A Flower for Anna

The Queen is planting petunias in her yard in memory of Anna. What a perfectly lovely idea and especially since Anna was very much a lover of flowers and a gardener. In fact, she was interviewed about Middle-Earth flora for the GardenMaine site.

I perused the site for something from New Zealand that I could grow since some of the areas in Colorado are similar. But I have a black thumb and was skittish about planting anything that an idiot couldn’t maintain. I thought perhaps begonias since that had been one of Anna’s Twitter avatars, and thankfully, Janine, prolific writer and gardener and owner of GardenMaine, says begonias are “actually super easy. They don’t require much care, thrive in indirect light and just need to be watered when soil is slightly dried out.” More about them here.

Yellow_begonia

Janine’s site is a wealth of information, and she is happy to help anyone who is not sure what to plant or how to maintain a plant. Thank you, Janine!

May 6, 2013
Categories: Fandom, Timeout . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 8 Comments

Timeout for a Friend

auckland-new-zealand-hd-wallpaper-nick-twyford

I’m somewhat gutted. I just received news that a friend passed away. She was a sweet, articulate person, and these are some of her last words to me and heavily edited for obvious reasons, but I wanted to share them because she had her life and this Richard Armitage thing in perspective:

Dear Lisa,

Thank you so much for your blog. I’ve got lots I want to say to you, but for now this will do.

(snip)

The Richard Armitage thing was and is the part of me that isn’t the responsible, brave, hard working me. It’s the girlish me that’s still there, that loves silliness and sexiness and lovely men.

(snip)

Love,
XXX

I think she would have been fine with this portion of the letter being posted. She’s at rest now but will be sorely missed. And may all of us retain our inner girl!

I will keep her family in my prayers.

May 5, 2013
Categories: Timeout . Tags: , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 43 Comments

Timeout for Norway

I started to call this post “What the hell?!” but out of respect for the dead, I couldn’t bring myself to do it; however, that was one of my first thoughts when I heard about the tragedies in Norway. Now given that I just said hell, and I’ve said other “choice words” on this blog, I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I said I am a Christian, and in fact, do have a love for the Almighty. Nevertheless, it’s true, and thankfully, He is gracious and I’m still a work in progress. Of course I bring this up because I’ve read the killer in Norway is part of a fundamentalist Christian group. I’m not sure what they believe, but whatever prompted the killing spree doesn’t in any way jibe with what I believe, and as a Christian, I vehemently denounce what was perpetrated. It was wrong. But enough about that, I don’t want this to be a diatribe about Christians for or against them. I want to pay my respects to those who died and to those who loved them.

Life is precious, and despite the fun I sometimes have on this blog, I cannot go blithely along while something obliterates it like this. Having been around a lot of death and having counseled people who have lost loved ones, I feel keenly for those people and especially those who lost their children. No matter how many times I am around someone who has lost a child, I still cannot process that horror. It is certainly something that I’ve asked the Lord about many times. For now it’s obvious to me that sin in the world kills people, steals precious things from them and certainly destroys innocence, and this is such a painful example of how it lays waste. Since this is beginning to feel like a sermon, I’m going to stop here and just say that I’m so sorry for the suffering and my heartfelt prayers and sympathy go to those in Norway.

edit: As for Amy Winehouse, I have no words but to say I’m terribly sad just as I was when Kurt Cobain died or Heath Ledger or any number of fairly young people who were unhappy and died too early.

July 23, 2011
Categories: Timeout . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 12 Comments

Forgetting Guy — Spoilers

Last year at this time it was days after Guy’s death, and I could still feel tears welling up in my eyes when I thought of it and would shake my head at the absurdity of grieving the death of a fictional character. Just now I felt them start again. Amazing.

Certainly I’ve read books and watched movies that had tragedy and loss and was profoundly moved by the events to the point I shed tears as I was reading or watching. Sometimes I’ve thought about the events for days or weeks later and in some cases months or years later. But my later thinking has always had more to do with intrigue about the human condition and certainly examining it in a kind of detached way. This wasn’t the case with Guy. With him it was personal and a grieving process, and it stunned me. I’ve had to grieve lots of deaths but never someone who’s not real. Honestly, this made me think I really was going nuts, and so my analytical side stepped up to ask why and try to make sense of it and preserve my dignity.

I’ve had a year to think about it, and I’m not sure I’ve completely made sense of it. But I understand much better what’s happened. I’ll be posting more diary entries about this process, and perhaps I’ll find I have CWS. But if I do, it’s not of Richard Armitage but rather this fantastic character he helped to create.

Now you know the real reason I’m anonymous. LOL!

When I was drafting my first post for this blog, I thought about hitting this subject right up front but knew it would not be as satisfying (at least for me) to go right to the issue I’ve wanted most to address. I really did want to have some fun along the way in my self-analysis. Could I have bored you with all sorts of psychoanalytical terms? Oh yeah, I could have. Believe me I know enough of them after up close and personal acquaintance with some psychiatrists. But you don’t want to hear all of that shit, and I really don’t want to type it.

Screencap courtesy of RichardArmitageNet.Com

June 29, 2010
Categories: Robin Hood, Spoilers . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 8 Comments