BEAUMONT — Going against advice and books I haven’t read

Here’s a blanket love story. We have names for the blankets in our house. The Bear is brown and fuzzy and just right for the couch on TV night. The problem is that The Bear belongs to my husband, not me. No-so-comforting words have sometimes been exchanged that The Bear should not have to hear.

I have a new soft, brown blanket that is everything The Bear is, and it has a second personality with what I’d call a big, Texas star and fringe. My husband first’s viewing made him ask if I was under a teepee. The Montanaco Clothing Company has nearly 20 more luxurious blankets suited for gifting and spreading warm thoughts. I feel like a frontier Texas woman with this beauty, that even sounds like something from the old West when you snap it out. But the makers call it a little piece of Montana, and offer clothes that look just as fine. I have noticed that The Bear’s owner has his eye on my “teepee.”



Heads up, wrapped

If I actually followed the Violet Love motto, you might not hear why I love their designer headbands. “Love me, wear me, don’t dare to share me” is on the promotionals for these slinky barely-there bands that get noticed. A solid brown goes dressy, but Rebecca Michaels offers tons of pop color designs in bands, wraps, scarfs, etc. that take wearers back in time. Look hippy chic or sleek ‘70s with Venice, in peacock; Redondo, turquoise with black roses; or Palisades in animal abstract. I got compliments on dots in the season’s hottest pairing, purple and orange. Michaels is a former civil engineer who created the “no headache headband”  and is a “complete obsessor of all things violet.” I think we could be best buds. Yogis, sports folks, beachgoers and walkers (me) are wearing them wide, scrunched or folded. Look for the ECO in bamboo blends. Thanks Rebecca. You go purple girl.



Books I haven’t read

I’m completely unfamiliar with Mick Foley’s world-famous wrestling, but flipping through photos in his “Countdown to Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal,” piqued my interest. There’s this big, hairy guy in full color meeting his crush Tori Amos, chatting with Eunice Kennedy Shriver and doing charity work in Sierra Leone. This is his fourth memoir.



Argygle writer Jane Roberts Wood has released “On the Summerhill Road,” No. 5 in the Evelyn Oppenheimer Series. Four women in the Tuesday bridge club hear a rumor that Jackson Morris, the only person of interest in a 1946 murder of a young couple in Cold Springs, has come home. Or has he? University of North Texas Press has released the book.



“Mexia”

Frederick L. Malphurs of Gainesville, Fla., wrote to me that his second novel, on memoirs of J.C. Mulkey, a young boy who discovers a murder in his hometown of Mexia, ought to interest us Texans who love a good mystery. The character matures and finds a side kick for his quest to bring the killers to justice. Action moves to Waco and Chihuahua, Mexico. Learn more at fredmalphurs.com

ddoiron@panews.com