Do you see the gals weaving their curly wishes into reality, and the kitties and birdies and mice supporting them? This is one of my latest pattern design pieces for fabric and home decor. This, and others in various colors, are now added to my Spoonflower shop, so you can get them on fabric, wrapping […]
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Tag: Angela Treat Lyon
I Lost My Temper, and Lost Everything
Freya. Little Freya. Five feet nothing, thin as a rail. Powerhouse. Strides in from the outside deck, leaving the door wide open to the frigid, whirling snow and cutting wind. Which wasted no time rushing in and wrapping itself around me, doing its best to freeze my tropical butt off. I’d just gotten home, settling […]
Comments, Connectedness, and Kindness
I wonder why people feel so free to be outright a-holes, mean sons of bunches, and screaming ranting judgmental karens out to intentionally destroy some innocent person’s reality. I’m thinking about the comments we all make online — on Medium, Substack and other article sites, social media — from Facebook to X to instagram and […]
How Peace Bringer Brought Spring Back
Isn’t it just like life! You have to brave going through the shit in order to finally get to the gold – which has so much more value, the more trouble it was to get it. TRIGGERS: If you are sensitive to mentions of violence or harm, you may not be brave enough to read […]
I Had A Tantrum Yesterday, and It Wasn’t
Finding out I had zero choice set me on fire. I can usually put up with automated customer service, whether on the phone, or online chat. But this time? Oh my. We bought a new mattress/box-spring set from a company we found online. It was delivered, unpacked and set up; the delivery guys left; I […]
Are You A Writer or Author?
Do you know where to publish your articles and stories? I’ve added a rich list of various places to publish at the end of this note — you’ll want to bookmark and save this — lots of good info. Maybe you already know about websites where you can publish your articles and stories. I didn’t […]
SILLY KITTY
Kitty comes from the planet Amberocity. They have the most amazing spiral deserts that intersect with ferocious thick carnivorish jungles. My neighbor’s cat, Kitty, is from that planet. She came here because she was scared of the jungle. And she likes chocolate ice cream, which they don’t have on her planet. She loves to run […]
Meet DAWG.
I bet you don’t know that there are dog-aliens. They look and act like our dogs, but you can tell at night, because their eyes gleam green when the moon is full. Dawg is a silly, fun-loving, very tall, very fast-running critter who came from the planet Outlandia, which is covered with very high mountains […]
Caught by A Monster Outgoing Tide
(Published in Small Craft Advisor Magazine) My friend Jana and I decided to take the little blue skiff out — we’d row across the harbor to the tiny crescent-shaped beach right under the old Tiffany mansion, and have a lazy picnic. But we never got there. We were bored. It was a hot July noon […]
What’s Your Destiny? Mine Is Scary.
I’m assuming that I’m going to live to be 100. So I’ve been thinking about what I want to see happen in my life in my last 22 years. On the one hand, most of me just wants to disappear to a small hideout on the beach somewhere. I want to putter in a thriving […]
Why Should I Bother Making Art in Times o...
I got a call from an artist friend who was all upset about the way the world seems to be inside out and utterly falling apart. She said, “When I look at how the world has gotten, I think why bother making art anymore? People say they are either too worried about rent to buy […]
Excruciating Pain and Horror to Unending,...
The emergency room intake attendant side-eyed me in disbelief from under frowning grizzled brows. Holding my pulse with one hand, with the other he was hurriedly filling in my chart with cryptic slashes and numbers. He looked back down at it on his lap, and glanced at me again. Not really seeing me. “How is […]
My Dad Thought It Was Sooo Funny When He ...
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, looking back up at me, actual tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry.” My dad used to burst into my bedroom, at dawn:30, throwing the door back with a thunderous bang. He’d roughly yank all the covers completely off me and my bed, tossing it all aside, and cheerily spout, […]
Get Your Audience Settled, whether Live o...
You’re about to lead a workshop or presentation. You want to begin, but your audience comes into the space full of energy, busy-busy chatting, walking around, chaotic. This is for you. What I’m about to show you works for in-person, online, and zoom events. The first thing I do is bang on my podium. Or […]
Happy, Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee!
Yesterday was my birthday! I never thought of myself as a writer . . . I woke up to grey skies and freezing cold air — I’d forgotten to close my window to only an inch like I usually do. It was wide open, and all the cold night air was hurricaning around in my […]
Erecting Energetic Safety Zones
‘They’ say “we are all energy, frequencies…” So … I’m wondering … what if we could actually make use of that idea? We are all eating great quantities of chemicals, unbalanced or poisoned nutrients, plastic particles, and industrial byproducts that our bodies cannot use, metabolize or eliminate. We just can’t actually see it all, or […]
That Damn Cat!
How my mother was attacked by an enormous rasty-looking tabby cat…. (You can watch/listen to this story in a video at the bottom of this page!) My family used to live in a wonderful old 1880s farmhouse. Upstairs, my folks’ bedroom had a dutch door that opened onto a wide, sunny deck. My mother liked […]
Signals that There’s Something Going on U
Speaking with my business coach about a plan we were creating for my own coaching, I started to get really sleepy. If I didn’t lie down right now, I’d simply collapse on the floor in a puddle… (Watch/listen to me reading this story to you here!) I had been blazing wide awake the moment before, […]
God Rays Under the Water
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part IV Each day, just as evening began to shade the sky, an enormous, rippling line across the horizon in front of us appeared, darkly ominous, growing bigger and bigger. The first time I saw it I about wet my pants! In no time at all, it was […]
Sailing with Giants
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part III As we began to plod our way through the Doldrums, I started having a recurring dream when I settled down in my bunk to sleep after my night watch was over. My habit was to lie in my bunk fully dressed, because I didn’t trust James. […]
I Was Tossed Around Like A Rag Doll; My A...
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part II One moment, sunny sweet skies — the next, the Mother Hulk of a demon storm with hideous, grotesque grey-green and black clouds pelting us square on with sheets of ice-cold rain. We were hard-put to keep our footing, being tossed around by gigantic heaving swells. I […]
Almost Raped 400 Miles from Land; How One...
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part I I struggled to sit up, holding my head on with both hands. I couldn’t seem to stand, so I slid off the bunk, and inch by inch slowly creeped on my hands and knees over to the box…. It was a hot mid-August, 1984, just a […]
I Was A Disaster As A Mother
My now-grown kids have told me they loved it that I was an artist and showed them by example about being creative. However, my personal opinion is that I might have felt more successful as a nurturing, loving mama if I had not been so completely focused on my artwork all the time. But I […]
Dreams of Devastation Morph into … Pickle
I keep having dreams where I’m standing in a dried up, deserted field. In the distance, I see the crumbling husks of hundreds and hundreds of houses, and the blackened, burnt skeletons of the once-magnificent trees that used to shade them. The cracked mud on the bottom of the creek is rock-hard, bereft of even […]
Got A Recipe for Eating Crow?
Is it better to just let things go? Or risk being criticized or countered or even cancelled, because of making a mistake? In a post I read on medium the other day, the writer said something I thought was incorrect. I was surprised, because he seemed pretty knowledgeable. Normally, I don’t try to correct people […]
How the Voice of Dreaming Saved My Life
Isn’t it funny how, even though a period of time was one of the most painful ones of your life, later on you can look at it as one of the most fortunate? It’s January, 1999. After returning from visiting a friend back east, I’ve been homeless for months because I can’t afford to rent […]
My Mind Starts Eating Before I Do
I’ll be sitting here writing, or doing some other task, and in the back of my head I’m busy preparing the juicy makings of a delicious tomato salad, or a nice spicy wrap around some cheese and micro-greens, or some yummy curried lentil soup… Or making art of some kind…. If I don’t get up […]
You’re Always Late! You’re So Annoying!
It was Sara’s 40th birthday party. I had barely walked through the door when she pounced on me, screaming. Right in my face. Behind her, the casual low-level murmur of party-din dissolved into a ragged silence. Every head swiveled toward us, mouths agape with surprise. I was so taken aback I almost turned around and […]
Unity-ness. Loch Ness. Lock-ness. Open-ne...
From a Dream, Narrated by The Voice of Dreaming: Word play. Philosophy in Silli-ness. The Doctrine of Jest. Farcicality of Foolery… Starting here and ending where? Unity
Last Does Not Mean Loser
(Published in Small Craft Advisor Magazine) We were in the last part of the first pack. The finish line seemed impossibly far away. It was right then that I made the most colossal mistake. I had been so proud! I’d been invited to be one of two kids to represent our local sailing club as […]