Babblings

Called swallowtayle last night and talked. Much of the gossip went down.

Called shywickedpixie tonight, because she sounded like she could use a cheerful voice. Midway through that conversation, I decided to go shopping. So I did. She had to go as I was checking out.

Then I called swallowtayle, who is in the process of moving. Moving is always a mess and a half.

Got pizza. Sadly, did not look carefully enough at the pizza I was getting, so instead of three Supreme and three Four Cheese, I have one Supreme (in the oven now) and two Mexican Fiesta, which should be OK, but not what I was looking for or expecting.

Bad Loony.

Blogging...

Anybody know anything about Bloggingnetwork.com?

Robin McKinley: book glee

Robin McKinley's one of my favorite fantasy authors. Has been since middle school, with The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown and all that.

She's got a new book, adult fantasy, vampire, Sunshine. The HoIF List recommends it highly.

There is signing tour!

For those who haven't read her? She's another of my Buy On Sight authors, up there with Duane and Bujold. Closer in style to Duane, especially the Tale of the Five; Bujold's fantasy differs. For more in that same general style, I also recommend Patricia McKillip; Rois in Winter is the latest book to leave me walking between the worlds for a day.

Fic rec: the Absence series

http://www.snitchfiction.net/cgi-bin/stories/profile.cgi?login=lonchura

I know I recognize the author's name, either from HoIF, the List, or both.

Good. Angsty. Yummy.

High Prickers (childhood phrases)

For whatever reason, rosebushes made an early impression on me. These weren't the domesticated, tame sorts of roses with the huge thorns that fall off easily; these are the Alaskan rosebushes, with the millions of little needlelike prickers that stick in your skin. They're Alaska's answer to the cactus.

Whenever I saw rosebushes, for a while, I would announce, "High Prickers!" in my deepest, grandest voice.


I was reminded of that when Mama and FatherSir told me about FatherSir's little adventure the other day.

In disassembling the shed that had been for swallowtayle's horse Nefi before she and the Nef both moved out, FatherSir wound up getting knocked off the ladder by a piece of swinging plywood. He rolled through High Prickers, and bashed his forehead into a stump. He's all right, although a little dinged up, and his glasses have been found.

'Tis the Season...

...for loud, wild college parties, evidently.

Came home from the store just shy of midnight to find cars zooming into the apartment complex parking lot, and find that there was a Large Crowd at the other end of the parking lot, making that unmistakable combination of noise that lets you know that it's either teenagers, college students, or both.

This is a high-college apartment complex, so I'm guessing that they're college students. Something must have broken up part of the party, because I saw several carfuls leaving, all at once. Perhaps it's migratory. Commented to one of the neighbors who was also taking out trash at that hour.

Now, as I'm doing laundry, I am seeing and smelling another party -- loud voices, loud music, and that unmistakable herbal redolence pouring down from somewhere slightly upstairs of the laundry room.

Back in my first set of college days, I learned that smell, thanks especially to one incident. My chickfriend/roommate StaticGirl and I were hanging out in the office of the dorm-stationed campus police officer, and we saw -- and smelled -- this guy rushing by. Tonya, the officer, excused herself, kicked us out of the office, and went barrelling after him. He wound up to have shoved the bong down his pants. He was reeking. StaticGirl told me that the technical name for what he'd been smoking was "skunk weed", because of the overpowering odor.

It is evident that the guys upstairs of the laundry room do not have the good stuff. Pfew!


Also, I came home from the grocery store to find that the parking lot smelled like intensive cedar, or mothballs, or something. Our patio smells of it, too, and around outside at that end. It smells like cedar dipped in rubbing alcohol. Or something. It's very strong, and not especially fun to breathe.


Time to go put stuff in the dryer. We'll see if the wild and stinkies have gone to bed yet...

The Nose Knows

The loud smelly party's still going strong, but with scents of other, more legal, things burning, overpowering their former odor. Smells like candles, cigarettes, and match-striking combustion.

The music's also in questionable taste. It sounds like stuff picked more for intelligibility at high volume, beat, and lyrics and themes that may be chorused along with drunkenly, than music picked for actual musical merit.

But then, I'm a snob.


FatherSir trained me in my pseudo-ninja-esque skills of silence and sneakery, and also in observation. I have the "sensitive nose" of my paternal line -- something that evidently also goes along with the nose shape. You can, in any given photo of my paternal-line relatives, tell which ones are genetically related to GrandfatherSir, and which ones have married in, by the nose. I have the nose quite strongly; swallowtayle may have gotten a more refined version of it. (Little Fayoumis has his mother's nose; it's starting to emerge from his baby-face.)

I smell stuff. It's what I've been trained to do. Unfortunately, my nose is so badly congested so much of the time, that I'm walking around half-crippled, as far as scent's concerned. Other times, I don't notice it so much until a scent smacks me in a trigger spot. I have this thing for the way leather smells on men. Some days, Fuzzy smelled of leather and coffee and exhaust. Darkside smelled of leather and dryer-scorched fabric. When he wears his work uniforms, before he snaps up the shirt, I just want to let my face rest against his bare warm neck...

Can we tell that the Lunatic's tired? I think we can.

Ninja Pizza Cats

So I'm eating my pizza, and suddenly my bed is full of cats. I look over my shoulder when the bed lumps behind me, and there are two fuzzy faces looking back at me hopefully. I think they wanted me to share. No such luck -- my pizza is all mine! Mine, I say.

Quite apropos, as there has been a thread on the List about our feline friends who eat odd things. Most vivid was the recollection of the hungover cat... my. My oh my.

Silly cats have let their ninja skills lapse -- I wouldn't be able to detect their presence on the bed by the bed bouncing were they true ninjas.

Outy-outy

Another phrase from childhood: when cleaning berries, swallowtayle and I would declare the bucket that the unripe berries, sticks, leaves, spiders, and so forth went into as "the outy-outy bucket".

Tonight I tossed the box spring that was recycled when I first got it. It's all smashed, stained, stepped-upon, and broken. It was making my bed-pile more shaky than necessary, so I hauled it out.

Maybe it can be useful to someone else. Maybe it can't.

Garbage, don't forget

When I was a kid growing up just outside of Fairbanks, we did not have garbage service out that far. So we would have to load the garbage up into the trunk of the car, or the truck, and deliver it to the array of dumpsters set up for that purpose.

We'd do this on our weekly Saturday morning trips to town. Sometimes FatherSir would forget to turn off so we could throw out the garbage. So we formed a habit of having someone sing out, "We have garbage, don't forget!"

Occasionally, no one would remind anyone, and then FatherSir would realize that we'd gone past the dumpsters without leaving the trash, and he'd grumble, "We have garbage, I forgot!"

Things to do tomorrow, and general stuff:

( Read more... )

Hoo boy. Let's hear it for circular logic!

I wake up to the sound of immature howling. I tie a sheet about my waist (this was the night for sleeping in a T-shirt) and stalk out in the living room to find the Little Fayoumis howling on the couch, in that "I'm not getting my eyes gouged out physically, but somebody sure did it for me emotionally, and I'm feeling terribly sorry for myself" way.

"What in the world is going on?" I asked him.

"Mommy says I can't play video games if I'm going to cry about it!" he told me, and proceeded to bawl some more.

Let's hear it for circular logic!

I pointed out gently that, "You do realize that I had been asleep, and you woke me up." Nod nod. "And I heard you crying, and I thought that maybe you were hurt." Nod nod. "Or bleeding. Or something." Nod nod.

"Furthermore, I notice that last night, marxdarx told you to put your racecars away. And you got them out again and were playing with them after he told you to put them away and not play with them anymore. And you left them out. So, please put them away now."

We dismantled the track, and I have the bin in my room now. He is grounded from them!



...it turns out, of course, that he was told that he may not play video games without the active and current permission of marxdarx, which he tried this morning, and got majorly called on it. He's been so generally good lately that when he runs bang up against a rule and breaks it that it hurts like holy fuck-all.

I describe Alaskan rosebushes to marxdarx:

marxdarx spent a decent portion of his formative years here in Arizona. So he was not overly concerned about hearing that my father had rolled through some rosebushes.

"They're Alaska's answer to cactus. Think a teddybear cactus with a haircut. OK, a balding teddybear cactus with a buzzcut."

He winced.

Exhaustion

votania called. I stood looking at the phone until the answering machine picked up, and evidently my voice when I said hello, hold on, was so faint that when I went and turned the answering machine off, she hadn't heard me, and hung up.

I am hungry, but I don't see anything to eat. I don't have strength or coordination to come up with anything healthy. I probably could/should ask for some help, but it's him here with me, and we don't get along so well when I'm tired.

That Idiot Shawn and the mac & cheese

When I was in high school, I had a best friend: That Idiot Shawn.

One night, he called me up, past my bedtime, with an urgent question: ( Cut for those who have heard it too many times before. Also, put down beverages to avoid possible spewage. )

(no subject)

Happy New Year.