Where Did June Go?

Hi, my name is Kat, and I'm a workaholic. 

WIP is around 50K now. I'm trying to a) not stress about daily wordcount and b) not write every single day. You know. Take breaks. I realized that since I started it April, I'd been either working on it, or on The Day Job, 7 days a week. I am trying to persuade myself that in summer, I can work on it 4-5 days a week, and that's fine because I'm not under contract or deadline. 

I should be writing now, but it's been A Day and also blogs count as writing. Because I said.

As proof that I Did Things other than write in June, I present:

"His Golden Lair", done in Miss Babs' "Biker Chick" colorway in her Killington wool/silk (which one cannot buy at the moment? Alas). The pattern is inspired by Smaug, and I think was intended to be done monochrome to show off the stitches. It's all cables and lacework and then some serious blocking. 

I don't mind cables. I do not like lacework, and I hate fussy blocking. But it's for dragon wings, so. 

It's big, y'all. Like, 62" tip to tip. About 18" down the spine. The lower image is from its blocking phase, when I had it pinned to the wall (under a LOTR print, as it happens). You can see the lace scales a little more clearly here. I confess I'd hoped for a more intense color from the Miss Babs--punch your face orange, rather than smouldering--but I like the effect. (My intent had been to use some homespun orange wool-silk-blend, but I ran out...10 rows from the end. 10 long rows, but still. I might've said some swears.) Now I have a bunch of the Biker Chick and 350 yds of fiery homespun that match fairly closely in color and texture and what will they become. 

And now that May Grey has become June Gloom has given way to July and we're seeing the sun... I've gotten back to dyeing. 

I actually mixed the dyes back in February, because the more humid and wet and even rainy it is outside when I do this, the less powder gets all over. Anyway. The dye is called "Ruby" and I was imagining a red. Maybe a dark, jewel-tone red. You know. From the name. But just in case, I made a 2% solution and I aimed for a dark dye job. And I got...

Pink. Rabid peony. Now, I do love me some hot pink, but that is a lot. It's on Knit Picks Bare Hawthorne, so it's destined to be socks, but it was supposed to be red socks. Jury's out on whether I'm going to overdye with purple or the other red I've got made up (called "Flame". I anticipate orange rather than pink) or just leave it alone. 

And finally we have TinyCat, who has nothing to do with yarn or fiber arts whatsoever. According to the chart at the vet's she is now geriatric. She prefers the term senior, please and thank you.  She continues to shrink despite eating well, so perhaps there is a black hole of spite where her heart used to be. 

old is new again

The scene: my classroom, students exiting.

Young, hip college student: "OMG, professor, I love your jacket. Where'd you get it?"

Me: [thinking: it was a gift from my mother before I was even dating my husband of 20 years, from J.C. Penney, so where is Colorado but when is the late 90s. But aloud:] "It's older than you are, I'm afraid..." 

Student looks shocked. I am not sure if that is because the nineties are, to her, too distant a past to imagine, or that the idea of a jacket worn by her professor being older than her is just weird. Or both. Student, bemused, exits the classroom. 

Second student, on her way out the door: "OMG, professor, I love that jacket!"

Me: "Thank you!"

At least she didn't ask me where and when it came from.

The jacket, for the record: a boxy black suede (washable, ffs) St. John's Bay blazer with--rare for the era--deep, practical pockets. It was very good (in the day) for adding a layer between me and the Colorado wind when I was stupidly underdressed beneath it, wearing some crop-top tank or whatever I thought was cool, even when it was clearly weather-inappropriate.

The lesson: don't bin your favorite old jackets because they seem hopelessly out of fashion. Just wait.

mended

When there is absolutely no way to invisible repair the clapotis, repair it boldly. The patch keeps the same pattern, but sets it at an angle, and adds an extra corner at the bottom because why not. 

And! Nearly a year after tearing a hamstring, I'm back road-running. The healing period was spent running laps up, around, and down the 7 flights of parking structure, which kept the cardio and let things heal and made other things stronger. (Of course I did not rest.)

I also changed my gait completely, a mix of necessity and intent, which I'm given to understand one shouldn't do? Or something. Whatever. I am far happier than I thought I'd be to be running again. I look forward to it, even.

And! It doesn't hurt. I had forgotten what that's like.

I came late to running--in my 30s--because I'd always believed I wasn't built for it. I pronate pretty badly on a heelstrike, which is my "natural" stride, and end up pulling my body weight forward, rather than pushing off from the ball of the foot. Turns out I could, and did, muscle my way through for a while, with a scattering of IT and piraformis injuries (treated with months on an elliptical). But the hamstring, boy howdy. There was ouch and then there was ouch and then there was literally unable to touch my toes. Like, could not. Pain override.

It was the yoga that clued me in, hard. I couldn't do things I'd always done. A quick search told me what this was. Torn hamstring! Tendon?! I had to let that heal. And that meant I was going to have to stop running.

I was terrified. There was no gym access! Walking isn't enough! I'd get...well...fat.

And here let it be said: this is not about fat-shaming. This is about body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

belated

( ...originally typo-titled "bleated," which might be kinda appropriate too)

I was going to write about getting the vaccine when I got the second dose two weeks ago (Pfizer). I had imagined--based on my unexpected emotional reaction to the first dose--that I would have Feelings. First shot, we'd gotten a spot unexpectedly, because a coworker posted on Facebook that a nearby vaccine site was accepting appointments right now for educators and we jumped on that. After that jab, I realized how much stress I'd been under, and how even one shot made me feel like...not that things would return to normal, not that everything was okay now, but...like there had been a pressure, a discomfort to which I had become so accustomed I no longer noticed it, and now it was gone. I noticed the negative space of it, the place it had carved out in my psyche. I thought that the second shot would herald a return of that feeling, but it didn't. I was just relieved. 

That was two weeks ago. If there is such a thing as officially vaccinated, all the immunities as in place as they will be... we're there. Our region is coming out of restrictions, things are reopening, and great! But I am in no real hurry to go back to the restaurants I haven't been to in over a year. I've grown accustomed to the take-out sandwiches on Friday "date night." It feels weird to think about removing a mask in public. And eat in public? Egad. Visiting a zoo might be nice. Or a museum. Or a store that isn't faithful Trader Joe's. But be around people? No, thank you. My latent agoraphobia has taken root this last year, hard.

(I better get over that before classes start in the fall. Because barring a new pandemic, they will. We've been super lucky here--the UCs have shut the fuck down and stayed that way for in-person instruction. How delightful to have official policy dictated by science and public health, instead of political toadshit.)

And I wasn't going to write about any of this, sweartogod. I was going to write about The Patchwork Terror and how, in his quest to eat all of Tinycat's scarfed-and-barfed breakfast, he chewed a big chunk out of the first clapotis I ever knitted. And how I did not quite freak out because he's not Idris: he shreds and gnaws whatever he eats to tiny pieces, even wee bits of kibble-treats, so I was pretty sure he hadn't swallowed long strands. (He never did throw up a damn bit of it. Where has it gone? The obvious answer--through him--has not manifested. He either reduced that wool to tiny pieces and digested it along with his food or it's still sitting in his gut, making itself into the grandmother of hairballs.) 

But also, ferfuckssake, I was upset, too, at the destruction. The loss. That clapotis--hours and hours of knitting, out of a indie-dyed colorway--is irreparable and irreplaceable. Of course PT was, is, more important, and I would set fire to the clapotis myself to keep him safe, but he's also fine, and fortunately not inclined to chew on textiles unless someone has thrown up on them first. This is a one-time catastrophe. 

But then, as I began writing, I realized--the worry, the fear, the anger, the guilt about being angry over a ruined thing on which much work had been spent, the grief over what was destroyed--felt familiar. This was a fresh wave of it, sure, but that's why I noticed it, after so long being numb to it. It's what I felt last spring. 

Anger. Fear. Guilt. That sinking, sick feeling of knowing something is irreparably mangled, and there is nothing to be done for it except figure out a way to salvage what's left: make it, if not beautiful, at least defiantly functional. Somehow. Wabi sabi. (And even if it's not beautiful again, ever--the clapotis will be warm. It will be of use. And it will be a story). 

I wish I could say that I think the world, post-pandemic, post the 45th president, will be like this clapotis. I don't think it will, though. We can't wabi sabi what's happened. We won't be past BLM because we're not past white supremacy. We can't get past anti-science insurrectionists because they're still crawling all over the Capitol. We can't even get people to take the fucking vaccines. I don't know how that sort of damage becomes functional again, that it can be patched. I hope I'm wrong. I don't know what happens if I'm not.

In the meantime, I have a clapotis to mend. 

here. have some flowers.

They are probably a sign that my basil is finished, but they're pretty. 

 

From the scraps...

It began as the "what do I do with leftover handspun?" project. Some leftovers of blue/purple silk blend (which wouldn't felt well) plus and then a lonely partial ball of a pale grey-pink gradient which was not silk, but a BFL blend (that would also not felt well)... 

...plus a skein of OMG PINK (silk blend? maybe?) and some beautiful sunset-colored Polwarth M. gave me for my birthday (which felts like a bad boy),  and then just knitting in a spiral until we get this. 

It's all M's dye-work. 

Obviously Murdercat approves, so what else does a rug need?

 

scattershot

Y'all, I am not a super fast writer of nonfiction, and sometimes I take a couple days to think about how I want to address a particular topic. Except the breakneck idiocy of ::waving hands:: all this is such that the topics pile up until I don't write at all because other more eloquent, and speedy, people already have.

But let us be clear:

Black Lives Matter. Transwomen are women and transmen are men. Science is real. Wear your fucking masks. And this Portland thing? Armed and unidentified federal troops grabbing people in "proactive" arrests? That's straight up authoritarian toadshit. Gods both small and large, vote in November.

...Thus has passed July.

I had a birthday early in the month, in which I turned a firm corner into my late 40s.  It was an odd birthday, in that we went nowhere and did nothing and I cooked (sure, Nous would've cooked for me, but I wanted chili verde and I like making chili verde and so). I even made my own cake, which actually a blueberry buckle (I didn't even know buckle was the legit name of a fruit-pastry thing, but it is). It was in fact a day like most other days around here, which have been divided into D&D night(s), and Borderlands 3 nights, depending on the number of participants.

The Patchwork Terror, 1 year old

The Patchwork Terror also had a birthday. He is north of 12 lbs and still growing. He is as soft and plushy to touch as he looks, and also, that tail clearly belongs to a different cat.

I made yogurt for the first time, which was easy. I have acquired a very tiny ice cream maker, and made good matcha ice cream and fantastic strawberry frozen yogurt and an okay sorbet. Next up, coffee ice cream. I have not had this much full-fat dairy in my fridge in, like, ever. I don't care. I gave up beer except on D&D nights and I will have whipped cream and ice cream and full-fat yogurt if I want to.

I wrote the first fifty pages for one of the books we're going to pitch to my editor at DAW, and I think it's pretty good. We'll see if my agent agrees.

I resigned at the HS. I am sad as hell because I love those students, but I need more time to write. The pandemic has only reinforced my decision, because boy howdy, the reopening of schools is a scary prospect, and also, I cannot take another moment of Zoom.

I have a merit review file due right about the time school starts. Not difficult, but time intensive.

I have decided to teach the zombie apocalypse as my theme for the fall quarter, partly because it's relevant again, and partly because if I have to do a whole new syllabus and prep for a fully remote class, I might as well at least use texts I am familiar with, especially since I have that aforementioned merit review.

I refuse to start either of those last two things until August (although, truth, I have started them both. Just a little.)

how are y'all doing out there?

Functionally, my life looks pretty normal. This pandemic and its accompanying stay-at-home orders came at the end of a quarter, which means 2 weeks or so at home (grading, planning, recharging, maybe day-tripping) before the next round. I'd've stayed home mostly anyway. The campus--we live in faculty housing--is a lot quieter, but it's like, oh, winter break.

The weird shit is the kids. Or lack of kids. Usually we've got a wild band of Nerf-gun toting 8-10 year olds pelting around the complex, screaming and yelling and generally being kids. Now... now there's no one. Nothing. It's creepy-quiet. There's hazard tape around the playground where the very small toddlers and their caregivers would appear during the day. It flaps and whistles in the wind.

I hear more birds, now. I see more birds, now.

Our Trader Joe's has implemented distance-measures. You wait in line outside for admittance, on your little purple tape X a careful six feet from the next person. Couples can wait together, but they can't go in until two come out. There's stuff on the shelves again, and in the frozen section. Not toilet paper yet, or paper towels. (I have instituted hardcore rag-bag in lieu of the latter. The former, fortunately, we'd just bought before All This Started(tm), so we're stocked.) There was actually flour this week, limit one. I snatched up a bag. It might be time to learn sourdough.

My college classes start next week, officially; we got a "soft start" rollout, which was admin's way of saying 'right, so, all online in two weeks, this might freak some folks out' and indeed, it has, and the people doing the heavy lifting with how to teach people to use Zoom and all the cool features on Canvas and whatnot are being heroes right now. I did not think we'd get a soft start, so I worked from about March 13, with a break for grading, to get my spring classes online (rewrite the prompts, redesign the exercises. how the fuck do I do group-work asynchronously??). Ferfuckssake, y'all, I made videos. Before March 13, I would have bark-laughed at you if you had suggested I put my face on a video, like, ever. Now I'm just doing it. One take. Stupid hair, stupid face, whatever, let's do this.

I'm still freaking out quietly that this quarter will suck, even if I am prepared. I am trying to be chill.

My cats are proving helpful. Everyone likes a cat video. And the Patchwork Terror (formerly known as the Kaiju-kitten; names evolve) is very photogenic.

The stupid yellow flowers are blooming around here. The pine trees are releasing clouds of pollen. Every scratch in the throat, every sneeze, every sinus-induced headache triggers an instant's paranoia, firmly smashed by reason. Nous and I are taking turns being the rational voice of no, you are not sick. You are fine.

The gym's closed, of course. We're running outside. There are a lot of hills in this neighborhood. I will be very, very fit in the next quarter, or I will have aggravated every old injury I ever had and be hobbling around.

I have sewn us masks from truly colorful, terrible cotton. I regret only that I have no more skull-tie-dye print to use.

My concentration is...spotty. Since starting this post, I have darted off to my UCI page, written an announcement, started some class-related housekeeping, forgot I was doing that, and came back here (repeat, repeat, repeat).

I'm glad I'm not trying to write something new right now. Revisions are challenging enough.

This pandemic has made my social circle wider, which is kinda funny. There is more D&D now. I'm running our long-term campaign online, which means we get to play more often when The Rat doesn't have to commute from 2 hours north.  And Nous and I started playing in another D&D game with work-friends; we all knew we played, we just never played together. And now we are, because some of us are over-working and some are underemployed and no one would be able to do this if we had to commute all over Los Angeles. So that's pretty cool, too.

Yeah. So. That's me.

like a duck...

...all serene and floating on the surface of the water
everything's just fine

while under the water

oh shit oh shit oh shit

it's total, churning chaos.

The university went all online for spring quarter early last week.

On Saturday, the high school went all online until mid-April. Fortunately in the latter case, we are in the group-project stage, and the groups can, in theory, collaborate on Google docs together. (Whether or not they do is not up to me. Online learning is bloody difficult, particularly if it is asynchronous).

The uni classes, though. Fuck me running. I had them built for face-to-face. Now I must rebuild and recast. I am not especially afraid of teaching with technology, and I can self-teach pretty quick (which is good, because besides two truly amazing colleagues, the university is largely expecting us to watch training videos and be autodidacts). But the conversion is time-consuming, and I had been rather counting on almost 2 weeks of break to revise the RORY manuscript coming out in October. Now I will be lucky to get one week of break.

(The manuscript is currently sitting in my word processor. I looked at it. I am having extreme anxiety actually doing anything with it, because I have half a class to finish converting (and two weeks to do it, which is FINE for fuckssake, because I converted four weeks of the course in two goddamned days already, except for pre-recorded videos, if I even do those). Anxiety is not rational. I should apply some donuts.)

So the conundrum is--synchronous teaching, which plays to my strengths, or asynchronous teaching, which is a lot more work on the front end but may free up some time later on?

And we had a leak in the bathroom wall this morning. Big old bulging drip in the paint, spreading like some bizarre D&D monster. Amazing how fast the weekend maintenance guys show up when you say "water leak." It was the upstair's neighbors' shower, and easily fixed. Evidently there's no drywall damage, so...good?

And in other positive news, today's Trader Joe's run (after yesterday's abortive attempt, which did net us donuts and cheese, not insignificant) yielded bacon, some sausages, eggs, and frozen peppers (no other frozen veg). I ordered another box from our CSA this week, too, partly b/c they can't do their usual farmers markets and partly because they have stuff in stock. So we're good on healthy stuff. We won't starve. We'll be fine. (The cats won't starve either. Or run out of litter.)

But there is good news. One of my students from fall quarter came dashing into the gap between my last two face-to-face classes this school year, damp from the downpour, to give me a stuffed bunny. She gives stuffed bunnies to her favorite teachers, but she thought I hated cute things (because my desk at work is populated with small rubber and stuffed lizards, frogs, snakes, an a small, plastic Godzilla), so she got me some lovely handlotion from Origins at the end of fall quarter. When she discovered that I do like cute fuzzy things, she promised me a bunny. And when they announced spring distance learning, she made sure to get the bunny to me so I would "have something cute on my desk."

("I did not get you a pink bunny, though, because I know you hate pink."
"I do not hate pink."
"...Oh. Well. I didn't get you a pink bunny anyway.")

And she did not. The bunny's name is Buttermilk, because that is what color she is, and she's currently on my desk at home, surrounded by the stuffed things (I have, among other critters, a krogan and Bill the Cat).

But here she is under my desk with The Patchwork Terror (formerly known as the Kaiju-kitten, but really, PT is more apt) because they both have little pink noses and are stupidly photogenic and maybe I'll just use them as my stunt doubles for live-streaming classes this spring.

Anyway, that bunny and that student were possibly the best thing that happened all year, y'all.

Stay healthy.

reluctantly

...I will admit that there are perks living in a place with no snow, and its name is fresh winter citrus. Friend Tira brought over some Meyer lemons and three limes from her trees this week. Meyer lemons are amazing any day, but fresh from a tree two blocks away? Pretty fucking epic. When you grow up eating fruits from a grocery store, you don't realize that fresh off a tree tastes better. (Probably just as well. I would not have been comforted, in the dead of a South Dakota winter, to know that my orange which had traveled many food miles from Florida or California or wherever did not taste as good as it might.) If I had a yard, or space in this apartment--how much space do I need for an indoor lemon tree, anyway?--I would have a Meyer. I fear that it's light that confounds me, not space. The windows are all NE or SE, and no direct sun during the summer months. Good for hoyas and spider plants, not for citrus.

antisocial

Early advice from my mother: write nothing down you don't want someone to (be able to) read. If it's written, she said, anyone can read it. Maybe someone you didn't intend. If it's written, there's no guarantee of privacy. Nor should there be expectation of it.

(My mother basically taught me that people kinda suck, or at least enough of them do that you gotta be wary. I don't think she was wrong.)

Also early advice from my mother: think before you speak. 

I am not so great at the second--sometimes deliberately so--but the first one stuck with me. I wouldn't keep a diary of anything real because, little cute lock or not, someone might read it. (I did not think of writing in cypher, like Anne Lister; if I had, maybe I'd've written more, and there would be juicy details for someone to decrypt after my death. But see? That's even the point. Anne Lister's diaries got decrypted and fucking published. I would be long dead and would not care as a result, but even so: Mom would be right. I wrote something, and people read it, and I had no control over it. Would have no control. Oh, fuck the verb tenses. You get it.) 

The point is, I am less likely to write something potentially inflammatory than I am to say it. Even on social media. Maybe especially on social media: I don't pop off with the first thing that comes to mind (and out of my mouth, snarked for the benefit of whichever cat is in the room and possibly Nous, as we are in the habit of saying the shit we'd never write to each other, just so it gets said). If I say some shit to somebody online, boom, there it is. There it stays. Then everyone else who can read and access that page sees it, and suddenly my snark has an audience, and well, we know how this works. Proliferating toadshit. I'm not allergic to opinions--oh no, heavens, haha, I have a few of those, and they are not always kind--but I don't see the point in sharing them for their own sake, either on my wall or in someone's comments. I don't want to have a goddamned brawl. I hate the drama. 

Therefore I avoid posting in Facebook threads, even among my very locked up friends list. I avoid Twitter threads for the same reason, plus, you know, totally public (and I'm a woman and a teacher). I hesitate to post here, even, which is... kinda antithetical to having a blog in the first place. 

So I'm gonna try and write more this year. Here, I mean. Even if I am talking to the echoing emptiness of the internet...that isn't really too different from talking to my cat(s) (except Tinycat, who always answers). I probably still won't post a lot of inflammatory stuff because all the reasons. You want to hear what I really think, catch me at a con and I'll tell ya. 

hello, 2020

these reprobates, napping after chaos

I woke up with a headache (sinus and weather, not excess aquavit, though, you know... that could've contributed) and cleaned up cat poop before I even got coffee this morning, so, you know... it's either an omen for the upcoming year or, like, another normal damn day.

I'm going with the latter.

School starts next week, both uni and the high school. I'm pretty psyched about both. The uni comp class has a new theme this year--food, of all things, after years of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Aristotle. The idea was...I want them to write, but I want them to feel like they have something to say. Food does that. Everyone (with one exception last quarter) has some emotional connection/story with a particular food or foods. Most of my students are international, and suffering language culture shock along with oh god, you want me to eat what? There's a lot of loving detail to be mined about grandma's jiaozu or stinky tofu or pie.

I feel guilty that the subject's not harder but... eh. I got some Pythagoras in there, translated by Ovid, and I'm still making them read closely and analyze texts. It's just a little easier for them. And I've gotten some of the best writing I've ever seen, so... I think it's fine. It's also a lot less work on my end. When I taught the hardcore texts, I had fabulous peer tutors attached to my classes. Like TAs, kinda, with dedicated office hours specifically for my class and assignments. Mine were exceptional. Both went on to grad school, one to be an actual teacher (and some school somewhere will be goddamned lucky to get her), and without them, there are not enough hours in the week to teach the hard texts, do all the commenting, and...write.

Because I am given to understand that writing is a job, too, and needs time, even if it sits third in my priorities. It shouldn't, but it has to most of the time. Students, y'all. Also the paychecks that actually pay the bills.

The high school class this semester (they're on semester; uni's on quarter. PITA) is basically D&D, which I have been playing and DMing since, oh, never you mind. AD&D and THAC0 and saving throw tables. That long. It's been a bit of a challenge to learn 5e well enough that I think I can teach it. I expect some of the students will already know how to play. Others will be brand new. It's going to be... totally uncharted territory, for me, teaching actual skills to these kids, instead of trying to expose them to all these different texts they won't get in their normal English classes. But this is going to be the last year, I think, I can teach there. Best I go out with the class I am most nervous and excited to teach.

Because... the writing. It does need more than third place. I have plans. I have ideas. I have so many stories I want to write, and no time to do it. I have one manuscript coming back from my editor Soon I Hope(tm), to be published in October, and another due to that same editor in June (currently with my agent, who said I'd leveled up with this book, which means I didn't underwrite it this time).

But after those...

I have an idea. I'm taking notes on it now. Will I outline? Eh. Maybe. Broadly. But for now I'm in the thinking phase--characters are starting to surface, conflicts, personalities. Themes. I would very much like this one to be a standalone, but we shall see. I need to write it first.

But today, actual New Years... I am going to play Borderlands 3 with Nous and drink imperial stout and eat tamales and probably more pepparkakor because my god that recipe makes a ton of them. Tomorrow is soon enough to work.

Happy New Year.

on questions of dubious merit

You know how "they" say there's no such thing as a stupid question? Generally I ascribe to that and employ patience with my answers. Even if the question seems stupid or obvious to me, it might not to the asker, and responding with contempt or impatience would just make me an asshole. There are exceptions: the student who, having been reminded daily in class of X, asks about X (and inevitably professes shock at the answer). This is because either said student was not paying attention at all, or wants to lay the groundwork for a plausible but I didn't know! I can't do X in the time allotted! defense. (This never works, either in my HS or my college classes.)

But that second kind of question is not born in ignorance. It's born from some ulterior motive. It's not genuine.

Which brings me, roundaboutly, to a question that bugs me more every time someone asks, having noticed my tattoos: did they hurt? 

Listen: tattoos are created by multiple needles--five, seven--piercing your skin and depositing ink underneath it. Of course it hurts.  It's the sort of obvious question that suggests an ulterior motive in the asking.

I never say no, because it's not true and we both know it.

When I say yes, of course, but it's not so bad; or yes, and you get a pretty amazing endorphin high off it; or yes, and it's better or worse depending on location and how far into the session I am--pretty much any version of yes but/and--then I get the cock-eyed dubious stare and-or the hesitant smile. Because I just admitted that yes, I did this thing that hurt, and I did it willingly, and I did it multiple times/for many hours and I paid for the privilege. Which, having thus admitted, I then have to justify, or discount, or downplay, or excuse, or whatever it takes to make myself seem less crazy or more socially acceptable or whatever to this person.

Alternatively (and by default, these days), I offer no excuse: yep, it hurts! More if it's color, or this place here, which hurt more than all the rest combined, here look, yeah, that spot. And! (I add with glee) there's sometimes a lot of blood.

This only deepens the dubious look, as if I can no longer be counted as a rational human being. The usual follow-up then is why and then but what happens if you don't like the design later on? or my personal favorite, What about when you're old?

Because I wanted to, obviously, and just as obviously--tattoos are basically permanent. I can either pay to have the design removed, or I can get it covered up by yet more tattooing. I mean, duh? I am pretty sure I will not be tired of these designs because I thought about them first for a long time and collaborated with my very awesome artist. And when I am old, I will have age spots and wrinkles in my design, and I imagine they will look weathered and cracked like an old painting or the rocks on which some of the designs are actually found, and that will be fine.

Say this, and I will often receive a second dose of the smile, the look, this time more nakedly doubtful and soaked in condescension, as if it's perfectly impossible I won't regret my decision, now or later, and I just don't know it yet.  It's clear their opinion was formed well before the question, which they ask to confirm for themself their own choices/prejudices and to signal to me that I have made choices which they do not agree with nor approve of.

Listen: ask what the designs are, what they mean, how long the sessions take and how many there were--but don't ask if they fucking hurt to signal to yourself your own virtue, or whatever you're doing. I have a high tolerance for multiple needles and many hours contorted in the chair. I have far less for people trying to make me feel bad for choices that are none of their business.

Summer ends. I grimly face my wyrd.

So.

Murdercat found the sun

The summer of time measured in "X Days Since Last Time I Went Among People" (X=2, but this was a social week) is drawing to a close. The HS starts tomorrow. The uni classes hold off another month, but really, if I am back in front of any classroom, summer's over. I'm having those little surges of panic, like I'm forgetting something, or I've squandered my time.

I translate this feeling to myself as "did not write most of a novel this summer." I'll probably be doing that next year, assuming the apocalypse spares us. I have ideas. They will possibly require research. So I counsel myself to patience.

I did write other things. Two syllabi, two websites for those classes, and I have been listening to Critical Role S2 in prep for the third syllabus (HS S2020) because seeing a rules-oriented D&D 5e game is actually research. I even, gasp, playtested a module. Unheard of in this group of home-brew plots and epics, but it worked out. I am still wrangling with how in five hells I am going to teach a thing I have been doing for 30 years (mostly in AD&D 2e, house-ruled to our eyes) to teenagers who may, or may not, have played before. Or run a game. Or faced the rules. But that's a challenge for which I have a couple months left to prepare.


I also wrote several things for the release of How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, which is coming out in October and of which I am so damned proud I can't even. There will be a lot more about that coming up.

I've also spun a lot of wool. This batch is made of unrelated bundles of fiber in complementary colors, mixed together and spun at random. There's camel in there, various sheep wools, who knows. It's becoming a rug as we speak.

I have knit several socks in prep for the holidays. The godson is getting 4, none of which will match, at his request. They are also glittery yarn, also at his request. He is almost 5.

 I have rediscovered longsword training, and am pleased that I haven't forgotten my drills and that I've gotten so much stronger since I first learned them twenty-odd years ago. It is also a sadness, because the friend who was my first teacher died from a massive, surprise heart attack a few years ago, just north of 40, and that knowledge still shocks me whenever I recall it.

I have failed to convince my husband that we need another kitten. As Murdercat, almost 4, tries to coerce Tinycat, almost 12, to play with him, resulting in chunks of hair everywhere and a lot of feline yelling, I feel like the argument just sort of makes itself, but... the husband remains unmoved.

sew what?

My parents came out for a visit, and with them they brought antiques for which they no longer have room but we do, and so... I have this 1926 Singer treadle sewing machine now. My parents picked it up at an antique show and held onto it until I had room, because who doesn't want a treadle sewing machine in case of a zombie apocalypse? I am no seamstress on a good day, but that's fine. This is a beautiful thing. It came with an owner's manual for a different model of sewing machine. I discovered this when I went to start trying to figure out what parts were which and the first diagram identified things that simply are not on this machine. The internet is mighty, however, and I soon found and downloaded the correct owner's manual. Now I just need to get the belt on it--a leather belt, mind you--and order some needles and oil we're all set to... I have no idea. Sew the occasional seam, I guess, in quicker order than setting up the little crappy Kenmore electric I have. Dad says with the right needles, it can sew leather. I don't see myself making a bodice or anything, though.


But look at this thing. How pretty is that? The I-don't-even-know-what-that-part-is-called is decorated for no reason other than it can be, so why not? I wish we still did that. Decorated things for no reason. Why can't a utilitarian object also be beautiful? And also why can't it be made to last for a hundred years?

Dad also brought out this guy, which is the only toy truck I ever played with. I guess it's missing a couple of ladders, and this is not the original paint job, but whatever. The steering wheel works, y'all. The front wheels turn. And it has a bell, an actual bell. I recall in the dim and distant past it had, what, paracord or something wound up and playing the part of the hose? I'd unspool it, then rewind it again, repeat, repeat, repeat. I don't know why this truck fascinated me as a kid, but it did.

It's awesome. It's all metal parts and heavy...like the Kitchenaid of toy fire trucks.

how to make feathered enemies

This morning, on the way to the gym, we saw a crow dive into the tall grass beside the trail and grab a very tiny baby rabbit by the ears in its beak. The crow was having a little trouble with lift, and the rabbit was screaming (rabbits scream. This is not a fiction from Watership Down, but a shrill and disturbing truth).

I, torn between admiration of corvids and sympathy for tiny bunnies, slapped my hand over my mouth and stood there expecting to see the crow drop the bunny, stab it with its beak, and have a brutal breakfast. Nature's mean, man.

Instead, the crow lost altitude and landed and dropped the bunny...

...who tried to run...

...and got grabbed again, and lifted....

...and got dropped again, and tried to run...

...all the while screaming...

...and at that point I had enough. The crow had the bunny pinned, by the ears, and clearly couldn't hold it down long enough to stab it. (The crow was giving off wtf, man, I thought this was a mouse, this is not a fucking mouse! vibes.) So I ran at the crow, who prudently abandoned its screaming, thrashing victim, who--unharmed? or at least not bleeding--ran at me (or rather, away from the crow), and then jagged into the grass and hopefully from there back underground or under some bushes, where crows cannot go.

And that is how I pissed off the crows in the neighborhood (again. Last time I rescued a frog).

proof of life

It's spring, blah blab April cruel months blah blah. But here in SoCal, it's when the Renaissance Festival happens, which seems strange since I grew up with summer Ren Faires, but whatever. I do not miss the summer temperatures when one is laced into a leather bodice.

Here is proof that Nous and I are not, in fact, dead. Or even particularly sunburned, because a) sunscreen, duh, and b) hats!

It was opening weekend, which can be a little chaotic, but also the one cool day for the next five and, probably more important, since it's just the end of the first week of spring quarter (and my HS class is on spring break), there were no assignments requiring commentary over the weekend, so we went. I mean, we can't miss Faire. (I don't think I've missed a Faire since college days, when I used to work at one. That belt in the photo? From those days. And because it's peeling and basically disintegrating, this was its last Faire year.)

Anyway. It was not a year of big purchases, but I did find some fresh roasted coffee in a thoroughly appropriate blend. I AM deviant. And I am a witch* because that is what we call women who will not have it with the patriarchy, and who also might know a few things about herbs or spells or who make things or, you know, whatever. (Like knitting. That greenish bit beside the bag is a tea-cozy that looks like a bubbling-over cauldron from this pattern here.)

*Which is not to say I am a Wiccan--though I was, once, and I was deviant about that, too, which is why I'm not anymore.

Anyway, I will leave you with one more piece of photographic evidence of my witchery, because everyone knows all witches have black cats, and I have TWO.

Sometimes I need visible proof that they actually do like each other, and also just how much bigger Murdercat is than Tinycat, and how much she does not give a shit about that.

I am thankful for boxes. And no boxes.

We are moved. We are (mostly) unpacked. The boxes, some of which have moved with us twice now, have been sent to the great recycling dumpster in the sky (really, the parking lot). Books are shelved, art is hung, and only two things broke. One of them, unfortunately, was a light bulb on a lethal collision with a bookshelf on the deep-pile* living room carpet.  I found out there was still glass in the carpet yesterday.

Ask me how I discovered this. I dare you.




*this is the carpet that comes with the place. I would have wood, if left to my own.

upheaval

Right, so remember when I said I was restless because I was between writing projects and waiting for notes on edits? Haha, yes, the universe heard! And the universe did deliver unto us (she says, shifting into Bible-speak) a campus apartment, which is bigger than this one and actually less expensive, but which we need to take possession of... today. Literally, keys in hand today, appliances (hopefully) delivered tomorrow. (We knew about this apartment two weeks ago. It's not like they sprang it on us overnight, but we had, like, 48 hours to accept and get the paperwork in motion.) The truck to move the heavy things comes in a week and a half (because we are too old to haul shit up and down flights of stairs anymore. I mean, we could, but good lord, why?) ...other than all the things we will hand-move, like guitars and framed art and fragile objects and the plants and the entirety of the kitchen. Plenty to carry, yes, let someone else carry the couch and chairs.

So for the near future, I am grateful to circumstances that I don't have a writing deadline, other than those student-related, because this apartment is transmuting into cardboard boxes and chaos.

And lest y'all think I pay no attention to politics, today I have guarded hope, although I am bitter as week-old grounds that we didn't flip CA 45 blue.

now is the autumn of your discontent

I am feeling cranky and at odds with... everything? Not really combative, more restless. Like I should be doing something but I'm not, and whatever I've forgotten/am neglecting is going to bite me in the ass. This is what happens when Type A personalities have nothing on the immediate agenda. I'm like a border collie without sheep. Pretty soon I'm gonna start chewing on the furniture and digging in the garden and okay, letting this metaphor go now.

Part of it's the university teaching quarter starts in 2 weeks, but the HS class already started, like, a month ago, and I'm in that limbo between working my ass off and having something to do one day a week for 3 hours. My just-finished novel (RORY TWO)  is off at my agent, and I haven't gotten the editorial notes on the first book (formerly SRP, now How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, aka RORY ONE). I'm not writing anything at the moment. Not that I don't have ideas. It's just I don't want to go launching into a new project when I know revisions are coming.

Instead, I'm spinning a lot of fiber (like that bagful on the right. It's, like, 4-5 hanks of compatible colorways all mixed up to be spun out at random).  I'm making Christmas socks (2.5 pairs of 5, or halfway done!) and bingeing Netflix and Prime series. (The Good Place has to be one of the best things in a long time.) We've gone hiking a couple of times, now that things have mostly stopped burning. But the last couple of weeks I haven't had anything I had to do except the HS class.

Maybe that's it. I'm freaking out because I'm not under any deadlines. I'm...taking a vacation. It feels weird.