Just another magic Monday

by Liz Flaherty

Oh, hell's bells, it's Monday morning and I haven't written a word for the blog. Or for anything else, I might add, but I have been enjoying sewing. I've finished off 24 gowns for Riley Children's Hospital on my couple of days of writing voice gone silent. Aren't they nice? I wish no one ever had to wear them, that kids just didn't get hurt or sick, but they do, so I'm glad they can wear bright colors and fun fabric while they recover.


Now, about word combinations. Do you ever see or hear a turn of phrase that gives you a whole, complete picture--maybe even a scene? I had the car radio on NPR yesterday (NPR people are really good at word combinations, by the way) and someone said "October baseball." By the time I'd driven two blocks, I'd seen a whole game, I swear! Watching the game wearing hoodies. The sky a particular autumn blue. Drinking hot cider instead of soda or beer.

The title of this blog "just another magic Monday" is one I adopted when I trained myself to love Mondays. I admit to having some help from Holly Jacobs and her Monday glee. I also admit that the words are wrong--it should be "just another manic Monday"--but since I heard it wrong for years, I'm still singin' it my way. Go right ahead and join me.

The Moody Blues sang a song when I was in high school called "Go Now". Those words still paint me a picture of urgency, not because of the words themselves but because I can feel the beat of it 50 years later.

"Go dark" is something theatre companies (and high school drama clubs) do on the day before performances start. They don't rehearse that day. This always makes me think of our high school football team walking the field before a game. They always walk alone, their thoughts their own, in silence and dedication. Going dark (and silent) doesn't seem to go with either drama or high school football, yet it does. It does.

These are what I can think of right now. How about you? Do you have any word combinations that speak to you a little louder or sweeter than others?

By the way, today--got a drum roll, anyone?--is release day for Kristina Knight's latest, CALL ME. Go ahead and order it if you haven't already.

Katrina Phillips is itchy. The job that has always challenged her seems stifling, her friends are all pairing off and she's been without male companionship for seven long months. 
Josh Hanna is paying off a debt: fly to LA, play backup for the house band during the season finale of Star Power and then back to his boring - and sober - life in San Francisco. 
But five years hasn't been long enough to douse the flames between them, and its hard to remember why things went so badly in the first place...

Also today--my goodness, we're a busy bunch, aren't we?--the A Heartwarming Christmas authors are doing a Facebook tour with giveaways! Stop my my page and see what's going on and how to enter!  Go ahead and like me while you're there!










Comments

  1. Liz, I've found songs often give me story ideas. Iris Rainbow was based on the song Your Wildest Dreams by The Moody Blues. I thought it would make a great story and it did.

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    1. I haven't had that happen, but I've certainly used a lot of song titles! One of them, Every Time We Say Goodbye by Cole Porter, is the title of my next Heartwarming--out in April.

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  2. YAY, Kristina! Best of luck with your newest! And Liz, I love magic Monday as a title. It forces us (well, me, at any rate) to smile and take a second look at the day. Sometimes the smile is bittersweet, sometimes mocking, and sometimes, like today, a 'yeah! it is!' Hope you get back to writing, but making gowns for such a fantastic cause is the best reason to suspend words-to-paper.

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    1. I love sewing. The older I get, the more I like it. Sometimes I have to force myself to stay at the desk when the sewing machine is just across the room calling to me! :-)

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  3. thanks, Barbara!

    And thanks for the shout-out, Liz!

    as for those crazy phrases...there are so many. My granddad used to say 'turn the town on its ear' a lot, especially when someone did something really out of hand (which is another phrase I love)...

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    1. I've been trying to remember some of my grandparents' things and my mind is blank. My aunt Nellie, however, used to say something wasn't worth "a fart in a sack." :-)

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  4. I love the gowns, Liz. What a wonderful project! Though, as you say, I wish they weren't necessary.

    One of my favorite unusual sayings came from my late mother-in-law. She was always telling my husband, "I'll jerk a knot if your tail", if he didn't behave.

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  5. I love some of the NASCAR sayings like "back'er down there, Marine," when someone gets too fired up. And "kick the tires and light the fires, Big Daddy," right before a race started. My dad had a million of them but most of them can't be written in polite company - ha!

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    1. I always like it when I hear the hoo-rah thing Marined do, too.

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  6. Congrats to Kristina on her new release! YAY!! I envy your sewing abilities, Liz--I can barely thread my ancient machine, which serves only as a repair machine when my friend Connie is too busy to fix things for me. I am learning to knit though. I'm hoping to get a couple of baby blankets done this winter for the hospital here. We'll see, eh?

    The one I love is one my mom used to say and now it's better known as a Dr. Phil-ism: "How's that workin' out for you?" and my grandmother would say someone who was nasty was "meaner than a striped snake." Mom would also say she was going to "shake us 'til our teeth jingled" if we didn't stop arguing. We stopped... ;-)

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    1. I like that Phil-ism--we talked about that! Jingling teeth is funny!

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  7. I love "Magic Monday"! I might just have to coop that. Much better than a manic monday :)

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    1. I think so, too. I just don't know what they were thinking when they wrote it wrong!

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