UPDATE: The winner is…Colleen C!
*~*~*

September

Work-related:

1. I completed work on Book #2 of We Are Dead Horse, MT — Hard Knox — and released it!
2. I wrote over a third of my upcoming book, Gunn’s Mission! (Have you pre-ordered your copy?!)
3. I revised and published an erotic/menage short story that was originally published by Harlequin Spice years ago—Eye of the Storm.
4. I completed 6 editing projects for other authors in September.

Health-related:

1. Swimming ended for me after my trip to my sister’s place in North Arkansas because I came home to a green pool.
2. Through medicines and some diet tweaking, I’ve managed to keep my blood pressure down to 130-150. I haven’t had a bad spike in a while.

Happiness-related: 

1. I have been working on and making more great progress organizing my art room, getting ready for the next push for art shows and reopening my Etsy store. I have accumulated the supplies I need to begin painting in encaustic wax BUT HAVEN’T DONE IT YET because I’ve been buried in work.
2. As for making new art, again, work has kept me too busy to do much. I attended the monthly art guild meeting, and as a group, we worked on sketching cats. The only piece of art I completed this month was this cat, which I watercolored yesterday because I wanted SOMETHING to share…

October

For work-related, I plan:

1. To complete writing Gunn’s Mission, a Brotherhood Protectors story,  which releases on October 17th!
2. To begin & hopefully complete work on a standalone story I’ve been dying to write for years and years, called Little Green Dreams. We’ll see.
3. To complete 5 editing projects in October!

For health related, I plan:

1. To not make promises about counting points for my Weight Watchers diet, because it’s that time of year and I know I’d be setting myself up for failure. However, I will try to make healthier choices!
2. To continue to reduce salt, processed food, and incorporate foods good for blood pressure (spinach, broccoli, bananas).
3. To acquire and begin using a treadmill.
4. To do more housework because my art room isn’t finished! Cleaning is exercise, too.

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To work on art and jewelry-making to get ready for the Art Festival this month!

Contest

Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier, or tell me what you plan to read in October…
Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

It’s Sunday again, and time for me to lock down my schedule for the week. First, I’ll pull a card to see if I can get any inspiration from the tarot.

Hmmm. Seven of Wands. And this is Jason of “Jason and the Argonauts” fame, chasing after the Golden Fleece. What do I see in the card?

Two kings, so he must be fighting the King who possesses the Golden Fleece. Can’t remember his name… Ah, good old Wikipedia… It’s King Aeetes of Colchis, and yes, he has the fleece. So, two kings fighting. Four warriors helping them. Perhaps evenly matched. A battle. What does this mean for my week? I have no clue. Two kings… Perhaps it’s the classic devil and angel sitting on my shoulders, pulling at me to be good or be bad? I have a LOT of work on my plate this week, and sometimes, I see a huge page count and think, Who cares if I finish this? What does it matter in the big scheme of things? I can easily see myself shrugging off work for a movie marathon or a trip to a flea market.

What does the book, The Mythic Tarot, say about this card? It “augurs a struggle with other people’s creative ideas — stiff competition.” The person needs to learn the value of his or her ambition…” Okaaaay. Whatever. I like my interpretation better. 🙂

Open Contests

1. Saturday Puzzle-Contest, Plus a Bounty Hunter Poll! — Win an Amazon gift card!
2. 9-11, a Remembrance, and a Poll (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Gabbi Grey: Single Parent Books — Xavier (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. What’s leaving Kindle Unlimited soon?! (Contest) — Win a FREE download!
5. Saturday Puzzle-Contest — Let’s celebrate National Collect Rocks Day! — Win an Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Sandy Pennese!
*~*~*

August

Work-related:

1. I began work on Book #2 of We Are Dead Horse, MT — Hard Knox!
2. I completed 4 editing projects for other authors in August.

Health-related:

1. I’ve been swimming almost every day. Sometimes, twice a day.
2. Through medicines and some diet tweaking, I’ve managed to keep my blood pressure down to 130-150. There’s been an occasional spike, but it’s so much better.
3. My appointment with my heart doctor went so well I don’t have to see him again for 6 months!

Happiness-related: 

1. I helped get the kids ready for the school year, including the 19-year-old who began college this month! In fact, she made the Pom Squad!
2. I have been working on and making more great progress organizing my art room, getting ready for the next push for art shows and reopening my Etsy store. I have accumulated the supplies I need to begin painting in encaustic wax.
3. I finished the Inchie Challenge! These are tiny 2×2-inch paintings. Here are a few examples…

September

 

For work-related, I plan:

1. To complete writing Hard Knox, the next in my We Are Dead Horse, MT series which releases on September 12th!
2. To release my short story from Silver Soldiers—“Ripples”—in a special giveaway the first weekend of September!
3. To complete (taking a deep breath) 6 editing projects in September! I’ll be a complete zombie by the end of the month!

For health related, I plan:

1. To swim at least once a day—as long as the pool remains warm enough!
2. To restart counting points for my Weight Watchers diet and hopefully shed at least 5 pounds, remembering, as always: Slow is good!
3. To continue to reduce salt, processed food, and incorporate foods good for blood pressure (spinach, broccoli, bananas).
4. To begin walking and counting my steps (once the weather cools).
5. To do more housework because my art room isn’t finished! Cleaning is exercise, too.

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To spend quality time with the family—movie nights, swim-time, making fun meals together!
2. To visit my sister in North Arkansas for a “writers’ retreat.”
3. To work on art and jewelry-making to get ready for the Art Festival in October!

Contest

Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier. Tell me what you plan to read in September…
Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Gail Siuba!
*~*~*

This coming weekend (unless some catastrophe occurs), I’ll be visiting my sister, Elle James, along with our good friend Cynthia D’Alba in northern Arkansas for a writers’ retreat! It will be fun to spend time with other writers and to catch up with each other as friends. I’m already making a list of things I want to accomplish this weekend. You know, me and my lists! 🙂

Here’s a fun list of 10 things we can do on our retreat…

• ☕ Drink coffee in the morning while chatting about our stories
• 🤔 Think about the writing
• 💡 Find our inspiration
• ✍🏼 Then… Write! Write! Write! Write! Write!
• 🍷 Drink some wine!
• 🧀 What’s wine without cheese?
• 🏊‍♀️ Swimming
• 🍽️ Eat some good food
• 🍦 Reward oneself with ice cream for a good day of writing
• 🍫 Eat some chocolate just because!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon GC,
tell me five things you’d do on Girls-Only Weekend!

I have to admit, when I saw this card, I had to consult my book to remember who this scared guy in the middle was. I recognized Apollo (that sun-crown was a dead giveaway) and the three scary females could only be the Furies. But to figure out who the guy in the middle was, I pulled out my mythology book for a bit of refresher.

So, you remember the Trojan War, right? Paris, beautiful Helen, the Trojan Horse, poor Achilles, blah-blah-blah, right? One of the kings who converged on Troy to lay siege was King Agamemnon of Mycenae. Before Aggie sailed away from his Queen Clytemnestra and kids, he sacrificed one of his daughters to Artemis, the goddess of war, to ensure his ship would arrive safely at Troy. Fast forward, and Agamemnon returns victorious only to have his wife and her lover murder him. (Can’t say I blame her. Killing a daughter would’ve done it for me, too.) Clytemnestra’s new man is now king. Her daughter Electra fears for her brother, Orestes, and secrets him away to a neighboring kingdom, where he is raised to adulthood.

Then of course, he has to seek revenge. He goes to the Oracle at Delphi (Apollo’s oracle) to ask what he has to do to avenge his father, and naturally, the oracle tells him to kill his mother and her lover. He does, but then because he’s committed the sin of matricide, he is hounded by the three Furies. There’s so much more to the story, but that’s all you need to know, for now, about this card.

Here, you see Orestes, after he’s killed his mother and her lover. He’s caged in by eight swords. The three snake-haired Furies are on his left, ready to punish him for his sin, but on his right is Apollo, ready to defend him.

What does that mean for me? Well, it does not look good. It tells me I have a problem (likely one of my own making—Orestes got himself into his predicament!) but I am held in place, unable to decide what to do, with fear on one side and resolution on the other.

When I consult the book, it says I’m “unable to act” because of a fear of consequences. And I’m clueless because I can’t think of anything right now that has me afraid. Hmmm. Hopefully, this isn’t about something in the near future, because I’m going to my sister’s place for a visit this coming weekend!!! 

Open Contests

1. Saturday Puzzle-Contest–What is happening here? — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. One-Word Movies (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Anna Taylor Sweringen/Michal Scott: Susie King Taylor – A Teenager Who Became A First Among Firsts (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!

Welp. This card isn’t helping me decide how my week will go, or am I wrong?

First, just looking at the card, what does it represent? This is the goddess Aphrodite. Her origin story is kind of grisly. Cronus castrated his father Uranus and tossed his testicles into the sea. The foam that erupted produced Aphrodite. You can see her stepping out of the foam. The goddess of Love is the embodiment of feminine beauty, but also the embodiment of all those stereotypical “female flaws” like jealousy, laziness, vanity, and deceit. Lovely, right? What does that have to do with me? Aphrodite is holding one golden chalice—the Ace of Cups. The Ace of anything represents the powerful “first” raw meaning of a suit. So, before I check the book, I think this means I may be looking at an emotional week. One filled with love, or the “eruption” of love, and one filled with events that will have me demonstrating all those feminine flaws. I have the kids heading to school this week, so I’ll lovingly push them out the door with their backpacks prepared and their lunch bags filled. I’ll feel regret that I don’t have them under my roof. I have a ton of work in front of me, and I may wallow a bit in my feelings while I try to tackle the stacked-to-the-ceiling tasks I have in front of me. So, I think that’s what this card means for me. I don’t like it, but I will embrace the positive meaning and hope I can tamp down my “weak” feminine faults to slog through the work.

Now, to the book. It boils it down, saying, it “heralds an outpouring of feeling” although “not yet differentiated” and can often be “overwhelming.” *sigh*

Why do I start my Sunday mornings with a tarot card? I guess I could just dive into my calendar, calibrate how many pages I have to write and how many I have to edit to get to The End, but I like adding an element of the divine to my day, whether drawing a card or placing my hand into my bowl of crystals and gemstones and pulling out whatever my hand finds compelling. The mystical and the pragmatic can reside in the same heart.

Open Contests

1. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: Flea Market Finds — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Ava Cuvay: The End of an Era (Contest & Excerpt) — Win a FREE book!
3. Gabbi Grey: Falling Down the Regency Rabbit Hole (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Flashback: Strokes, Vol. 2 (Contest–Two Winners!) — Win a FREE book!
5. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: What’s he doing here? — Win an Amazon gift card!

This last week was such a cool one! Not temperature-wise, of course, but we did manage another movie day—we saw Haunted Mansion! It was a fun family-oriented flick. Strange New Worlds aired the “Subspace Rhapsody” episode, which we all watched and LOVED. It was a total blast. We swam multiple times, including two night-time swims with the tiki torches keeping the bugs at bay. And I did manage to get started on my new book and finish up one set of edits. So, it was a productive week. Today is the start of the last week of summer vacation for the kids, so we’re still trying to get ready for that and pack in some more fun—nothing big, but some “together” time. We’ll miss having them underfoot when they start school.

So, that’s the catch-up, here’s my Sunday Tarot card…

Sooooo…

Today’s the day of the week I always update my plans so I know what to hit hard and what’s going to get in the way of me reaching my goals (appointments, family events, etc.). I was shuffling my cards, asking whether I was going to “get my shit together this week,” and readying the deck to pull one when this single card fluttered to the floor from the deck landing face-down. So, I figured The Powers That Be intended me to have this card. I flipped it over and sighed.

It’s The Star. It’s a very pretty card, but it’s not the best to pull when you have a ton of stuff on your plate.

This card from the Mythic Tarot deck depicts Pandora. You know her, right? Zeus, being a bit of an asshole, had his smithy-god create a beautiful woman as a gift to mankind then had the gods give her gifts. Hermes, who I think understood the order best, gave her the “gift” of idleness and lies. She was warned by her husband (I forget which god, so I’ll consult the book once I’m done interpreting the card myself) to never open the chest that accompanied her. Pandora just couldn’t resist. She opened the chest and unleashed a host of unpleasant things out into the world; here they are the dragonflies and bugs flying away in the dark cloud. Also released though was hope, depicted here as the Star of Hope. So, while her own worst instincts had her open the chest, the Star of Hope is there, not to rescue, but to show Pandora that all isn’t lost. I think so, anyway.

Now, to the book. Yes! Her hubby was Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus, who was warned by his brother not to accept gifts from Zeus. (Too late!) He did warn Pandora not to open the box. The bad things she released? Old Age, Labor, Sickness, Insanity, Vice and Passion. They all flew out into the world. Only Hope stayed. The card, according to the book, “portends faith in the midst of difficulties.”

All this means, I have my work cut out for me. I have to stay focused and not let my “idleness” cause me to muck up my plans.

Open Contests

1. Puzzle-Contest: Make a Wish… — Win an Amazon gift card!
2. July into August (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Word Seach: Back to School Supplies (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Krysten Lindsay Hager: Top 5 Favorite Comfort Movies (FREE Read!) — Everyone, pick up your FREE read in KU!
5. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: Flea Market Finds — Win an Amazon gift card!