Day 234 of Week 34 August 2025

 

Starting August with a celebratory attitude is actually a good way to begin any month. Last year I celebrated the entire month of August. This year I am doing the same.

Think about it. In the month you were born, those 4 weeks were monumental for you. For the first time, you breathed air, drank fluids, sneezed, farted, had hiccups, used your voice, cried, laughed, looked at people, were held by your love ones. Are those events not worthy of a month of celebration!? I think they are.

 

Have a Happy Weekend!

Celebrate You

Browse cowboy shirts online

Make black bean chili

Read about horses

Listen to Willie Nelson songs

Draw a herd of cattle

Dance the 2 step

Tell a bale of hay a story

Thoughts On What We Miss

 

Bumble Bee & Red Clover

Can you spot the bumble bee right away?

Walking along, do you notice that you will glance down sometimes and see something on the ground? 

In the wild, surveilling above and below is a safety measure because of snakes and animals that can launch a  surprise attack. On a sidewalk or park grassy area, holes, sprinkler heads, dog scat or other various objects can also surprise us in unpleasant ways.

Sometimes, we miss stepping on a bumble bee. 🐝  

Being aware of our surroundings is survival. But what about the places we allow our faces to encounter close up as we do with LCD screens? There can be the figurative snake ready to strike and mountain lions ready to pounce there as well.

That brings to mind a thing I notice more and more online. The split second sudden jump on the page, a disappearance, or appearance of something. There’s also the plain old looks like I hit the wrong button (when I didn’t).

The surroundings of 20 years ago are not the surroundings of today. Back in the day, deflecting or avoiding danger was mainly in the control of the individual. 

Methinks, AI now handles our online surroundings. And that presents to me a big question. 

What did we miss? How or why did we miss seeing that in our path? Experts warn us. Yet, companies continue to invest in using AI. 

To increase profits? For what?

This Is the Day

Telling myself that my small voice won’t change anything is a truth that I can rely on. 

Writing a controversial post is not easy when retaliation is a real fear. I usually delete or revert them to Draft. Fascism is real in America.

Observations, watching shorts on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook have left me feeling worse than I already do since January despite the  many positive uplifting videos. 

There are also an excessive amount making fun of people and guilt tripping boo hoo you videos. As funny and clever as the jokes are, I find myself too often asking for God’s forgiveness that I laughed. 

Fort St Frederic in August 2025

Moving on to August sunshine, I had an exceptionally good day yesterday visiting places that I’ve been neglecting because I have not wanted to go anywhere. Depression does that, bullies you into numbness, and staring out the window instead of doing healthy things like being outdoors. 

I have not painted or sketched outside at all this summer. No trip to Massachusetts and the Atlantic Ocean. No beach. No diner. Yesterday is my best day of the season so far.

I plan to visit the Shelburne Museum as my big summer excursion. I bought the ticket online to be scanned from my phone. The ticket is good for 2 consecutive days. For bad knees old ladies like myself, that is good. 😎

The weather up here in northwestern New England is cooling down a bit as it does in August. I have the feeling, however, that hot weather may return. It is good to rule the days mainly with happiness not weather. 

Fields at Dead Creek 
Rt 17 Addison Vermont

Osprey Over Lake Champlain
Upstate New York

Summer Photograph: Daylily

 

Day 227 of Week 33 August 2025

Cooler nights are a  reminder autumn is nearing. However, early this week the 90°Fahrenheit ambient temperatures stirred no foliage dreams. 

Leaf peeper season this year (without foliage tour plans) will be see a maple tree, buy a pumpkin at the grocery store and wear a scarf on a frosty morning. Since my summer plans didn’t happen, I’m going light on autumn.

Have a Light & Bright Weekend!

Roast & glaze veggies

Draw a field of sunflowers

Browse nature tee shirts online

Write a 5 year plan

Brew a spicy tea

Read poetry aloud

Talk a walk with friends

Laugh

August Is August

Guess what tomorrow is!? 

My return to regular posting on the 15th is scheduled to appear at midnight.

The week flew by! 

Great news though, a major stress/anxiety surge is over. I napped away the emotional exhaustion when I returned home from the DMV after renewing my driver’s license. 

What a wimp I was taking a week plus to just get there after I realized I had to go in person for a new photograph. Appointments are rough for me to get to despite efforts to make it easier. 

Note to locals: 

There is No Middlebury DMV office. 

It closed years ago. 

The website dmv.gov giving information is wrong.

At a 9 AM arrival, South Burlington DMV: the parking was easy, the wait less than 2 hours, and clerks were pleasant and helpful.

Otherwise, I’ve been nowhere and done much of nothing but putter, water flowers, and write plans for my YouTube channel (to debut at the end of September 2025).

There is a lot of reading to do on YouTube policies and that’s in addition to researching how to set up a vlog channel. 

The scope is wider than I anticipated. Thankfully, my 17 years of blogging and about 25 being online does help, especially understanding the importance of marketing.

How is your summer going? Do you vlog? Use Instagram?  

Earth’s Moon Waning Gibbous
13 August 2025

Summer Photograph: Sun On Water

 August sun on water

New Haven River

Lincoln Vermont

Have a Wonderful Summer

On a Blog Hiatus

will resume posting 

15 August 2025

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Haven River in August

Lincoln, Vermont

When Oops Is Funny

 Every year I buy myself a birthday present. The reminder we are important to ourselves is a message, I believe, we need to hear as well as respect.

Mind you, the birthday present-to-self is not an excuse to go off and go wild buying stuff. There have been years when birthday cake was my present-to-self. (I was on a no sweets diet.)

This year I bought an adorable half inch serepentine pendant necklace.

As you can see from the photo, I greatly underestimated the size. 

This is not the first time I have not paid attention to an item’s size. There’s the hot air balloon poster to cover the wall above my double closet that arrived in a size ten envelope. And then there’s the small bedside lamp that arrived in a box the size of a beer keg. Yes, I have made mistakes buying online. 

The lovely part about it is all those oops made me laugh.

Adding…

Evidently there are 2 choices to have with a Dunkin Blueberry Breeze Refresher. No need (when asked what I want with that) for me to keep saying “A straw.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🥴

Cold Beans & Daylight

There ya go!

Cold Beans and Daylight

Debut the end of September 2025

My YouTube channel name! 

Yay for me!

Here’s the story.

You know the question:

If a tree falls in the woods, then does it make a sound?

Well, this morning in a dark room, I open the blinds to see daylight! I’m thinking then, it’s like a tree in the forest, if the blinds aren’t open, then is there daylight!?

I laugh aloud as I go over to the tiny kitchen to cook breakfast. I decide on one egg and some cold canned beans (maple flavor).

Right then and there, with my thoughts all jolly and whatnot, I tell myself that is a great YouTube channel name, Cold Beans and Daylight. It fits my quirky personality. And, it has a genuine story. 

An Internet search results in nobody online using cold beans, as a brand or profile name. Cold beans as part of a title but not in the context of my channel name. The domain name, cold beans, is available for over five thousand dollars.  In other words, my made up channel name is good to use as it does not step on anyone’s toes. 

Back in the 1980s my mother served cold baked beans at a family barbecue. I was appalled! Outraged! Disgusted! Over reaction city I was. 

Then I tried them, after I was told they are safe to eat right out of the can.

Cold beans and potato salad with garden relish has been my favorite summer meal since then.

My YouTube channel may not be the biggest or most popular someday, but it will be lots of fun for me. 

Summer Updates

Inking lines has begun

Updates on current artwork has a Monday morning type of going to be a fun week vibe. Malaise had been grabbing me aside whenever it wants to. I have been very hesitant to select which lines to ink because in this style of drawing, mistakes can mean starting over completely. 

The second ink and watercolor drawing is a go with the flow with no or very little planning. It is more relaxing to do because I can play with mistakes to turn them into successes.

Abstract drawing in progress

Elsewhere…

Last week the side of my left leg banged into something sharp. I don’t remember what it was. When the plum size bruise is noticed, I start looking for things at that level. Trying to match up a bruise with an object is probably one of the weirdest experiences of my summer thus far. 

The object might be my iron framed coffee table. If I was getting off the sofa, the leg could have made contact then. 

I have been careful this summer to avoid (most) injuries, wear sunscreen and use bug spray. I think I’ve had one mosquito bite early in the season. 

The weather here has been dry or downpour season, an indoors or maybe outdoors kind of summer. 

I missed the county fair due to a calendar mishap. I wrote down the wrong dates. 

A particular derp depression slump left me with widespread catching up to do. 

How is your summer going?