The one-eyed cat
Just sat and sat
I want to know
What you think of that.

Her one-eyed glare
That baleful stare
I want to know
If she’s still there.

A one-eyed tabby
Shouldn’t be crabby
I want to know
If she’s getting flabby.

The one-eyed cat
Just sat and sat
I want to pet
That putty-tat!

I want to know what you think of me deleting this in the morning.

I decided to get back to the drawing instruction book I got in 2023: 50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life.

Here are some of the beautiful ordinary things I bought at the beautiful ordinary grocery store.

Drawing practice of any kind seems like a good idea. Sometimes I think about whether or not I could publish anything I’ve written and do my own illustrations. These are mostly delusional thoughts, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try, right? I’ve been continuing to work on my story about Saul, the bog lemming. His wife’s name is Borealis (Alis for short) and he has three children, triplets named Yogi, Kogi and Chogi. Let’s see how this experiment turned out.

I was trying to think of a way to make the triplets distinguishable from each other. Very challenging.

Then I moved on to draw Alis, who wears a leaf apron when she is cooking. As you can see, the first attempt makes it look like she is wearing a large green diaper. Alis, I done you wrong. We can’t all be Beatrix Potter, but I’d like to get closer to her work than this.

Thank you for taking the time to see what weird things I’m drawing these days.

This beautiful, ordinary blog post will self-destruct in the morning.

Before we get to some quotes from my commonplace book, I thought I’d do another roundup of neglected photos. These are photos that I smallified, thinking I’d use them on the blog and then nothing happened. There was no call, for example, for a statue of a monk that I saw at the Como Park Observatory. Commentary, such as it is, will follow the photos.

Tonsures are awkward.

My artsy photo of our cat Luna. I still like it.

What’s the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? I think this is a tortoise, but couldn’t tell you why.

Notes from My Commonplace Book:

Join them in their world when they’re little,
So you’ll be welcome in their world when they are big.
L.R. Knost

Those that with a holy reverence fear God need not with any amazement to be afraid of the power of hell or earth. If God be for us, who can be against us to do us any harm? It is our duty, it is our privilege, to be thus fearless; it is an evidence of a clear conscience, of an honest heart, and of a lively faith in God and his providence and promise.
Matthew Henry, commentary on Psalm 46

The best mirror is an old friend.
George Herbert

Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;
Not by wine drunk, but the wine poured forth.
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice;
And whoso suffers most hath most to give.
Ugo Bassi, Sermon in the Hospital

Measure my blog by loss…in the morning.

With all the re-shelving of books going on here, I’ve been finding occasional bookmarks, tickets and other random things in them that served as bookmarks in a pinch. It felt like a special treasure, then, to come across an old note from my mom in a book by Georgette Heyer that was one of her favorites.

She says in her note to me that it’s a book she revisits every few years and that she bought an extra copy of the book to give to me since she thought I might enjoy it. Because it’s a small paperback with somewhat small print, at the end of the note, she wrote: “Buy some cheap magnifying spectacles at the drug store or Walmart! Love, Mom” Ha ha!

As it turned out, I did enjoy the book and have revisited it at least once. The note from my mom will serve as the perfect bookmark for that one.

What’s the oddest thing you’ve used as a bookmark? I’ve been known to stuff a paper napkin in a book.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits.
eating someone else’s good cooking
inspiration for writing
privilege of prayer
Big Bertha, our backup van
nightly hymn singing
re-reading a favorite book: Stepping Heavenward

I’ll be determined to delete this in the morning unless it steals my heart!

Books, books and more books.
Re-shelving all of our books
Takes a lot of time.

Yes, I’ve been pretty busy reorganizing our bookshelves after my husband put new flooring in our library. Hence, the zippy haiku instead of a longer poem. Here’s another one just for fun:

I love root beer floats
1919 is the best.
Three cheers for root beer!

Zippety do dah!

I’ll probably zip this post in the delete file in the morning.

Taking a break from watercolors for a moment, I’ve been doing some pencil sketches, one of which I featured with a poem from last week. Although I’m usually copying someone else’s artwork, I actually drew this deer from a photo I found on the internet. I used a few coloring pencils to finish it off.

Did you ever read the book The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings? I read that as a child – first book that made me cry (but not, by a long shot, the last). It’s about a boy who raises a fawn as a pet. If you haven’t read it, you could still probably make a good guess as to why the story made me cry.

Got a hankering to start drawing mice, which may turn into a series of watercolors paintings. I found these cute sketches by Brenda Lee Minor on Pinterest and gave it a try. Our kids were fond of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, in which mice with names like Matthias and Cornflower were the main characters. I mean, why not?

Ta ta, friends!

Not a blog creature was stirring, not even a mouse…in the morning.

First, a couple random photos that I find pleasing.

Where did I take this photo? Was it at your house?

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If the sight of those bright yellow swimming fins doesn’t bring you some cheer today, I’ll refund the money you didn’t spend on this post.

More quotes from my Commonplace Book:

Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.
Samuel Rutherford

A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back.
Proverbs 29:11

In the confession of the Trinity,
we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion.
Herman Bavinck

A poet is a man who is glad of something,
and tries to make other people glad of it, too.
George MacDonald

We may ignore, but we nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him.
He walks everywhere incognito.
C.S. Lewis

Time to make this post inblognito…in the morning.

Do you know this family?

I found the photo in a book of ours while re-shelving books after the Great Flooring Project in our library was done. The people in the photo are not familiar to me, so it must have been a book that we picked up at a used book sale. A normal person would have tossed the photo immediately, but as you all know by now, I’m not normal.

The photo was taken in the era in which I grew up. That could be my older sister with the glasses and the nice dress. Where have all the nice dresses gone? I love the bow ties on the two boys. It wouldn’t be hard for me to find an old family photo of my siblings in which the boys were wearing those clip-on bow ties. Isn’t it sweet how the two little boys in front are looking at each other? Sure, they probably fought some times, but one gets the sense that they were friends. I should probably throw this photo away now, but I might stick it back in the book where I found it.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits:
A fun outing with a friend on a very cold day
New flooring – I love it!
A husband who is industrious in January
We hit a deer but had no injuries – tender mercies
A letter from a young man I used to babysit back in the day.
A letter from my daughter.
TWO letters in one week!
Celebrating my FIL’s 97th birthday
A timely word in the Sunday sermon

Happy Monday to you all. May you be aware of the way the Lord is daily loading you with benefits.

I’ll probably be industrious enough to delete this in the morning.

We had a strange appointment this morning
In the dark hour just before dawn
God sent a deer to meet our car
T’was a young’un, but not a fawn.

Brakes were applied with strength and speed,
The animal startled and leapt,
But the appointment that God had in His book
Was still most dutifully kept.

We marveled to see that creature get up
And run off out of sight.
A meeting with two tons of metal and yet
It bounded away with might.

And us? Why we were kept from harm,
Though with damage to the car.
But the deer most likely met His Lord,
A better appointment by far.

The next appointment for this post is in the morning.