making sure they LIVE while alive.

With beauty all around me may I walk

There’s a big difference between being alive and LIVING. Anyone breathing is alive, but probably only a handful of people remember to LIVE every moment they are breathing.

Do you? Do you remember to listen to the birds singing in the street as you dash to work worrying about tomorrow? Do you remember to taste the food and enjoy every joyful experience of eating instead of wasting it on guilt or worry about not eating healthy enough or getting fat? Do you still stop to feel the raindrops on your face or do you see rain as annoying? Do you pause to watch rainbows in oil puddles, stop and listen to the street musicians, talk to the person next to you on the bus or in the shop… or do you move quickly so that you’ll be on time for that important “something” that probably isn’t that important really? Do you see flowers or weeds growing between the paving slabs? Do you remember to live or are you just alive?

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk

It’s not just about quantity of time, it’s about quality of experience. To be here on Earth for a long life is only a blessing if it’s a life that is truly lived. Living in Beauty is choosing to live every moment completely, in joy and wonder, not simply trying to exist as long as possible.

For that reason I can think of no-one better to acknowledge as Living in Beauty than Judith because not only is she genuinely beautiful… she knows how important it is to LIVE while you’re alive. I check her Facebook page every week, because she always has something uplifting to share about her life. Her comments are replies are full of smiles, love and gratitude. It’s not that her days are exceptionally wonderful, or that her life is that much better than yours or mine, it’s her attitude to living that makes the difference. In fact… Judith’s life is pretty complicated, but I’ll let her daughter explain that to you:

My mum, Judith, is 53 and was diagnosed with Bowel and secondary Liver cancer last Feb 2010. Since then she has had two major surgeries to the Bowel and Liver removing the tumours. After over 6 months chemo she was told the cancer had spread further to the Lungs and she now has 5 inoperable tumours over both lungs & one in her pelvic lymph gland. Her prognosis is that the cancer is now incurable... and she has been given a statistic of 2 years to live.

Now go look at that photo and tell me what you see. I know what I see - I see the face of a mother, daughter, friend and wife, but mainly I see a woman most beautifully living while she is alive. None of us truly know how long our lives will be. We might lengthen our time, make ourselves as healthy as possible, but none of us have the power to stay alive forever. What we do have though is the power to live each moment of our lives as fully as possible 

…and that is what Walking in Beauty means to me.

 

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk

With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty

Last Saturday, 29th of June 2013, Judith finally left her family.

She was loving, gentle and brave to the very end.

It is finished in beauty... it is finished in beauty.

...

Book News

Well, I'm on chapter 30 and the end is in sight... for me and the book! It has been such fun, but I'm living, eating and even sleeping the story. Yup, I'm dreaming I'm the characters! It's a bit weird, but interesting.

I've started thinking about covers, which is part exciting, part headache. For  FIRST LIGHT I totally hated the cover the publishers/printers chose and was thrilled when I was able to design my own for the kindle version...

But the problem with doing your own artwork is the limitations of what you are capable of. I used photos for this cover above, but that meant finding photos I could use that fitted what I was envisioning. Thankfully I have photographer friends as well as belonging to a place that shares photos for artwork,but even so the girl's face (Daen) is a patchwork of three girls (hair, face, eyes) plus some serious photo-shopping!

Something Very Old for the Weekend

I used to post a music video every friday, for weekend, when I first started blogging. I thought I might start that again. :-) This one, however, is a saga rather than a song. It's a portion of the story of Beowulf and it is being accompanied by one of my favourite antique musical instruments, a hurdy-gurdy.

Book Writing Update

A quick update to that that I'm kind of on chapter 16 at this stage, "kind of" because I've realised I don't write in chronological order. With my first book I had written two chapters out in pencil in a notebook years before I actually wrote the book. They were the first chapter and the climax chapter, roughly chapter 20.

I thought I'd start at the beginning and work till the end his time, but once again I seem to work better if I get the main sections sorted first and then fill in the rest. It's a bit like flower arranging, I think. I put in all the large important features and then fill in with the minor stuff.

As you might guess by that vague description... I rarely arrange flowers! I far prefer to tweak and arrange words.

At the moment I'm managing to write between 1,800 and 2,800 words a day, which is good.  I stick on some music and I'm away. I write a lot better (and faster) if I have the right music to inspire me, it sets my fingers on fire. I have entire YouTube folders for
themes like; sad, tense, dramatic and romantic.

 

The only problem is that when I write that much in a day any energy for writing anything else - emails, blogs, etc, is used up and dried up. My "must reply" email list is alarming and growing. Household chores are suffering as well. I have not dusted in... a long time, but I simply can't do it all and at this stage the book has taken over my brain to such an extent that I'm not much use for anything anyway. Yesterday I left rice in water on the stove for 20 minutes and never turned it on.... ah well, at least I didn't put rice on a hot plate without water - that would have been worse!

glitter-graphics.com

At least my brain's on fire... not the house.



I'll leave you with the music I'll be writing to today. It's Citadels, by Galt Aureus. I'm also using another lovely song by them, for ...well, you'll have to wait for me to finish the book to find out about that one.  ;-)