the girly who shall end all girls

five questions returns! request five from me in comments and you shall receive!

from sara:

1. Is there anything you've done to your living space in the last while that you found particularly pleasing?
in the late 90s our favorite local bookstore was a dealer for Windstone Editions, and we are a certain kind of nerds so we own several dragon and gargoyle functional pieces - bookends, candle holders, a pair of sconces. the sconces have been gathering dustsitting on a bookshelf since we moved into this apartment. as part of welcoming in-person gamers back into our home we moved some bookcases around and finally mounted the sconces on either side of the door into our bedroom and put little LED candles into them. i think we waited to put them up because we thought they were too heavy for command strips (rental rules) but they are not. i love them.

2. Do you have any morning (or waking-up-time) routines, and if so, what are they?
weekdays: stumble to kitchen, pull overnight oats from fridge. eat oats and take pills while getting dressed. due to time zone fuckery i've had to stop going in to the office, so go to desk, throw down padded mat, lift to standing height, move the keyboard plug and throw the monitor switches to move from personal to work computer. around the time i finish reading my emails and switch to catching up on Slack messages C has placed a hot caffienated beverage by my right hand.

weekends: wake up when i wake up. if early enough, walk dog with C and get breakfast along the way. (otherwise C walks dog on his own and causes breakfast to appear.) since restaurants first reopened and we wanted to intentionally support local businesses, we've gotten takeout from neighborhood bar Hattie's Hat every Saturday. on Sundays it depends - if i'm meeting varina8 at the pool i wake up, eat some cheese, throw my pool stuff together and go. if i'm home it's pastries and what-have-you from the Sunday Farmer's Market.

3. What is the best dessert?
my Mom's apple dumplings - her flaky pastry with butter and cinnamon and Northern Spy apples, preferably with some whipped cream and a cup of tea. setting aside the love and associations it's hard to say; i'm a sucker for citrus and so far i've never met a lemon bar or key lime pie that i didn't like.

4. What are you reading this weekend?
a popular history of Victorian home life by Ruth Goodman. i have the new Freya Marske but i've been dithering about starting it because i suspect i should reread the first one.

5. If you were going to buy a new pair of shoes, what kind would they be?
comfortable shoes that have a sense of style or something unique about them.

i just bought a pair of waterproof breathable pull-on chelsea boots to replace the role of my waterproof hikers with the worn-out (therefore leaky) soles. of course it has not rained since i got them so i have no idea if they are actually fit for purpose, but they are certainly comfy and look like part of a near-future SF costume.

the shoes i want to buy are the John Fluevog Starfleet boots, which are part of the uniforms for Strange New Worlds. delta on the ankle! i've been waiting to go to the store downtown to try a pair on - historically my calves have been too chonky for their tall boots but there's a stretch panel in the back and reviews on the calf sizing are inconclusive enough that i have hope.

2021 was A Year. American democracy almost died, my father and brother-in-law did die, we got vaccinated but ultimately it didn't change our lives enough. (it did, a bit - we did get to see friends again, a couple soccer games, a few movies, some meals out...but then delta.) i ended up in four RPGs (multiple campaigns, but a consistent four games across three groups of gamers). we stayed on two more of the San Juans. i got serious about fountain pens again.

not previously chronicled here:

• Mom started dating (that's okay) a racist anti-vaxxer (FUCK NO). i told her how i felt about that person before things got where they are. it wrecked me for a while, but due to distance i can easily avoid any interaction with that piece of shit. she's had a horrible several years so i'm not going to have a fight about it. that said, i'm sending Mom an "in honor of Dad's Name" card for every donation i make to SPLC until it ends.


• I had increasing problems with concentration and executive function as the year wore on. I've been on some drugs for almost two months; I feel like I'm doing better and C says he sees the change as well.

January
"finally caught up on John Wick tonight (only recently did we agree that home video with lots of cuddles and the ability to pause would allow C to get through the wife and dog death in the first film)."
Jan 6 terrified me
I made a Helsinki Complaint Choir ringtone (which still delights me)
I watched the presidential inauguration and it was nice
We ordered a bunch of new sheets
Everyone was into sea shanties
Leela was attacked by an off-leash dog

February
"i have to deliver a presentation themed on "a day in the life" tomorrow."
I started having four RPGs in flight at once.
We had snow (always remarkable in Seattle)
I started making bath bombs

March
"character B has made it to third level. i am a bit surprised that i'm still on character 2."
Spent our anniversary on Lopez Island
Had my first bus ride in over a year
Started playing DJ with background music for the Tuesday/Friday games

April
"C is eligible for vaccine as of yesterday."
I got an electric spinning wheel
Both of us started our covid vaccine series
SIFF was remote and I hated it
I had a health scare
I did a very high-visibility, high-impact project at work
We got a new tent

May
"Concerning Hobbits always lifts my spirits."
Vaccination complete
Dad died (and I spent some time in PA)
I got an improved title/pay bump/stock grant

June
"my mother-in-law wished us a happy holiday today."
We went camping on Shaw Island
I did a bunch of spinning with my new wheel
We watched Ted Lasso
There was a massive heat wave

July
"I finished The Left-handed Booksellers of London and my Kindle let me know there will be a new Old Kingdom book soon."
I went to PA again, this time on a trip that had been planned for months. I got to swim.
I worked on a coding project for work that would impact all of our users and there was a (positive) management shakeup
On one eventful day I had dim sum for the first time in two years, saw a soccer game in person, and my brother-in-law died

August
"C: i voted for the indian"
we have a primary election with two Native candidates for mayor
i get a new fountain pen and inks
i find out that teaberry == wintergreen and i order a plant
i did most of the Carpe Diem challenge

September
"a lot of long-awaited library holds came through for me, some wonderful and one remarkably disappointing."
I finally read ✨Murderbot✨!
The House on the Cerulean Sea 🤮
I go back to the office for the first time

October
"a while ago i complained about how TJ Klune's The House on the Cerulean Sea didn't work for me."
I didn't write a lot - I went to Origins in Columbus and spent time with friends from college. it was planned before covid had started to surge again and i had a lot of conflicted feelings about the whole thing. ultimately it was a wonderful trip.
i get my first covid test - negative.
I see a psychiatrist

November
"apparently the pandemic was hard on the fancy nail nerds."
I start my drug regimen
Thanksgiving plans get scuttled over covid exposure
we made so much turkey stock
I get to see philotera
Stephen Sondheim died

December
I failed to post. It was a hair-on-fire kind of time at work.
I went to the rescheduled ECCC
I had my second covid test - negative
C went to PA for family stuff and that sucked
I ordered a new fountain pen
I bought fountain-pen-friendly notebooks
West Side Story!!!
We had people for Christmas dinner, first time to have more than one guest in almost two years
Minor covid exposure scare (natch) - negative
It snowed on boxing day
I sorted through a bunch of boxes in storage, which led to sorting, packing, and shipping a box of photos to a scanning service
I had debit card fraud - bank caught it, I got a rad new card that looks like a cassette tape out of the deal.

Transcript of a page of something I wrote for school when I was maybe nine years old, all content sic:*

My dad is a farmer. He has a larger lap than mom to snugle in. He cooks. He hunts. He is nice. He loves to go sledriding and to build snowmen. He likes the Pittsburg Stellers, Penn State and anyone who plays Pitt. He is very kind. He also likes to swim. He loves mom. He loves the rest of the family too. He plows filds, He also plants them. He’s a great dad and I love him. Is your dad like that?

*it appears to have mostly been a handwriting exercise, done in January. i am deeply disappointed in my spelling but i note that i still skip letters when i am writing quickly.

a thing about being in PA: it's profoundly dark. even though mom is in a housing development, there are no streetlights and no outdoor lights on houses to speak of.

there have been thunderstorms almost every day (2cm today and mom is still complaining about the lack of rain). tonight I stepped onto the back deck, and there was distant lightning flashing while fireflies danced.

I miss fireflies, and being able to accelerate up the ramp onto the highway. driving is really fun on overbuilt roads with no traffic. (there's infrastructure to handle game days, but in the summer there's no one here so zooooooom.)

spent most of the evening sorting papers with Mom. found a letter I sent at the end of our first month in Seattle, and a paper I wrote in elementary school about Dad (it's super wholesome and I need to transcribe it).

oh lawd it's hot, we're sitting in the dark as still as possible. (no air conditioning, it's 98F right now and it will be hotter tomorrow and Monday. the last time it got this hot here was in 2009.) the dog is at daycare in the ac until later in the evening - they're not doing any afternoon walks today because they're worried about burning pupper feet on the hot sidewalk. i got a haircut this afternoon, and impulse-bought gelato for C and me on the way home. it was a race against time - with a cup of gelato in each hand, both melting and dripping like mad, me licking up what drips i could while walking home as fast as i could and trying not to get chocolate on my clothes.

fortunately there was someone in the elevator to punch buttons and C had the door propped open to the hall so it wasn't TOO hard to get home and shove the cups into the freezer before i washed my hands. i suspect there's gelato all over my keys and in my purse, but it was worth it. C had Theo chocolate and Hawaiian macadamia hazelnut, and i had lemon meringue pie and bourbon vanilla.

***
i haven't written for a while because i didn't want to write about my dead parent feelings. i was able to talk about a nice memory of Dad without getting upset while i was getting my hair cut today, so that was good and getting better, i think. (C tells me that he got surprise grief every so often for a few years, so i will just need to roll with that.) the memory was that before i was in school full time i used to go along with Dad when he got his hair cut - old school barbershop where you walk in and then hang out and shoot the shit until a chair is open for you. they always had comic books, and those are my first memories of reading comics.* all this spurred by my stylist's Barbicide jar which appears to be completely unchanged in the intervening years.
* * *

i spun a self-striping true three-ply yarn from two space dyed braids of BFL wool, which i was not really skilled enough to do and will probably not attempt again for a long time. it involves a lot of weighing and being extremely consistent...and ultimately being willing to break the plies and edit when things just aren't lining up. but it's done now and in the ball it is very much what i hoped, the kind of gradual transition between the color bands that you get in Noro but a three-ply. i probably should feature it in a sweater since it will wear hard, but i'm looking at some sideways shawls that i'm more likely to wear.




*and the ubiquitous Hostess ads which apparently dates me pretty exactly

thrilled

email from Mom today: now that she has both her shots, Dad's facility will allow her to visit. this time next week they are going to touch each other for the first time in over a year.

relieved

i went downtown the other day to get a weird skin tag removed. pathology confirms that it was just a weird skin tag. whew.

chuffed

now that i have the proportions on the bath bombs dialed in, tonight during my Thursday knitting meetup i made a 2L container of the dry ingredient mix. having that part done should make it much easier to make the next batches, and reduce the need for protective equipment - sifting the lumps out of powdery substances means wearing a mask and goggles. as it was once i had the drys done it was easy to knock out a couple batches of bombs. and i confirmed that dyes that need to bloom will bloom fine in the wet ingredients, no need to add extra water. they're setting up nice and hard.

Haircut today. Still asymmetrical but now with more drama. I'm pleased.

Dad's facility is now closed to visitors. I'm glad PA is on the ball, but Mom is crushed.

I am struggling with this week's homework. At this point I've accepted that I will take tomorrow off and game instead of starting late (for the third week in a row). Saturday will do. I have a 105% average, time to take advantage of it.

i want to tell the funny-in-retrospect story of That Time We Bought C's Mom a Chromecast Because She Wanted YouTube to Play on Her TV.

But after being on the phone for 2 hours and 40 minutes setting it up, i have no spoons left. let's just say that if i had a can of D's ashes available i would shake them so hard. all the devices in the house use his AppleID and require his fingerprint to authenticate. see previous statement about ashes.