Board Books Four

10 Valentine Friends was issued in board book format last week, so now all four of the 10 Kids counting books are available as board books. It's my favorite format because the books are fat and chunky––fun to hold and bite. (And the ink is specially formulated to be chewed and bitten--completely nontoxic.)

Fall Colors

A Long Day

The 4 Stooges Take a Hike

Goofing around with Gina and the doc.  Lunch at Louis'.

A little foggy on the Coastal Trail

Over My Shoulder

looking east   5:19 p.m.

Found On the Beach

Merry Christmas

Fifty-Two Spots, a special delivery from Anne

a splendid centerpiece––note furry mouse with tail feather

5:08 p.m.

I had a great jog/walk this evening. Tom was in a meeting and it was really tempting to stay home. The tide was high--I knew that--but I headed down the sidewalk to the beach anyway.

No one was there. It was dreary and the wind was fierce. But it was blowing from the south, so it wasn't as cold as it could've been. Still, I was wearing a baseball cap with my mom's cashmere cap on top of that, then my hoodie from my running top--and to top it off, the hood attached to my lightweight down jacket.

I got almost to the end of the dunes then turned around. It was easy street going back, because the wind pushed me from behind. I took off two of my hats. By the time I got to Lincoln it was dark, and I cut over to the concrete boardwalk.

I love walking--and walking alone, even though it's creepy sometimes. When I turned up Balboa, I noticed an elderly man running up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street with only a towel wrapped around him.

A few blocks later, I heard an enraged shout: "NO, YOU MOTHERFUCKER, I WOULD NEVER DO THAT! IT'S AGAINST THE LAW!" I looked across the street and the guy was shaking the big blue mailbox on the corner with all his might. Then he turned and ran back down the street.

My neighborhood is so interesting. I thought, "If anything like this had ever happened in the 20 years Tom and I went for walks in our TN neighborhood, it would have been talked about for a decade."

Today's Prompt

Today's prompt isn't a word––it's the photo above, by Jane Underwood.

My head's been hurting for months.

This morning when Dr. Naraghi clipped my MRI* up on the light window, I caught his expression of shock before he could mask it.

"Doc, what's wrong?"

"This is … interesting. Our imaging equipment uses a gray scale, which means this image of your brain shouldn't be registering color at all. Especially being that the brain is made up of gray matter."

"But I'm an artist. I love color. I'm working on a job right now where the illustrations need to be in black and white. And I'm finding it impossible to do them in black and white. Even though the ink I'm using is black, color keeps flooding out of my pen. Is there a correlation, do you think?"

*see image above
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p.s. I had a text from a good friend this morning asking me if I had really been having headaches for months, so I wanted to explain that the prompts are from a class I take called the Round Robin, given by the Writing Salon. Every day we get a prompt, and we write for 10-12 minutes. Then we exchange our writing with our partner-of-the-week, and spend 10 minutes commenting in a positive way on our partner's writing. It's a magnificent class! Sometimes we write things that are true, and other times we make things up, sometimes we write poems--whatever the prompt inspires.

Anne's Birthday

We were treated to a visit to her studio (followed by a big pizza pie).

Even her palette was beautiful.

Uncorking the bottle that washed up. The message: Love, Live, Laugh

It Happened Again.

5:14 p.m.

Dark Too Early

5:18 p.m.

Mimi's In Town!

We met at Kinokuniya Book Store in Japantown.

Then we had noodles and played with trains at Mifune.

Mari and Wolf said we could keep her, but then they changed their minds.

Sigh ....

You all know how much I like Siri. Here's another great Siri story from Barbara:

I LOVE my new iPhone. And I love Siri. I told her once that she was wrong and she said: "Sigh...."

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and on another note, a text from Jamie at 8:17 p.m:

Dude it's done!!!

p.s. I loved seeing Obama's family come up before and after his acceptance speech.

I loved it the next day when the papers said that Michelle had been seen wearing the very same outfit in public twice: in 2009 and in 2010. 

I loved it that she said she just didn't have time to deliberate about what she would wear--that she was too busy, and that she had her girls to take care of. God, if that's what a family of four can look like without planning and plotting and studying their apparel … to me they looked like a vision of the heavenly host. Their colors, their polish--did you see Sasha's necklaces? So fun--and the hot pink belt Malia wore with the shiny blue skirt … But this isn't the main reason I was happy.

The Sun Had Set

5:22 p.m.

The sun had already set by the time we got out this evening and this cruise ship was rounding the bend by the Cliff House, all lit up like a Christmas tree.

My Writing Guru

This is Jane Underwood, who runs The Writing Salon (and that's her bf, Jack). I always sign up for her Round Robin class, and I meet the best people in it. Tonight I got to meet my partner from last week, Katie.

Douglas Goetsch taught a class this weekend through The Writing Salon and tonight he gave a poetry reading at The Great Overland Book Co. He's kind of cute and wears braces. Some of his students read too, and since Jane had signed up for the class herself, she read. A great poem.

If you'd like to read one of Jane's poems, here's one of my favorites.

Josie and Me

You will not believe who I saw today at the Santa Cruz Sea Glass Festival. Well, actually I met her at her open studio last weekend and that's when she told me about the Sea Glass Festival this weekend.

... It's Josie Iselin! She's a hero of mine. I love her books and I love the way she photographs things she finds on the beach, using her scanner. Her writing is wonderful too.

found

6:09 p.m.

Spookiest Beach Find Ever

 A sand dollar wearing a Halloween mask?