scrubjayspeaks

Well, it took until Monday before I started feeling even remotely human again. And it wasn’t until Thursday that I started feeling like I could do much by way of activities. It’s disappointing, though I suppose I didn’t have much planned for my vacation that needed high physical activity. It’s just that I had hoped to rest in a way that involved being conscious slightly more often. Also, it meant mum was left doing all the work. I don’t feel guilty, because it wasn’t my fault, but I do feel upset.

I tried out the vacuum sealer I got second-hand from work. Neither of us was feeling in the mood to plow through the massive quantity of yule log cake we had left. So I sliced it up, lightly froze it for stability, and then vacuum sealed it into sets of two or three slices. It seems to have worked great. And now I have emergency cake rations in the freezer!

We had another couple of storms roll through. Solid rain, though not as apocalyptic as I expected or as other places got. The weeds are at least knee high, but it’s never dry enough to mow or weed whack, so, uh, guess we just live in a jungle now...

Lewisia: 6 new pieces written (all caught up), January posts queued

Day job: none hours

Cooking: vacuum sealed yule log slices

Cleaning: hauled the tree out of the house

Crafting: bought some more stickers (shoutout to KeyMonster) and turned them into magnets again, made a little more progress on attaching patches

Gardening: started making a shortlist of seeds to buy

Reading: Strangers in Paradise XXV #1 & #2 (oh no, you mean all the other series are connected too??? I am never going to be done reading Terry Moore, am I?), We Need Your Art by Amie McNee (I liked it, I think, it’s a bit different from the usual advice, which I appreciate), also, I’m reading each day’s passage from John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated

Watching: out of a desperate desire to actually set aside time to watch things I want to see, I have resorted to creating a Pacemaker plan for watching shows, adulthood is hell...

Listening: a clutch of Louie Zong albums--Oneiric Ocean (sounds like lost tracks from the E.V.O. game soundtrack), Spyglass (more of the fun collage stuff he does), and Rain in the Valley (just beautiful)

Playing: started dabbling with Moonlighter--oh, I’m so bad at real-time combat, but I will make an attempt

Clock Mouse: 583 words through the end of the year, switched to doing planning work--30 minutes

Other: purged three email inboxes with extreme prejudice (╬▔皿▔)╯

She found the stash of silverware in the back of her grandmother’s closet after her death, swaddled in mouse-nibbled dishcloths, crammed in byzantine arrangements into dusty cardboard boxes. All of it was black with tarnish from decades of disuse, save one piece she took at first to be the wedge of a cake slicer. The knife was big and freshly polished to a shine like moonlight by someone who evidently knew her grandmother’s house and belongings better than she did.

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LL#1351

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm Jay (he/him). I'm a fandom old, though my fannish contributions have been thin on the ground for a few years due to life things. I write and post original fiction regularly, though. I also talk about music, which I'm always open to recs for, and gardening.

Snowflake is a nice, low-pressure way to potentially meet new people. I look forward to it as a touchpoint for each new year. There's usually a good mix of prompts for looking forward and looking back. In place of setting resolutions, I think of this event as my yearly taking stock activity.

The annual lighting of Beacon House will take place at sundown on Wednesday, so bring your candles, flashlights, lanterns and pocket lighters and meet on the hill. Our lights will be reflected into the many mirrors in the House, helping to renew the infinite light that bounces around inside there. Local tradition says that this light is needed to ensure that the new year can find its way to our community, which sounds like a good idea whether taken literally or metaphorically.

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LL#1349

Death classes, taught by a combination of spiritual leaders, medical professionals, and retired actors, encouraged people to make peace with their eventual demise by facing it head-on. Exercises included practical planning with legal advice, but spent more time on often outrageous playacting of possible final moments to help adjust to the idea of dying. In addition to the elderly and terminally ill, the classes always saw a few misfit attendees, frequently alarmingly young, who often turned out to be psychopomps in the making.

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LL#1348

(reproduced from my tumblr post for your enjoyment)

Speaking on the subject of holiday desserts,

me: King Arthur had a video course they were promoting on making bûche de Noël

my mum: that's where they fill it with cream?

me: yeah, it's usually a chocolate sponge cake that's rolled with...?

mum, visibly confused: oh

me, realizing the conversation is about to Go Places: er, yes?

mum: wait, maybe I mean...kraken bush? No, wait, is that a monster?

me, delighted beyond measure: yes, a kraken is a giant, monstrous squid octopus thing. A kraken bush is nothing, I don't think.

mum, miming something small and round: where they...and then the pile...?

me, about to commit a crime against French people with my pronunciation but I have other things on my mind now: do you mean croquembouche? Like profiteroles? It's French all the way down, apparently.

mum: yes, that's what I was thinking of.

me: okay, great, forget Christmas trees. We're doing a kraken bush for Yule from now on.

So, I guess I’ll go with the option of being grateful, as is appropriate for the gods’ luckiest fool. Apparently, it had been longer than I realized since I checked the oil in my car. Which is weird, because I have a distinct memory of doing so, but I guess that was in a bygone age??? And because it’s not enough for one thing to go wrong, the level sensor must be busted, because it never gave me a low warning, despite the light on the dash being technically functional. My “warning” was the engine smoking.

Long story short, I had a rather harrowing experience of thinking I might have murdered my car. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. No need to panic. ⊙﹏⊙

Though we had our misgivings, the holiday meal that our manager set up for my team ended up being spectacular. I still think he’s a ninny about professional matters, but I can hardly find fault with an entirely homemade prime rib lunch. Yum!

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours

Cooking: biscuits for party potluck

Gardening: succulent club holiday party

Reading: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Secondary Phase and Tertiary Phase (continuing the BBC Radio productions)

Listening: Secrets Nobody Keeps by Jon Gomm, plus the single “Shchedryk (Carol Of The Bells)” (of “Passionflower” viral fame, an interesting mix of vibes)



Clock Mouse: 1029 words

Other: donated blood

The trouble--one of the troubles, anyway--with locking up one’s monstrous offspring in the attic is that one must then tell less-monstrous offspring, “Your brother is a monster and we keep him in there so he can’t hurt anyone,” and they decide they quite like monsters. Then you tell them, “So you must never, ever open this door,” and they decide to whisper through the keyhole and pass notes under the door. Then you tell them, “Family secrets have to stay in the family,” and they decide they and their monstrous sibling will simply have to find a new family in that case.

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LL#1344

Ugh. Multiple appointments this week, all of which got rescheduled, sometimes more than once. My dental cleaning revealed a cavity, so I had to go back to get that dealt with. My regular follow-up for my HRT was a bit of a fiasco. They were obviously too busy and didn’t actually have time to provide me with competent care. Normally, I don’t need anything in particular; I’m just showing up so they can renew my prescriptions. But I had actual questions this time. No one was really listening to me, as they kept misunderstanding what I was talking about, and they didn’t have time to do anything for me anyway.

So I have another appointment, which I needed anyway to get the last round of HPV vax. Maybe that will go better… Perhaps they will also have the injection supply kits I use (since my pharmacy can’t manage to fill them in a timely or accurate manner), which they were out of. And apparently now I have to have at least a telehealth appointment to get the results of my blood test for my T levels, which is a new policy. Considering it takes me over an hour to get to them, I wish they would be a bit less cavalier about making me come back multiple times.

No one’s head is really in the game at work right now, least of all mine. There are various holiday activities happening, and I think we’re all just skating from one to the next until we get to our days off. Which doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy, because nonsense is constantly afoot. I’m just not sure I’m especially competent right now. ≧ ﹏ ≦

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours, not counting the 1.5hr of consultation via text

Crafting: converted 1 more sticker into a magnet, repaired more socks

Gardening: harvested pumpkins, garden club post

Reading: The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (a sort of fairy tale [pun intended] of the ebb and flow of the fortunes of the collective queer community, interesting reading in these strange times), The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (I only saw the movie for the first time as an adult and it did not have the magic it might have if I saw it at a younger age, but the book was perfectly lovely, he does truly gorgeous things with language)

Watching: Jurassic World: Rebirth (huh...well, it was a better movie than the last one [low bar] but it still feels like they’ve lost the thread--I like the series because dinosaurs, which seem to take a backseat to other concerns in the modern movies)

Listening: Napichideh by B-Band (“Kavire Del” was one of the all-time best finds from KEXP for me years ago, and I finally managed to obtain the full album)

Aftermarket Parts: six month follow-up

Clock Mouse: 1208 words

Other: dentist...twice...

The frat house, for good or ill, was not inhabited by the sort of brownie who helps with household chores or takes offense at squalor. Instead, the unnamed branch of the Gentry who lived there entertained themselves with drinking the dregs of red Solo cups and impressed one another with feats of strength by hoisting near-empty kegs over their wee heads. If these occasionally got dropped on the head of a passed-out pledge, they were usually too still-drunk to believe anything they saw or notice any additional headache.

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LL#1342