You Know I Can’t Just Let Something Go
By now those of you who have read my blogs, really do need another word for that but that’s another story, I can harp on something more than once.  This is one of those times.
When I got drug into that rock painting group I started out reasonably normal, at least for me, but as time goes by I see the darker side of me coming out in my painted rocks.  I do try to mask this as much as I can but this last one I just couldn’t.  Oh no.
I just finished a rock that has nothing to do with pretty, cute, or adorable.  The men and women in this group take this very seriously and do phenomenal artwork on these stones.  They make things that are bright, beautiful, and amazing.  Then there’s me.  I have to do things that are super complicated and are becoming more macabre as I go.  Folks you know me.  I don’t do simple, I don’t do cute and sweet, I don’t do the status quo.
This sounds like I’m trying to belittle these wonderful people but I’m not.  The defect in this process is me.  I’m the a-hole who can’t compete with these wonderful people and Lord love them they are wonderful.  They are sweet, kind, encouraging, and super supportive.  Of all the groups I’ve seen these are people are truly close to saints.  Now there is one guy in the group that I’ve only seen a few of his post with his work and damn this man is good.  He’s a bit like me however, he likes the more edgy darker side of the art.  The difference is this man can turn out the cute and beautiful.  He has managed to find a balance between the two worlds.  I’ve also told him he should consider doing book covers because his work is that damn good.
Anyway I’m sure that if this last rock doesn’t get me kicked from the group, I’m sure I’ll get a warning, I’m sure one in the near future probably will.  This last one came with a comment that reads like this.
Please disregard the melted shoe. Barbie got loose last night and decided to go exploring. The shoe is a total loss but we're hoping her foot heals.  Now seriously, does that sound right to you?
The image of the rock follows.
I’m just bat crap crazy and too dark to create real beauty.  Anyone got someone they want me to get rid of?
 

It’s An Addiction
I’ve heard of drug addiction, alcohol addiction, gambling addition, hell even sex addiction, but flipping rock painting addiction.  In less than two weeks I’ve painted no less than fifteen blooming rocks.  I’m not talking just cute little images, dots, wonderful little prophetic sayings, or lovely words of encouragement.  I’m talking full on paint, sculpt, and inventing new ways to do it.  Please don’t get me wrong, most of the people who do this turn out some amazing artwork and little gems of wisdom I would be tickled to death to possess.  They’re use of color and design is pure beauty and delight.  I ooh and awe over most of them and it is honest oohing and awing.  They are magnificent.
So what the hell is wrong with me?  I either have to sculpt, paint something more appropriate for a large canvas, or find a way to make the whole thing different.  The lengths I’m going to just so I can come up with something different is crazy.  Understand this isn’t a matter of competition, that I could understand, but more a matter of I just have to be different.  I see a rock and I see an image in it and I’m off to the races.  I’ve got a rock sitting over on my desk right now that reminds me of a rocky bottom pool of natural water that is begging me to come and fix it.  I’m crazy, that’s all there is to it, I’m flipping crazy.
If I ever get my hands on the person who did this to me, added me to that group, I’m going to hunt them down and beat them to death with a rock.  A big one and yes I do have some very large rocks in my yard.  I’m talking some that weigh close to twenty pounds or better.  Get this.  They even want me to paint them.  There’s this one with a supper flat side to it, at least a twenty pounder, that whispering paint me, paint me.  I will probably end up painting that sucker and then having myself committed.
I write, I don’t paint.  I make jewelry and I love doing that but this.  I’m not obsessed with jewelry making.  This is blooming nuts.
Here’s the real kicker.  I don’t want to let the little jewels go.  I want to hoard them like large nuggets of pure gold while I croon over them like Gollum over that damn ring in Lord of the Rings.
The sad part is I do understand why I might feel this way.  When I’m writing my mind often has to go places that aren’t very nice and when I’m painting these little rocks the only thing going on in my head is the painting.  The pure creation without much thought.  I love it and it relaxes me.  So to a certain extent maybe my feelings of wanting to keep the darn things, which I won’t, makes a little sense after all.  They sooth my mind and for a few moments I can think about nothing but the paint.
I love the pretty colors in my world.  Hehe.
 

Sometimes You Have To Hold Yourself Back.
There are times when something happens or you see something and it sets you off.  That’s happened to me three times in the past two days.  When you write you sometimes have to be careful about what you allow to spill forth from your fingers as well as your mouth.  For me that’s not easy.
I had a totally horrifying tale that I wanted to post but a dear young friend felt it might be more than I should put out there.  Oh well.
It is hard to keep a lid on things at times.  I see things that just make my blood boil.  What has happened to the people of this country?  I try every day to hold the faith in the people of this country and their intelligence but each day at least one person, usually more, will say or do something to poke a tiny little hole in that faith.  Now I’m not talking politics, religion, race, or anything that should honestly matter here.  I’m talking about ‘stupidity.’
I know there are a lot of videos on YouTube with people saying and doing things that would make anyone’s head spin at the ignorance spouting out of someone’s mouth but I’m smart enough to know that most of these are people doing what they do for their fifteen minutes of fame and managed to turn it into a money maker and you can’t argue with the fact that shows signs of intelligence.
The news gives me some of my biggest ‘oh my God you’ve got to be kidding me’ moments.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned to my husband and asked if they really did say that.
I’m talking about the spur of the moment, blink-blink, they can’t help themselves second that a person opens their mouth and out pours something so stupid that you are left with your jaw lying firmly on the floor with that ‘deer caught in the headlights look’ instant that throws your head into overdrive and the breaker switch in your brain blows out.  It can honestly take you a full minute or more for your brain to reset itself and you recover from the shock and awe of what you have just been a witness to.  The situation doesn’t end at that point either.  You will then spend the rest of the day or maybe even weeks trying to find some point of logic or redeeming factor in what you experienced.
Remember the line about poking tiny little holes in my faith.  I sometimes feel like a starship traveling through space and I’m constantly being battered by tiny little meteors that is poking holes through me from all angles and it’s only a matter of time before I implode.
Don’t take this the wrong way please.  I’m not a fatalist.  I still have my hope that somewhere along the way someone will step up and find a cure for dumb people.  I look forward to the day when we will see a vaccine that saves the human race and that horrible plague that is the scourge of our country, no, our world.  Until that time I think I’ll just start tying a scarf around my head to keep my jaw off the floor.  The rest I’ll just have to continue to deal with.  It might also keep me from opening my mouth and traumatizing others as I’m sure I’m guilty of.
Which way to the line for the vaccine please.

You all know that I do my ranting here and most of it is pretty harmless, at least I hope it is.  I get on my little bandwagon on occasion that is a little more serious but again mostly harmless.  The problem is here is that someone told me something and I’m pissed as hell.
I’m trying to decide to tell a bunch of ignorant, idiotic, self-righteous ass holes they are full of shit or not.  This is really getting me.  On one hand it is a small thing but on the other it is a big gaping hole in our world.  It has nothing to do with race, religion, or God forbid, politics.  It is about something so small and simple yet is a major thing to our world.  It doesn’t involve hunger, civil rights, or health of a human.  No my knowledge no dogs or cats are involved but who knows.
If I do this rant I’m opening up one hell of a can of worms, like that hasn’t been done already, and the consequences of my actions could effect a lot of people.  Most for the good I think but those moronic nutcases, not so much.
So I’m asking you, no I’m begging you, without knowing what the issue is to give me some advice.  The one person who does know that is going on says go for it because she needs a good bandwagon to harness her horse to right now.
I know I’m asking a lot but you have no idea how far I’m will to take this one and I promise it won’t be pretty.  As a matter of fact I’ve already collected some pretty ugly images.  No, I’m not talking about someone having an affair and I managed to get pictures of them doing the dirty deed. Yuk.
Anyway would love get your input.

As I had mentioned in a recent little rant I went down another little rabbit hole only this time I’ve got rocks falling in with me.  The one question I have asked, a couple of times now, is where do you get your rocks?  Surprising enough the ones lying in your yard aren’t the best for the artwork.  No they haven’t said that, they have been quite gracious.  The overall consensus however is to buy them.  I can’t do that.
I have been picking up rocks my whole life.  True most have been more on the size of boulders but there have been geos and lovely and rare finds along the way that I dearly loved.  A lot of them I still have and still dearly love.  Nothing wrong with that I’m sure and I’ll probably continue that little quirk of my nature until I leave this mortal coil.  I accept it and can live quite happily with it.
Today however became a bit of an issue.  My hubby and I, he’s such a sweetie sometimes, went on a little rock hunt this afternoon after he took me to lunch.  All’s good right.  Of course not.
The type and size of stones, really doesn’t matter to me but it seems to be important in the painting of the stone part, were slim pickings.  I did however find a few nice little specimens that I picked up here and there.  OK so what’s the problem, right?
I didn’t come back with a bag full of stones and of the few I picked at least three will never see the first touch of paint.  It would be a crime to nature, I’ve already pointed this out to the group, and I refuse to deface a thing of beauty.  I simply can’t.  If you can paint over a raw piece of beautiful black granite go ahead but I refuse.  Yes I found one.  Also a white one.  OK, after all these years of picking up rocks all over the country I’ve developed an eye for finding really good ones.  So is this the problem?  Hell no.
At what became the end of our excursion into nature, a sudden one I might add, I heard my husband take that deep oh shit intake of breath.
“What?”  I asked in a bit of an apprehensive voice.
“I think your standing in poison ivy.”  Was his response.
I looked down at what was all around my feet and he was right.  There it was, poison ivy.  Right nest to that was also a nice little patch of poison oak.  Yes I’m allergic to the crap, very allergic, what you might call deadly allergic.  Another words the shit don’t like me.
So as I sit here itching my ass, and other parts of my body, off I know that what is happening right now is all in my head and hopefully tomorrow the steps I took after rushing home will have taken care of any problems that might have arose from this little fun filled and loving outing with my dear darling sweetie.  If not, woe be unto him because he will be the one to have to hear me bitch and moan for days to come.

Continuing from my last rant, the thing my hubby and I were wanting information on was a train wreck.  To get the most important part aside the moron who tried to outrun the train in his car managed to jump out before the train hit his vehicle and you can take away from that what you want but I have my opinion on it which I won’t get into it.
Moving on.  So that should have been the end of the story but not where we live.  This railroad runs right down the center of the busiest part of our fair town splitting it in half.  From the Mississippi River all the way out this particular railroad cuts this city in half.  If you’ve ever been to Memphis you would know this is no short distance.  Along this rail through our town there are maybe six underpasses for this rail, most of these close to the downtown area and only one in the eastern part of our town and that one is way out east.  So this wreck resulted in a traffic tie up that ran for miles.
You had cars running around like lost ants trying to find a way around this mess and I have to say it would have been amusing except my hubby and I were caught in it on the opposite side of where we lived.  Fortunately I do know where the underpasses are and although it meant driving at least ten miles out of our way to get home we managed to get to the other side.  I was surprised how few people seemed to know this but from the amount of traffic, or lack of it, once we got to the closest way to get past the train traffic became almost nonexistent.  Once on the other side of the tracks the lack of traffic was almost creepy.  It was sort of nice to have half the city to ourselves I have to say.  What would have taken us about twenty five minutes on a normal day to drive from that underpass to our home took us about ten.
Now why the news about this train wreck was so important.  We have three daughter as some of you might know and all of them work and all of them have children.  Between them getting off work and running around trying to pick up their kids shortly after we got home they would have been cross those tracks to and from work and picking up their kids.  We didn’t know until later that as things worked out that day those crisscross maneuvers weren’t an issue.  Buddy and I were caught in the mess about thirty minutes before the rush hour set in so for our girls they would have been right in the middle of it.
I would have thought that giving people a warning so they could have tried to make arrangements to get around the worse part of the mess would have been something important but evidently the weather people felt that the fizzled out storm was more important and warning people to take cover.  You know getting on your knees and covering your head with your hands and never mind all the little ant cars running around with people who didn’t have a clue stuck in major backups on that side of the tracks.  If a really bad storm had hit us that day with some serious straight-line winds we really could have had some serious traffic pileups and I’m not talking one where cars were sitting in two or three rows one after the other.
Oh well, what do I know?  After all I’m just a crazy old lady who doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.  No joke a lot of times I don’t.  One of these days one of those storms that doesn’t fizzle out make pick me up and carry me away.  I’ll be sure to wave at you as I pass over you.

The Weatherman, Oops, The Boy Who Cried Wolf
I don’t know if it is the same everywhere else but here where I live we go through what my husband and I called “The Sky is Falling” mentality every time the weather looks like it might kick up.  We all know that it is the job and responsibility of the meteorologist/weather person to keep us updated and when necessary to warn us when bad weather is on its way.  What I don’t understand is why this has become a time when we have wall to wall coverage for hours on end just to tell us that bad weather is coming and that we may all die.
These long drawn out weather broadcast are also dotted with some of the dumbest statements that any human being can make.  Yesterday was a prime example of what I’m talking about.  Turning on the news to find out what might have happened in our fair city yesterday, we had a good reason for wanting to know about one thing in particular which I might address at another time, all we got was loads and loads of the sky is falling crap while nothing in our city seemed to be noteworthy from the day.  That is, that’s all we got was gloom and doom.  There was a major storm front moving across Arkansas and all we heard about was heavy rain, hail, straight line winds, and possible tornados.  This went on for over two hours.  This was on every local channels so no news for us.
All this weather hell and damnation was accompanied with ridiculous little statements delivered as if they were pearls of wisdom.  One in particular damn near made me roll off the couch laughing.  It went something like this,
“You need to go to a safe room in your home on the lowest floor.  If your house has only one story then that is the lowest floor so go there.”
Really?
Now as for that storm rampaging across Arkansas heading toward the Mississippi River and just beyond that the lovely city of Memphis.  It’s true that Arkansas did suffer a good deal of flooding and there was possibly a tornado that did touch down somewhere west of us but most of this was well outside of our local stations coverage I believe.  For those dear people who did suffer the damage and loss my heart and prayers go out to them.  I seriously doubt however that while they were going through the nightmare the weather was visiting on them they were sitting in front of the TV watching any wall to wall coverage of the “Sky Is Falling” gloom and doom that any network was spilling out over the airwaves.  Obviously they were too busy doing what they needed to do to protect themselves and their families.
Back to the oncoming devastation that was headed our way.  After hours of this massive amount of weather bombardment this storm from hell gets close to the Mississippi River and it totally fizzled out and we ended up getting maybe four or five tiny little raindrops.  No joke.  Just so you know this isn’t uncommon around here.  Don’t get me wrong we can and have been hit by some major storms, Hurricane Elvis comes to mind, and we can get our butts kicked.  This past year however most storms predicted to kick our butts have managed to split and go north and south of us leaving us high and dry.
So what’s the point to all this?  Well it’s gotten to where most of us around here no longer pay any attention to them.  I have a weather app on my phone and I watch the radar on that more than anything.  Hey there is a great big red and orange blob on the radar so make plans accordingly.  Of course I check this pretty often to see just exactly where it might go and sometimes I’m actually disappointed at the splitting and it taking those north and south or east and west splits.  Hey we need the rain just like anyone else.  However the weather people are people I no longer take seriously.
I think most of us need to know what is going on and I know that the only way some people have to keep up with the weather is through their TV’s but come on people use some common sense.  Give people regular updates and move on.  Stop this nonstop play by play sports like narrations and move on.  By the way if I have to hear about that damn polygon or the phrase ‘when thunder roars go indoors’ one more time I might scream.  That last one I often ignore and I probably shouldn’t.  Ever been hit by lightning?  I have.  Let me tell you, it’s truly an electrifying experience.  Yes there was a witness to it.  It took us days to find my shoes.

Small Children And Cell Phones
One of my biggest pet peeves is sitting in a restaurant and some small kid on a parent’s cell phone and usually it’s turned up quite loud.  Parents use these things to keep their child occupied, I’m not saying quiet, so they can go on with their mean with no regard to the people around them.  So many times I’ve wanted to jerk the phones from the child’s hand and throw it across the room watching it shatter into a million pieces.  Now we all know I can’t do this because it would result in me being taking away in handcuffs.
Last night at dinner I watched my husband hand his phone to our grandson for the first time because he was being a bit rambunctious, OK he was being total little twit, and hubby thought showing him some pictures he had taken earlier of him would settle him down.  Buddy had to ultimately take it away from him because he managed to get into something that would have cost a lot of money.  If nothing else this four year old is extremely smart.
I spent the entire day yesterday with this same child who I was helping paint rocks and his attention span was unbelievable and his willingness to learn was astounding.  Later his grandfather had him out with him and between hubby and our oversize dog so by the time he went to dinner yes he was tired but to me this doesn’t give the child the right to act like an ass.  Especially somewhere others are trying to enjoy a nice dinner they are usually paying fairly high prices for.
So here I was trying to keep my mouth shut about the whole phone thing when it hit me.  I had my own way of expressing my opinion while in some way doing what I wanted to do with that damn phone.
As a writer I have loads of apps for the pictures I take of place that I may someday use in a story.  I get a lot of my inspiration from these photos.  I also do videos for my book trailers and various other things so these apps come in handy.  I also use some of these apps just for shits and giggles.  So what did I do?  I pulled out my own phone and took my revenge out on my husband’s phone and in a way all the other phones which have served as what I consider to be a pain in my ass.  I proceeded to make a video and here it is.  I hope you get as much satisfaction from it as I did.  Hours later I’m still smiling.

Sale Time
Through the weekend of August 17 through August 20 Blood Lines The Curse in paperback will be on sale for 15% off.  Now is the time to give the first book in the Blood Lines series a try.  You can get it at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lines-Curse/dp/1517571057/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1534533493&sr=8-22&keywords=bloodlines+the+curse
Synopsis
When Emma finds out her father’s mother has passed away she has to make a trip back to her childhood home in Missouri.  Emma’s mother had taken her and left when she was twelve years old and swore that they would never set foot on the property again after Emma’s father had died in a tragic accident.  That had been twenty years ago.
Now she was back to put her grandmother’s estate in order when she hadn’t even known that her paternal grandmother was still alive until she had received the notice of her recent death.  She wouldn't have returned even now if it hadn't of been for a notebook left to her by her mother who died only a few weeks before her grandmother.
Emma had inherited the estate which turned out to be quite large but with it came a hundred and thirty year old curse and some unexpected and unwanted family members.  Now Emma has to unravel years of secrets to find a way to break the curse so she doesn’t end up like everyone in the Rodgers’ family bloodline.  Every one of the Rodgers have ended up dead, most before they even make it to adulthood and the one child from each generation that does only live into their thirties and that has always been a male child.  Emma is the only female to make it to adulthood and has been on borrowed time most of her life and the payment has finally come due.

An excerpt from Blood Lines The Curse

When I went out and started clearing away the dirt and debris from the old headstone that had been setting against the old pump house I never knew what it would start. Two little girls became the inspiration for my first book.

The sun was starting to go down and the wind had picked up a little. You could see clouds coming out of the west and it looked as if it might rain a little later. Great she thought. It sounded like a scene from some old grade b horror flick. Someone dies, the poor unsuspecting heiress goes to spend the night in the house for the first time afterward and a nasty damn storm blows up. The next thing you know the spooks are climbing out of every nook and cranny in the place. The stupid heiress ends up getting her head hacked off by some crazy, non-dying, chauvinistic ass hole wearing a mask with a thing against women inheriting the family fortune.
Emma heard Charlotte calling her name, “Are you OK? You looked a million miles away and I had to call you three times.”
“Yes, I was just looking at the sky thinking it might rain tonight.”
“I caught the weather report earlier and yes we are supposed to get a nice little blow in here tonight.” Steve told her.
“Figures.”
“What did you say, Sweetheart?”
“Oh, nothing Aunt Charlotte.”
Steve and Charlotte were sitting closer to the grill and talking between themselves so Emma turned her attention to the surrounding area. The irises continued all around the house and took up a good portion of the yard area and that was a lot because it was a damn big yard. The grounds around the house took up over five acres. If you counted the land around the barn and out building it was almost twice that much and there were irises and daylilies covering a very large portion of that as well. They weren’t willy-nilly either. They had all been laid out in neat little rows and in nice little patches and all had been well tended. Right now it was the irises in bloom but come June you would be met with all the daylilies. Scattered about the place were also roses and other flowers that bloomed at different times. During the entire growing seasons you would find something in bloom and color would meet your eyes everywhere you turned. Right now the irises swayed in the wind and the effect was almost hypnotic.
Emma thought back and could remember playing in this very yard. She had had a tree house in a big oak tree on the north side of the house. Emma got up to go check.
“Where are you going?” Steve asked
“I was going to check and see …?”
“It’s still there Emma. Your grandmother had it kept in good repair.” Charlotte knew what her niece was talking about.
Emma headed around to the side of the house to see the old tree house she had spent so much of her time in as a child. There it was. The tree stood about thirty feet from the house. The area around the tree had been beautifully landscaped. Where it had been mostly cedar chips around the base when she was little now there were flowers almost all the way around. There was an almost fairy tale quality to the tree house now. It had been painted a green color that made it blend into the foliage around it and the windows painted with a brown to match the bark on the tree trunk. Her dad had built it well but her grandmother had added the touches that a little girl would love. There now were flower boxes built into the rail around the balcony or porch or whatever you called the open space on a tree house? It looked like a little girls playhouse picked up and set in a tree.
Emma wasn’t sure how she felt about the changes. When her father had built it he had done it with love and care. He had insisted that if she was going to sleep in it then the door and little windows were going to have screens to protect her from pesky little critters. He had built it to last too but it had remained in a natural wood state and little frills were not his strong point. Now it looked like a little girl’s tree house. It also broke her heart to realize how much her grandmother had missed her and hoped that she would return.
She climbed up and sat on the porch with her legs hanging over the edge and she just couldn’t hold it back any longer. She cried. She cried as if the whole world had collapsed and fallen on her shoulders. Not the shoulders of a grown woman either but those of that little twelve year old girl who had left here all those long years ago. She cried for the little girl who had been ripped from the home where she had been born and lived for all of her childhood years. She cried for the much loved grandmother that she never saw again and she cried for the father that had so cruelly been taken from her at such a young age. She cried for the mother whom she had loved so dearly and would never be held in her arms again. She cried.

Rocks, Rocks, And More Rocks
Somehow I got added to a group called 901 Rocks on facebook.  Now I have no idea who added me to the group but unfortunately it opened up a very old can of worms.  You see when I was younger I painted miniatures.  Now my first thought was this might be something I would enjoy doing with my grandchildren and then I picked up that paint and that rock and away I went.  Lord help me but I may have a problem.
I had forgotten how much I loved doing those tiny little images on small surfaces.  There is a challenge in making a complete scene of something beautiful on a very small surface.  I already have too many things going on in my life so adding something new probably isn’t a great idea.  Oh well I’m down another rabbit hole so what can I do.  Here are the two I’ve done since yesterday and I have already hidden them in plain sight for people to find.  If you happen to come across one please go to 901 Rocks on facebook and share your find.  Also I’ve added my website so please if you have a minute feel free to leave a message for me there.  Happy hunting and yes I will be doing more and not just with my grandchildren.  LOL.