Frivolous dithering
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cupcake_gothI'm tempted to hold onto the boots so I can use them as vases for dried flowers (I can't find the image on Pinterest, but I saw something similar done and it looked great), but I will first need to have a probably convoluted discussion with the Stroppy One about putting outdoor footwear on any furniture, even after they've been carefully cleaned. (His weirdness around this is too long to get into here, but it starts from a superstition around not putting footwear on chairs or tables.)
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INCREDIBLY shallow whining related to the state of the world (because if I start thinking seriously about things, I freeze in panic): I guess I should have purchased the pretty pretty dress from the Ukrainian designer earlier, because who knows if the $USD will be worth anything and if anyone outside the US will be willing to ship anything to a US address.
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I need help from the sewing and costuming hive mind! I have a many dresses like this. (Mine don't have the wide sash/belt.) The skirt is two rectangles gathered at the waist, with the pockets inset at those side seams. I want to occasionally lift the skirt to about knee-length so I can wear the dress with different skirts. I've tried actual skirt lifters, and they didn't work well. I tried ribbons sewn on the outside of the waist with matching ribbons sewn on the inside at the point where the ruffle is attached to the skirt, thus catching a bundle of the skirt in a loop of ribbon that shows on the outside. (The Madwoman in the Attic saw this attempt, clutched her head, said, "NO", and left the room.) So I'm out of ideas. Help?
I guess being couch-bound means I post a lot
cupcake_gothBehold the shiny! Which was almost entirely paid for by Poshmark profits, so in terms of “real” money wasn’t unreasonably expensive.
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My god does my hair need dying. It’s not going to happen any time soon, but I sigh every time I look in the mirror right now. There are so many projects I want to do right now, and I KNOW I must not. Even the ones that would be something I could do while sitting on the couch watching movies. Getting up to put on a movie leaves me shaky, which is a sure sign I need to keep resting. Hmmph.
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Yesterday I learned that Miss Erzabet No Biting has blanket preferences. I had switched around some of the blankets I was under on the couch, with a polyester knitted one on top. She would walk onto my lap, look bewildered, and hop off. As soon as I switched things back to having the woven cotton ones as the top layer, she immediately settled down. Yes, my cat is spoiled.
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Speaking of the kitties, they turn 15 this year, which means we’ve owned them for almost half our marriage. That’s weird to think about.
(no subject)
skygiantsThen Piers did indeed get north to the aunt and tap into her Family Birthright of Magical Revenge Poisoning. As the actual plot geared up, the more I understood what type of good time I was being expected to have, and, alas, the more it did, the less of a good time I was having.
So the way the family magic works is that all of the Corbin women have the magical ability -- nay, compulsion! -- to eat poison ingredients and convert them internally into a toxin that they can -- nay, must! -- use to murder Bad Men. It's always Men. They're always Bad. They know the men are Bad because they are also granted magical visions explaining how Bad they are. They absolutely never kill women (there are only ever women born in this family; they have to give male babies away at birth in case they accidentally kill them with their poison, and I don't think Ava Morgyn has ever heard of a trans person) or the innocent!
...except of course that the whole family is actually threatening to kill Piers, to protect themselves, if she doesn't accept her powers and start heroically murdering Bad Men. But OTHER THAN THAT they absolutely never kill women, or the innocent, so please have no qualms on that account! Piers' aunt explains: "Yes, Piers. Whatever has happened to you, you must never forget that there are predators and there are prey. We hunt the former, not the latter."
By the way, both irredeemably Bad Men that form the focus of Badness in this book -- Piers' evil and abusive husband, and the local serial killer who is also incidentally on the loose -- are shown to have been abused in childhood by irredeemably Bad Women, but we're not getting into that. There are Predators and there are Prey!
The book wants to make sure we understand that it's very important, righteous and ethical for the Cobin family to keep doing what they're doing because everybody knows nobody believes abused women and therefore vigilante justice is the only form of justice available. There are two cops in the book, by the way. One of them is the nice and ethical local sheriff who is Piers' love interest, who is allowing her to help him hunt the local serial killer despite being suspicious that she may have poisoned several people. The other is the nice and ethical local cop investigating her supposed murder back home, who is desperate to prove she's alive because she saved his life and he's very grateful. He understands about abuse, because his name is Reyes and he's from the Big City and his mother and sister were both abused by Bad Men. The problem with these good and handsome cops is that they're actually not willing enough to murder people, which is where Piers comes in:
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: You don't want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him.
PIERS: Doesn't he deserve it?
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: That's not for us to decide.
PIERS: Isn't it? This is our community. You're an authority in maintaining law and order, and I'm a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Surely, there is no one more qualified than us.
This book was a USA Today bestseller, which does not surprise me. It taps into exactly the part of the cultural hindbrain that loves true crime, and serial killers, and violence that you can feel good about, in an uncomplicated way, because it's being meted out to Unquestionably Bad People. Justice is when bad people suffer and die. We're not too worried about how they turned out to be bad people. There are predators, and there are prey.
(no subject)
cupcake_goth—-
The Stroppy One has decided it’s necessary for him to remind me over and over that my #1 priority, my only chore right now, is to rest as much as possible. Especially because he leaves for a show on Thursday, so he won’t be around to look after me for a few days. Yes, the Madwoman in the Attic will be around, but our schedules are somewhat offset.
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Someone please remind me that my new boss asking if we need to set up some sort of medical accommodation for me for the next few weeks means she wants me to be okay, not that she’s annoyed I’m sick and this will be noted on my permanent record or something? Because I know my reaction is PTSD from previous bad managers, but the Brain Raccoons are doing their little song and dance, because of course they are.
Wittering
cupcake_goth—-
Fandom whining: I know fic writers are doing their own thing, but it’s always sad when a writer I’ve subscribed to migrates to a fandom I don’t care about, sometimes abandoning their other works in progress. Le sigh.
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I think the new prescriptions are kicking in. I’m not coughing quite as much, and the Stroppy One said my breathing overnight didn’t sound as wet and crackling. I still get exhausted any time I get up from the couch AND I’m jittery from the steroids, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to sit in my office and get work done on Tuesday.
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Women of a Certain Age will understand this: with violent coughing comes the need for constantly changing pads, and I’m so tired of it.
(no subject)
twistedchickHe died two days ago, in the hospital, with his daughters there. His son was at home, dealing with the aftereffects of a small kitchen fire (apparently some wiring fizzed and went up; they lost one cabinet but other things need repair and also the insurance man.)
I remember Don all the way back to when I was small. He and his older brother, Walt, rode their Indian motorcycles down from Ottawa to Rochester to visit my mom and meet me when I was maybe 2 years old. I remember them from then as being very tall and kind; as I grew up they continued to each be very tall and kind. In the summers as I was growing up Mom and I stayed at Don's place or Walter's place or their older sister Joan's farm for a week or two every year, so Mom could visit her wider family of sisters and nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and so I could get to know everyone.
Some of it blurs a bit -- how many back yard picnics? -- but I remember Don and his wife, Jean, taking me up to a cottage they had in Quebec once so we could go canoeing on the lake there, listen to loons calling and just glide over the beautiful clear water. I remember putting my hand in the water in a certain way and a fish just coming to rest inside it for a moment as if it were seaweed. I didn't grab on and catch it, but I could have. Later on, the two of them canoed up the St. Lawrence River for a good distance; it took them a month or more. I asked Jean what it was like, and she made a face and said it was "like walking uphill on your hands". But she did enjoy it.
All the memories are good. I do wish I could have seen him again, but I have him in my mind firmly and that will stay. And 91 years is a good run. He got to see his children married, and play with his grandchildren, and even (I think) one or two great-grandchildren. He loved listening to Irish music, any time it was available.
Hail the Traveler, Donald Hugh McKenna!
(no subject)
cupcake_goth—-
Miss Erzabet No Biting is doing her very best to nursemaid me and keep me pinned to the couch, but is startled every time I have a bout of coughing. I don’t blame her, because I find it pretty alarming, too. I know it’s only day two of the antibiotics and higher dose of prednisone, but I don’t feel any better yet and I’m frustrated about it.
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I’m still pining over this goddamn striped dress from Selkie. There’s one in my size on Mercari, and if it’s still available in a month I’m going to consider breaking my no-buy for clothing to get it. Of course, if I had any sense I’d soothe my coveting with either this dress from Dracula clothing or this set from Blackwood Castle.
(no subject)
cupcake_gothI’m still am suffering bronchitis. I did some digging in MyChart, because I’ve suffered this bronchitis thing at least once a year for the past few years, and mine and Mr. Loomy’s suspicions were correct: the clinic doctor I saw over the weekend, who was abrupt and didn’t listen to either of us, prescribed me less than half of the dosage of prednisone that I’ve had previously. No wonder I’m not getting better. I went back to the clinic last night, and while the (different!) doctor didn’t say anything bad about what his coworker did, his facial expression made his opinion clear. I’m now on a massive dosage of prednisone that slowly tapers and antibiotics. I tapped out from work again; look, me trying to be better about self care!
If I’m going to be a sickly invalid, I want laudanum. And a trip to the seaside where someone will push me around in a fancy wheelchair. Then more laudanum.
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Yesterday I turned off the Ask Anonymously option on my Tumblr. I’ve been inundated with spam, porn bots, and unkind-to-hateful messages, and I don’t have the spoons to deal with any of it.
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(no subject)
skygiantsgenarti and I went along with some friends to the Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which was such an unexpectedly fun experience that we're already talking about maybe doing it again next year.The way the marathon works is that people sign up in advance to read three-minute sections of the book and the whole thing keeps rolling along for about twenty-five hours, give or take. You don't know in advance what the section will be, because it depends how fast the people before you have been reading, so good luck to you if it contains a lot of highly specific terminology - you take what you get and you go until one of the organizers says 'thank you!' and then it's the next person's turn. If it seems like they're getting through the book too fast they'll sub in a foreign language reader to do a chapter in German or Spanish. We did not get in on the thing fast enough to be proper readers but we all signed up to be substitute readers, which is someone who can be called on if the proper reader misses their timing and isn't there for their section, and I got very fortunate on the timing and was in fact subbed in to read the forging of Ahab's harpoon! (
genarti ALMOST got even luckier and was right on the verge of getting to read the Rachel, but then the proper reader turned up at the last moment and she missed it by a hair.) There are also a few special readings. Father Mapple's sermon is read out in the New Bedford church that has since been outfitted with a ship-pulpit to match the book's description (with everyone given a song-sheet to join in chorus on "The Ribs and Terrors Of the Whale") and the closing reader was a professional actor who, we learned afterwards, had just fallen in love with Moby-Dick this past year and emailed the festival with great enthusiasm to participate. The opening chapters are read out in the room where the Whaling Museum has a half-size whaling ship, and you can hang out and listen on the ship, and I do kind of wish they'd done the whole thing there but I suppose I understand why they want to give people 'actual chairs' in which to 'sit normally'.
Some people do stay for the whole 25 hours; there's food for purchase in the museum (plus a free chowder at night and free pastries in the morning While Supplies Last) and the marathon is being broadcast throughout the whole place, so you really could just stay in the museum the entire time without leaving if you wanted. We were not so stalwart; we wanted good food and sleep not on the floor of a museum, and got both. The marathon is broken up into four-hour watches, and you get a little passport and a stamp for every one of the four-hour watches you're there for, so we told ourselves we would stay until just past midnight to get the 12-4 AM stamp and then sneak back before 8 AM to get the 4-8 AM stamp before the watch ticked over. When midnight came around I was very much falling asleep in my seat, and got ready to nudge everyone to leave, but then we all realized that the next chapter was ISHMAEL DESCRIBES BAD WHALE ART and we couldn't leave until he had in fact described all the bad whale art!
I'm not even the world's biggest Moby-Dick-head; I like the book but I've only actually read it the once. I had my knitting (I got a GREAT deal done on my knitting), and I loved getting to read a section, and I enjoyed all the different amateur readers, some rather bad and some very good. But what I enjoyed most of all was the experience of being surrounded by a thousand other people, each with their own obviously well-loved copy of Moby-Dick, each a different edition of Moby-Dick -- I've certainly never seen so many editions of Moby-Dick in one place -- rapturously following along. (In top-tier outfits, too. Forget Harajuku; if you want street fashion, the Moby-Dick marathon is the place to be. So many hand-knit Moby Dick-themed woolen garments!) It's a kind of communal high, like a convention or a concert -- and I like concerts, but my heart is with books, and it's hard to get of communal high off a book. Inherently a sort of solitary experience. But the Moby-Dick marathon managed it, and there is something really very spectacular in that.
Anyway, as much as we all like Moby-Dick, at some point on the road trip trip, we started talking about what book we personally would want to marathon read with Three Thousand People in a Relevant Location if we had the authority to command such a thing, and I'm pitching the question outward. My own choice was White's Once And Future King read in a ruined castle -- I suspect would not have the pull of Moby-Dick in these days but you never know!
Please imagine the Kate Bush song playing while reading this post
cupcake_gothA quote from the director, which gives you a good idea of what we're in for:
She suggested that some of her risque additions are things she thought she had remembered from reading the book as a teenager -- but weren't actually in there when she returned to it.
"It's where I filled in the gaps aged 14", she said with a smile, adding that making the film had allowed her to "see what it would feel like to fulfil my 14-year-old-wish, which is both good and bad".
Oh! And the costumes! MY GOD, THE COSTUMES.
