Test post

This is just a test post. I'm hoping to write more soon.

The tiger is a rescue living in comfy conditions in the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue near Wisconsin Dells, WI. We got to visit the rescue center and see some of the enrichment activities they do there (an entire raw chicken makes a tasty treat for a 500-lb. cat). Beautiful creatures.

Anyway, yeah, look for more calligraphy and henna posts from me soon.

posted from Bloggeroid

Where have I been?

Oh dear.

I've been busy, or tired, or just generally neglectful. But I have at least been making art and writing stories, and once the holidays are over perhaps I will get back into the habit of posting here regularly. That's a good New Year's resolution to make, isn't it?

Some highlights:

• A Laurel scroll (very high award in the SCA) for an old friend of mine, well deserved and long overdue.
• Taking up a challenge and producing eight or nine other scrolls as part of a massive effort to get overdue awards to people. If I remember right, nearly 200 people produced something like 600 scrolls in 20 weeks.
• Writing even more fan fiction, including the completion of my first series, which includes two novels and three novellas, as well as a collection of deleted scenes.
• Plenty of henna at various street festivals in town.
• Plenty of singing for the Lafayette Chamber Singers.

But yes, I'm feeling a bit tired and it's been hard to motivate to blog about all the stuff I've been up to. Sorry for leaving my readers hanging (all two of you). Facebook and Tumblr are probably to blame as well, heh.

In other news, I'm setting up a Ko-fi page, sort of like a tip jar for online creators. If you like what I've done for you, and if you're the sort of person who might buy me a coffee if we were in person, consider dropping by my Ko-fi page instead.

Hope you have a great holiday season no matter what you celebrate (or if you celebrate), and I'll do my best to get you some pretty pictures soon.

Cheers!

How to make your own chai

Okay, I admit it, this has nothing to do with editing. But if you're like me, drinking something tasty and caffeinated could have quite a lot to do with your creative process.

So. I got this chai recipe from a friend of a friend via Facebook. Unfortunately, I have gone hunting for the original post (it was a comment in someone else's thread), and for the life of me I cannot find it to give proper credit where it is do.

But anyway. Chai.

I wrote the recipe down originally, but am too lazy to get off my butt and go look for it, so this is from memory - but it's pretty easy.

• Three cups water (or 750 mL)
• Three black teabags (you can use loose tea, but you'll have to strain the chai after it's done, before serving)
• A pinch each (HA! I used more like 1/4 tsp at least and then added some more to garnish) of cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cardamom (or I think it was three or four whole pods if that's your thing), ground cloves, and black pepper. Don't forget the black pepper.
• Two cups milk (or 500 mL) (preferably whole)
• 4 tsp sugar (or 50 mL), prepare to add more to taste. I started with sugar, but when it came time for the "to taste" part I added honey.

Put the water, tea, and spices into a medium saucepan and bring to boil over HIGH heat. I personally had to watch out for foaming from the tea, although that may have been the teabags. And by foaming, I mean the pot was less than half full of water and threatened to boil over.

Anyway, once it's boiling, reduce heat to LOW, cover, and simmer for ten minutes. You're gonna end up with some seriously strong tea, here.

After simmering, add the milk and sugar, bring heat up to MEDIUM, and bring it all back up to a simmer. Remove from heat. If you used loose tea, strain before serving. So that's most of what was in the recipe, with a little of my commentary added because I get verbose about things I like.

This next part was not in the recipe I was given: Once it's in your mug, you can add honey instead of sugar to bring it up to your preferred sweetness level. You can also garnish with another little sprinkle of your favorite of the powdered spices you used (I go for ginger).

They also don't tell you that this recipe makes at least three or four mugs' worth, so unless you have friends or are a chai junkie, you'll have to let the extra cool to room temp, put it in a sports bottle, and store it in the fridge. Now, I only made this for the very first time yesterday. However, speaking from experience this morning, you can just shake up the cold chai to stir up the spices that have settled out, then pour into a mug and microwave for about 1:20 to 1:30, and it will be just as flavorful and possibly even a little spicier than it was yesterday. And yes, if you want, you can totally drink it cold too.

Warning - black tea has caffeine in it. This is not at all a caffeine-free beverage. If you're looking for a caffeine-free alternative to coffee, this ain't it. You will be stimulated. You may possibly be wired. Just... keep that in mind. But it is really, really good. It takes like the tea I got at an Indian restaurant once, as opposed to the mixes you get made from powder at your local coffee shop or the grocery store.

Tropical flowers at the farmer's market

As you know, I have a booth at the west side farmer's market every Wednesday.  If you live locally, you also know that we've had some really dry and occasionally really hot weather pretty much since February.

When you combine the two, things get interesting.  For one thing, the market is set on the asphalt parking lot of Cumberland Park, with only token trees to offer a minimum of shade.  Once our popup shelters are in place things start to cool down, but it takes a bit for all the heat in the pavement to radiate out.  I'm really glad of my bamboo rug on the hot days; people tell me that my booth is actually a little more comfortable because of it.

When the weather tops 90 degrees or so, two things appear in the market that you never see at any other time.  One is my foot bath.  It's a little camp tub with a gallon or so of water in it and some ice cubes, and on the really horrible days, the ones where most people just give up and start whimpering, that little thing makes the entire day survivable.  I make no apologies for having a foot bath in my booth; hell, I'be got a bamboo rub in there.  The whole thing is pretty much a portable day spa.

But the other thing that appears is just neat.  The really hot days are the only times - the only times - that you see the little old Indian ladies at the farmer's market.

See, we have a lot of families around here from India, Pakistan, and that general part of the world, thanks to the university and especially its grad program.  We see young moms and dads, and their kids, all the time.  But apparently, if you're in your seventies and you've lived most of your life in a country where the word "monsoon" isn't used as an exaggeration, the weather here is too cold to set foot outside for most of the year.

But when the temperature tops 90 degrees, ah, that's when the little old ladies finally feel comfy, so that's when they come out.  And, of course, being old-school and traditional, these women are not interested in our dippy Western clothing, thank you.  While the rest of us are whimpering in our shorts or reaching for our foot baths, they are strolling in quiet dignity through the market, wearing these gorgeous saris in brilliant red and gold and green, marriage dots between their eyebrows, picking through the vegetables with their little old men nearby to offer their elbows and hold the grocery bags as they go.

It's sweet.

The little old Indian ladies remind me of tropical flowers - all these beautiful, exotic colors that only come out a few days of the year, when the climate is just right.  I always used to think it was my imagination, but I checked with some of the market staff, and no - it's true.  The little old Indian ladies won't come out if the weather is too cold.  It's just that for them, "too cold" is anything under the level where the rest of us start begging for mercy and cranking up the A/C.

Seeing them always makes me smile.

Something I don't understand

There's something I don't understand: How is it that a person can have the blues long enough to sing the blues, but upon hearing the blues, they no longer have the blues?  At what point in the middle of your blues singin' do the blues go away, and after that point, are you still really singin' the blues?

And if not, what do you call it?

And if you're not really singin' the blues, wouldn't that be enough to give you the blues all over again?

(guitar riff)
If you not really singin' -- if you not really singin' the blues....
I said if -- if you're not really singin' the blues...
If you not singin' the blues, won't that just  - give you the blues all over agin?
(more guitar riff)

It's like Heisenberg, man... .I'm speakin' to you here, listen now
Some kind of blues paradox goin' on, messin' wit the space-time continuum
Messin' wit mah head
Messin' wit blues, man, and that's just not right

Is it like a standin' wave of blues, or is it more like...
like...
like Schroedinger's blues?
Man, you got Schroedinger's blues, you never know if you comin' or goin'

'Cause you both.

***

Yep.  That's my brain, doing what it does best, right there... sometimes I feel like I'm just along for the ride the same as you, but it sure is a lot of fun.

Also, I'm not sure if this is more evidence for the theory that quantum physics really is about everything, or if it's just proof that blues music goes well with everything.  It is, however, an excellent demonstration of what happens when I free associate and try to get philosophical while listening to the blues.  Only silliness can result.

My Current Hope-To List

Longtime readers will recognize that I've made some cosmetic changes to the blog in the past few days (let me know what you think of those, btw); well, I was doing some stuff behind the scenes and had cause to look at a bunch of posts from about 2008 or so.

It was kinda cool, but also kinda depressing.

Cool to see some of the projects and ideas I'd had floating around – but depressing to see how many of those are still in stasis, and more so to see that the things that were bugging me about life in 2008 are still bugging me today, in 2011.  I still need a job.  I still am having relationship issues.  I still question my abilities as a mother, and my value to society.

Like I said: depressing.  It's as if I'm the project that is currently in some kind of indefinite holding pattern.

However, that's not what I want this post to be about.  I want it to be about all the nifty ideas that I've had floating around, waiting to be acted on, and on all the sweet projects that actually have come to fruition in the past few years.

So, here is my current "hope-to" list.  It's not a to-do list because those are depressing and frustrating; it's a list of stuff I hope to get to because it would be nifty if I could.

• Hang-gliding; and once upon a time, you could actually take that for PE credit at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Marionettes, which have interested me ever since I read Pinocchio when I was about six, and the book had this terrific appendix about them, their history, and how to craft papier-mache heads and the proper way to rig the controls.
• Mosaics.  I have #3 to repair and then 9 more to build to finish that monster of a project
• Oil lamps and
• Silk banners – both of these are for our group campsite at Pennsic, but I've taken a class on oil lamps and they're really really cool.  Cost-effective, safer than tiki and lighter-fluid type things, pretty, and crazy easy to make. The banners would involve learning silk-painting, which I could totally see becoming my Next Crazy Project for a few years, you know?
• Hand-crafted books.  I already know how to do a specific type of limp-binding, and I've even built one full of calligraphy already as part of a group project to make a "scroll" (see previous posts about the accuracy of that name) back in 2003.  I keep thinking of crafting a pair of books with favorite poems in them, to gift to a couple friends of ours.  Making the book itself only takes about 90 minutes, if you have all the right supplies.  Prepping the pages, doing the text and illustrations and such, takes considerably longer.
• Decent, regular work in henna bookings.  I could pay my bills with this if I had more consistent business, but that's a big if.  I really enjoy puttin' the pretty on people, though.  Also, that's not really a "project" like the other things on this list.

See, that's my problem with lists:  I start out with "want-to" and start putting in "should" and "need to".  For instance, right now I need to get a job and should start looking.  The house needs de-cluttering, organizing and cleaning.  I should be downstairs getting a load of dishes going.  Blah, blah, bleah, blah.

Anyway.  Watch this space; I hope to get more calligraphy stuff up this evening – but I do have a gig tomorrow that I still need to finish preparing for.

If any of you have ideas for how I could turn this stuff into a regular job, I'm all ears!

Winter's End

Oh, my goodness.  I knew it had been awhile since I'd put anything up, but this is crazy.

Should I tell you about the henna party I booked in December? Or about the health fair I did at Sunspot Market this past weekend?  Should I make excuses about the winter blahs getting to me in a big way, or tell you I had some other project on the boil and just never had time to write?  (Well, either that last part is a lie or I've already forgotten about whatever it was I was doing.)

If you live anywhere in the Midwest you know already that this was the winter that just wouldn't end.  I'm glad that it's officially spring, irritated that Daylight Saving Time exists, and gearing up for another season of henna at the farmer's market.  I'm also mulling ideas for a calligraphy project to be completed in a couple weeks' time, creating a character for a role-playing game with folks I haven't played with in ages (yay!), reading a new-to-me book by Barbara Sher who is my absolute favorite self-help person, and fighting a cold, all while mothering a kid and halfheartedly looking for a job.

Put that way, I sound tremendously busy.  This is what is known as spin.

How have you all been surviving the winter?  What will you be working on now that spring has officially arrived?

All the best,
me

Thought for the holidays

It's that time of year again.  The time of year when radio stations feel an overwhelming need to play Christmas music of all varieties; the only time of year when non-country, non-oldies stations will play things like vintage 1947 Gene Autry. The time of year, in fact, when the radio stations show some decency as compared to, say, Wal-mart, which by this point has been playing this stuff for nearly a month, because as we all know, nothing says Christmas like autumn leaves, 70 degree temperatures, and turkey shopping!

We were on our way to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner, and the radio was playing the required holiday-themed stuff, when "Frosty The Snowman" came on.  If you've forgotten the lyrics (and if you have, good lord, haven't you been paying attention at all?), here's a snippet:

There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found,
For when they put it on his head he began to dance around

And that got me thinking....

If the hat is magic --
if the hat is the source of Frosty's liveliness, personality, and mobility...
Dude, you could pretty much put the hat on anything vaguely person-shaped, and it would work.  Right? You wouldn't need to wait till wintertime to build a snowman; you could use it year-round!

For Halloween, you could break out a plastic skeleton and put the hat on, and you and your new friend Scully could go trick-or-treating while your parents stay home and hand out candy!  Win-win!

Go back even earlier in the year and you could make a scarecrow -- although, on further consideration, thay might not be the best idea.  Historically, animated straw people don't usually turn out well: best case, you've got some guy trying to take your daughter off on a road trip to an unspecified destination with the intent of getting advice from a travelling snake-oil salesman.  Worst case, you've got something like Children of the Corn.  Not good.  Okay, skip the scarecrow.

But you see what I'm saying here, right?  Right?  Keep the hat out of the attic.  Use the hat.

***

By Way of an Explanation


Mentally torturing my husband is one of the things I live for in life - I try very hard to come up with something absurd enough to make his brain hurt, and he tries desperately hard not to laugh because It Would Only Encourage Me. I've warned him multiple times that that look he gets - the one that says, "I am a mature adult and I refuse to laugh at this silliness (no matter how much I'd like to)" - is just as rewarding for me as his actually laughing, but either he's refusing to Get It, or he's decided that his half of the game is to play the part of Mature Adult Refusing to Laugh.

Now that you know this, you pretty much know everything there is to know about my personality, sense of humor, and the best dynamics of our marriage. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a sad thing that I can sum all those things up so quickly and easily, but there they are.

The main point is, you have some idea of where my brain most likes to go, and why.

Ooh! Mardi Gras!

Zelda the Zombie
was a corpse without a soul
with a shambling gait
and a lust for brains
and one eye that's just a hole...

Happy holidays, everyone.  (Keep the hat.)

About my child

For reasons of personal and Internet security, my husband and I don't discuss our child online.  There's the whole pedophile thing, but there is also the simple fact that in her future, job applications and interviews will almost certainly come with a Google search in addition to today's criminal background check, drug screens, and such.  Even now people are losing their jobs over pictures posted online, Facebook pages showing a bit too much of your personality, and so forth.  So. If you pay attention, you'll eventually discover that we have a daughter, but we try not to use her name, and until today there have been absolutely NO pictures of her uploaded to the Internet.  No matter how awesome we think she is, we don't intend to put any videos on YouTube or anything like that.  That kind of thing needs to be under her control and with her consent.

Yes, I said "until today".

You see, our child loves to take pictures.  She is forever begging to use my phone, or her dad's, or our digital camera, to take pictures of anything and everything she finds interesting.  Some of her visions turn out to be black, or hopelessly blurry (or pink and blurry as when she did the extreme close-up study of her favorite stuffed animal).  A few of them, however, turn out really nicely.  I have a post coming up where nearly all the photos of me working on my mosaic were taken by her.

She also loves self-portraits.  Here, for the first time ever on the World Wide Web, is my Beloved Child:

 

When she was smaller, she wasn't coordinated enough to both aim the camera and push the button, such that a lot of pictures she meant to take of me, or her stuffed animals, or anything else, unintentionally became photos of her feet.  Eventually she got the hang of things, obviously, and in fact she recently figured out how to make funny faces and take pictures of herself at the same time.  But we told her about all the inadvertent shots she took of her toes, and she thought this was hilarious, so now she does it on purpose.

 

What? Did you really think after all that lead-in about respecting privacy and Internet safety, I was going to show you her face?

Pff.

Talk to the foot.

Memorials, monsoons, and Eminem

If there are any of you who came out to last Saturday's Mosey Down Main Street, and are maybe wondering if you walked past my booth without noticing it, never fear.  You'll be pleased to know that I was there for about an hour, during which time the temperature dropped from 87 degrees (heat index: 102) to 73, as the winds picked up, the rain started, and downtown proceeded to get absolutely drenched by a truly impressive thunderstorm.

Winds were reported gusting up to 70 mph, although I'm pretty sure I missed the worst of those; Beloved Husband and I were able to get everything taken down and thrown into the back of the van before the lightning front moved in.  We went to eat and I tried not to yelp too much as my hair dripped cold rain down the back of my neck.

Maybe I'm just a pansy, but there's something about being at an outdoor fair with tornado sirens going off that just – I dunno, just doesn't appeal to me.

***

On Sunday I was told I should consider a career in politics (blargh), because the world needed more honest, straight-talking people to hold office.  This was shortly after, and a direct result of, my standing at a podium and calling an entire roomful of people "lucky bastards".

At a funeral.

Earlier last week we got the news that Dan Lawrence had passed away suddenly.  Dan was an acquaintance of mine, and old friend of The Husband, so we would have attended the memorial anyway; Husband actually ended up being asked to officiate the service.

I don't know if you can ever describe a funeral as "good", but if you could then this service would have been a prime example: the building was packed with people whose lives Dan had touched over the years, a great many of whom opted to speak, impromptu, from the heart about the man they were going to miss.  There were tears, there was laughter, there were a great many references to programming, Rocky Horror, Dr. Who, and various sci-fi and gaming jokes.  This is what happens when nerds die; if you are a nerd, take comfort, and if not, well, you've been warned.)

Dan was described as someone who would do anything for a friend, no questions asked; he was regarded as a brother, mentor, uncle, and good-natured corrupter of college freshmen by probably hundreds of people for nearly three decades.   So the people who had the privilege of knowing Dan so well really are lucky bastards.

It made me wonder what kind of funeral service I'd leave behind when I'm gone, and ask myself when the last time was that I had, as I said at the service, "gotten my head out of my baggage and given so generously".  What would people say about me if I dropped dead tonight?  I'm afraid I'm not too excited about the possibilities just now.

My brain goes strange places sometimes, and it usually comes back with an opinion and the need to share it.  Let's face it, I'm a teacher and storyteller down to the bone, with a little performer thrown in. (Or maybe I'm just self-centered enough to think my opinion is worth sharing with the world, or maybe I'm so desperate for attention that I'm willing to inflict myself on a captive audience.  The jury's still out, depending on who you are and what you think of me in general.)

What I needed to share Sunday was that grief is not about our fear for the deceased's soul.  It is not about our belief that they no longer exist unless they've been "saved" by the religion of your choice. (Well, okay, I also needed to share my irritation at funeral services where the pastor uses the person's death as the basis for a sales pitch for their religion. Feh.)  Grief is about that person inside us that never outgrows the age of about five, the one that yells, "hey, no fair! I wasn't ready! You can't do that!"  I needed to tell an entire roomful of genius-level IQs, people who probably already knew this, that they don't need to feel selfish – and the definitely don't need to feel alone in their grief.

If there's a rule somewhere that says memorial services are required to include a sales pitch, I told the assembled crowd, then let it not be that you-yes-you-can-get-to-heaven-if-you-act-now-and-get-saved. Let it be that you, yes you, can be the kind of person Dan was, and that it isn't even that hard.

All you have to do is give.

***

It's possible that I told the room they were a bunch of lucky bastards because I've been listening to too much Eminem lately.  I mean if you're going to be thoroughly crass while also demonstrating tremendous emotional honesty, I guess he'd be a decent model to pattern yourself after, right?

I was online looking for footage of P!nk's performance of "Glitter In The Air" at this year's Grammy Awards; when I found it, it was immediately followed by a video for the single "Not Afraid", from Eminem's newest album, the yet-to-be-released Recovery.  Which, by the way, is pretty amazing; see above re: emotional honesty, presented in genius lyrics disguised by, well, by the kind of pottymouth I don't usually encounter in my comfy little world.

Well, because I do this, watching one cool video got me curious and I started looking for more of his stuff.  And more.  And more.  (If you recall my recent obsession with Robert Downey, Jr., this behavior might be starting to look familiar. Shush anyway.)

I learned that Eminem and I have exactly four things in common: we're white, we're left-handed, we were born in the same year, and we're raising girls (though I only have the one).  Trust me, we could not possibly be more different in every other aspect of our backgrounds.

But.

I also learned that he's had some collaborations that I wouldn't have thought of as likely – Dido, for one – and, for better or worse, this information sent my brain to its special place again.  This time I came back with the need to come up with the absolute least likely rap collaboration possible on this earth.

Because that is just the way I roll, yo.

The only rule is that this collaboration has to include Eminem.  I'd prefer that it be "Eminem feat. [Insert Artist Here]" because,  while  there are definitely some brain-achingly weird possibilities if you do it the other way around (for instance, "Willie Nelson featuring Eminem"), I think that makes it almost too easy.

Currently I'm not sure which would be more mind-boggling: a collaboration between Eminem and Loreena McKennitt, or an appearance on Sesame Street where he takes on Elmo in a freestyle battle.

I'm not sure how much responsibility I can really claim for the things my mind comes up with, when I'm usually as bewildered and entertained as the rest of you.

We won't discuss the rap I started putting together for no reason whatsoever while I was in the shower this afternoon, although I swear, for once I really wasn't operating in the Land of the Weird.  No, really, I swear – there was stuff in there about Martin Luther King and rising above, and a bunch of other things I'm trying not to remember for fear that I'll embarrass myself even more than I already have just by bringing it up.

We also won't discuss why I would get embarrassed over trying to create rap lyrics, but not over calling mourning friends and family members bastards at the memorial service.

How do you spell "gangsta", my homie?

When did I start writing movies??

I like stories.

I like to tell 'em, I like to listen to 'em – I just like stories.  I used to introduce myself, years ago, as having come from a long line of bullshitters and storytellers.  When I travel, when I choose work, it's important to me – it really, genuinely matters – that I be able to come away with stories to tell about where I've been and what I've done.  If I can't do that, then it almost feels as if the entire experience is wasted – there was nothing learned, nothing worth remembering, nothing worth sharing with people.

However.

When it comes to actual writing, or trying to create fiction, I have a major, major stumbling block:  I can't plot to save my life.

Silly stories, serious stories, if it's already happened I can tell you about it – but when it comes to building a tale from scratch, all I usually can manage are scenes: visual tidbits, snippets, but nothing you could put together and make a novel out of.  I usually have a hard time coming up with any sort of plot for anything longer than, say, one of my blog posts.

This appears to have changed.

An article over on Entertainment Weekly pretended to review the movie Sherlock Holmes, barely, and then jumped straight to a speculation on what it might be like to see Robert Downey, Jr. in a film with Johnny Depp.

My brain combined this with another recent movie review, this one more in-depth, over on the Redbox Blog, which funnily enough also mentioned Depp:

Like Johnny Depp, his fellow acting eccentric, Downey doesn’t let the fact he’s much more talented than the material give him pause or shame—instead, like Depp, he lets his quirks fuel memorable performances even in blockbuster popcorn fluff. Downey’s wild/warm eyes and self-amused smirk are still here, dancing him through familiar action-movie routines. The result is that both actors have created a new sort of Movie Star: the Magnetic Weirdo.

The author of the first article invited readers to come up with their own ideas for movies starring the pair; my brain made the jump from "magnetic" to "charismatic", added the word "leader", and I suddenly had the following:

• Imagine a comedy, starring Downey and Depp as a pair of cult leaders/commune heads/self-help gurus.
• They are squared off in a massive rivalry that amounts to a popularity contest, trying to outdo one another in ratings/book sales/followers/believers/the girl.  The characters cannot STAND each other, I'm guessing largely because they're too much alike but can't see it themselves.
• Hmm, the formula demands that at some point they be thrown together and forced to cooperate, let's see, against federal authorities/uptight fundamentalists/a third competitor in their market/an actually dangerous guy as compared to these two wannabes.  Or maybe they're on a "find yourself" kind of outing that goes wrong and leaves them stranded together.
• Hilarity ensues.

My brain is actually starting to percolate on this.  I mean, can you just imagine one of them as a sleazy "sincere" type offering to listen to all a lady's troubles while not-so-secretly checking out her ass?  And the other as a completely out-there airheaded flake who is utterly convinced of his own Deep Understanding and Cosmic Wisdom?

The beauty of it is, I'm not sure which actor would be better in which part.  I can see either Downey or Depp completely nailing either role.

Your thoughts?

The wisdom of home remedies

My friend Amy Prettybaby sent me this image, suggesting I change "cross stitch" to "embroidery".

I have no idea what she's talking about.

Testing

Maintenance post, sorry, nothing else to say... although if I had more time I suppose I could start something.

Still here, still ... here...

In case any readers were wondering if this blog was still updated - it is; I just have been have some problems with motivation lately, and haven't felt like I was doing anything to really crow about.

I've gotten some good henna fun in at the Farmer's Market, the downtown Mosey Down Main Street, and most recently at my kid's preschool/daycare, where I slapped some henna down on about 40-45 kids plus their teachers, while trying to provide about 30 seconds' worth of education. I've been able to make credit card payments for a change, which is making me happy. The data entry is so hard to keep myself motivated to do, even with the post-it note on my monitor telling me how much I still owe on the card.

Within the next week or two, I'm going to be creating a kind of brochure that I will keep available here on the blog for potential customers to look over - just check out the categories section, where it will be labeled as conspicuously as I can make it.

***

Completely unrelated to anything, I have a new imaginary friend. I say "imaginary friend" because it sounds so much nicer than "stalker-like obsession"... see, my imaginary friend looks and sounds JUST like Robert Downey, Jr., though I'm willing to bet that the imaginary version and the actual living breathing guy don't have all that much else in common.

Has anyone else noticed the trailer for the Sherlock Holmes movie, coming out Christmas Day, which just happens to star Downey in the lead role? Complete coincidence, I swear. Also, it's cruel to tease me with a movie I really want to see, that is more than six months away - which it was, when the trailer first came out. Big meanieheads, anyway.

***

I want to take a brief moment to put in a plug for Uniquely Yours pottery and glass studio, over on the east side of town. I'd been doing a lot of stuff over at All Fired Up before the shop changed ownership, and now I find that Uniquely Yours has the more nifty atmosphere; they have a few things you can do there that All Fired Up doesn't offer (so far as I know), plus a little kids area where you can chuck the little ones if they're not interested in painting with you. They'll even play DVDs for the kids if you bring something in.

Anyway, the kid and I have been in there now and checked it out, and I have a piece on display, which should surprise no one. I love to paint the stuff, my ego enjoys having it on display, and this way I don't have to bring it home into my already-cluttered house. Wins all around.

***

That's it for the time being; I have an appointment for later this evening to sling some more henna, and as long as the weather holds I'll be at the Farmer's Market tomorrow and every Wednesday. Hope to see you all there, especially my growing base of regular customers - you all make me happy every time I see you.

Cheers!

Gosh golly, I'm so tech-savvy...

I've noticed that I often want to update my blog even though I have very little to actually say (maybe I should become a politician...?) I've also noticed that the only way to keep Facebook from eating my life was to subscribe to a feed that just shows my friends' status updates. It's looking like short-and-sweet messages just work well for me.

So yeah, I went ahead and put up an account on Twitter, and yeah, it's linked to this blog, over there on your right. I'm wondering if the "tweets" will show as updates to the blog or not, 'cause if they do, you could be notified when I update. That assumes you don't have a Twitter account and don't want one, 'cause otherwise you could just follow me there.

***

Embroidery is progressing. Maybe when I unbury the scanner (currently there's a box of data entry work on it) I'll get some pictures in for y'all.

And, as the first tweet says, flower seeds have pretty colors on them. One packet is more expensive than one skein of thread, but you get lots more flowers once they sprout, and if you buy perennials, they're the gift that keeps on giving!

Speaking of flowers... Note to self: it was a mistake showing the kiddo how to blow the fluff off of dandelions last year. Our yard is now very, very well populated with pretty yellow flowers. Man, those things are fertile little buggers. Supposedly their roots produce a purple dye - this may be enough incentive to get me out there with a spade (but probably not).

Kid and I went to the local greenhouse for the first time today. She thought it was great, right up until the roof dripped on her nose and startled her. We now own a snapdragon start -- any flower that you can squeeze and make it go "roar" is automatically COOL -- along with the fennel I was looking for, and some delphinium seeds that I wasn't. Couldn't find the darn Maximillian sunflower seeds, though. This is getting frustrating.

It's a weakness, I admit

I like colors.

Seriously, I don't sew and I find myself wanting to purchase pretty fabric. I already have over thirty different colors of embroidery thread at home that I don't do very much with. When I was a more active scribe, I bought a whole bunch of powdered pigments, intending to make my own paints but mostly just enjoying the colors. I don't actually know how many boxes of crayons I own, but considering I'm almost done being 36, I'm pretty sure that even one box counts as "a lot"... and I know I have at least four.

We won't discuss the garden overhaul I'm working on, except to say I'm finally giving myself permission to dig up the previous owner's mostly white or (very pale) pink or (very pale) lavender garden, and almost all the replacements I'm looking at are going to be pretty intense.

This week in Mississippi, I attended dyeing classes for lack of anything better to do.

Oops.

I'm now considering plants for the garden based not just on what colors they are, but also on what colors they can make other things turn. Worse than that, I'm considering rounding up the neighborhood kids and teaching them to make colorful, semi-permanent messes too.

***

Did henna at Gulf Wars (Mississippi), first time in months, I don't seem to have lost much skill, and I really need to get my registration fee in to Parks and Recreation soon if I want to be included in their advertising for the Farmer's Market. I donated the leftover henna to the dyeing workshops, and played with some string samples with it also.

***

Also attended an embroidery class focusing on the "Bayeux stitch", as in, the main stitch used throughout the Bayeux tapestry. It goes fast - really, really fast. My stylized griffin from the tapestry margins is almost done, and I know have a pile of yarn in the three colors I needed for it.

***

On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know whether it's possible to get a permit to grow hemp? Yes, that plant, aka cannabis, aka marijuana. I could care less about the drug; that part concentrates in the leaf tips as far as I can recall. I want the stalks, for fiber - string, cloth, or paper, hemp has been used to make 'em for thousands of years. They're also a way more sustainable and renewable crop than trees (six times the paper-usable fiber per acre compared to trees), and I'm pretty sure they're better than cotton as well, though I can't find the stats on that just now.

I'm going to stay out of the "legalize marijuana" debate for now, but I would like to see the plant itself made legal to grow. Just as there are different varieties of grapes, or corn, or roses, there are different varieties of the cannabis plant - you can divide them into three loose categories, only one of which is intended as a drug crop. The other two main types are much lower in the drug content, and are cultivated for their fiber, or for the oil you can get out of their seeds. According to some federal agency or other - DEA, maybe? - 95% of the plants they find and destroy belong in those other two categories. In other words, the DEA wastes a heck of a lot of time and resources on plants that would be false alarms, if it were legal to cultivate them.

You could issue permits, and bring people around to inspect your operation, and only worry about the crops that are being grown without a license or whatever. The way I see it, one guy with a clipboard and some test tubes would be a lot easier on a department's resources than a dozen guys with bulletproof vests and jugs of kerosene. Ya know?

I bring this up in the interests of going green... and also to see what colors I can dye the fibers.

Maybe it's that time of year...

I am cranky today.

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, tomorrow we finally, finally get rid of W the Incompetent, we start a new administration, there are all these parallels to historic civil rights and great changes and so forth... and I'm cranky.

Partly, I find myself just itching to write some kind of gigantic "I told you so" letter to the general public, referencing the last eight years; the man mismanaged, plowed under, and failed every single business venture he ever undertook, and only family money enabled him to have the chances to start over again. We knew this, and yet, voters hired him anyway? And yes, I know, it's more complicated than that.... but we have a whole generation of aging hippies who could have pushed a lot harder on the vote recount and so on.

Partly I'm looking at the civil rights movement in general - very general, as in, my expertise lives somewhere around the level of "I can solve all the world's problems in twenty minutes". I'm seeing that MLK's original vision has been largely fulfilled... but the struggle for equality in this country is not magically vanishing tomorrow at noon. Racial inequality still exists, gender inequality still exists (can you say, women earn 70 cents for every dollar that men earn in equivalent jobs?), and do NOT get me started on the idiocy of the whole gay marriage "issue".

Hell, for that matter, slavery - actual, you-are-not-free slavery - exists in this country. Most people use the term "wage slave" to refer to a boring dead-end job; there are cases of (usually) migrant workers earning a paycheck and then being intimidated into handing it back over to their bosses; or earning a paycheck and then being expected to pay for most on-the-job expenses, such that they end up in debt (illegally) to their employers and having to work harder to try and dig themselves out of that hole. That is wage slavery, and it exists.

I am cranky, today.

My kid didn't do tantrums when she was two; at least, not for the most part. Now she's three, and distracting her with a cookie doesn't work. She has a huge head cold and is waking up in the night, only instead of wanting to cuddle, she's pissed that something has woken her up, and intends to inflict her bad mood on whoever goes in to try and comfort her - with full volume and, as of last night, orders and kicking: "you don't belong in my room I'm going to kick you get! out! of! my! room!" All said in a hoarse, stuffy-nosed, high-pitched, three-year-old girly girl voice, which could be comical except that she's not kidding around.

Gah. Usually I try to tell these stories with a little bit of humor, but I'm just plain cranky today. I have been invited to fill out little "interview" questionnaires by a couple of my friends now, just in the past couple of days; and I discovered myself getting more and more cynical with each harmless little question on the list. I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the preferred answer to "what's your favorite color?" is not "none of your damn business". But that seems to be where I'm at right now.

I'm not depressed and I don't need a hug; or rather, the things that usually depress me are just leaving me annoyed and... well... cranky. Life isn't any different this week than it has been; if anything, I'm on a slight upward curve, in that I'm making money, getting along with the Husband, got two pieces of happy mail this weekend, and I'm making progress on the embroidery thing.

I'm just - crabby. Pissy. Irritated. Annoyed. Bitchy.

You know... Cranky.

***

Happy mail: one was a check for data entry I did in December; the other was a callout announcement for the coming Farmer's Market season. Yay!

***

Every time I get in the mood to rant, I find myself trying very hard to hold back so as to at least pretend this blog is still a marketing tool for the henna. At some point I'm either going to have to give up and let loose, or build a second blog just for the rants and bitching. But not tonight. It's past my bedtime, and I'm still kinda cranky.

And another thing...

I know I don't have a huge pile of readers here, but have any of you had problems with the RSS feed for the blog lately? I tried to set it up through FeedBurner and I haven't been able to see it since.

Dammit.

Bits and pieces

Let's see.

First - I got no sleep last night, for no good reason (except maybe that I was mentally rewriting a novel I had just read to make the main character a little more realistic). So if any of the rest of this post sounds like, "Braiiinnnnnnss...", that's why.

Second - embroidery. I cut the fabric today, after shrinking it in hot water a day or so ago. Yes, this is slow. I'm a fan of huge projects that can be managed in teeeeeeeny tiny little chunks. Plus I haven't really given myself time to do anything else with it, because of:

Third - data entry. Braiiinnnnnnss... Actually, it's going pretty well. As long as I remember to keep the radio tuned to something cool, I can get into a groove and just do the thing. Also, technically I'm an independent contractor, not an employee, so I get to add my hours to a little invoice at the end of each day, and see how much money I've earned so far. That helps more than you'd think.

Fourth - Remember my calligraphy thing that I did back in December? My commission for it was a barter for a new pair of medieval-style shoes. They arrived yesterday; they fit great, and the black looks sharp. I am stylin' now, baby. Before too much longer, I'll actually resemble the drawing I made for the embroidery project. No, I still haven't scanned it.

Fifth - nah, there's nothing else. I just wanted another excuse to say "Braiinnnnnss..."

An experiment in living off-line

I have an Internet problem. I like to say I can quit anytime I want, just like the characters in all those After-School Specials I watched as a kid; just like them, I can't actually. But at least I'm big enough to admit it, which in the specials usually only happened in like the last fifteen minutes of the show, right before the scene where they screw up their courage and Get Help, the commercial break, and then the scene where they're either All Better or starting to Get There.

My life doesn't have commercials. It would help if I had commercials, 'cause then I might know where I was at in the plot.

Anyway.

I've decided to try and download a desktop blogging thing, so I can write posts without going online, and only publish them in the evenings, and otherwise, stay the hell off the Internet in the hopes of becoming a productive member of society. If it helps, think of it as me getting a New Year's resolution underway now, so I can drop it on January 2 and feel guilty, just like the rest of you out there.

Oh YouTube, I'll miss you most of all. Hm. No... oh RSS feeds, I'll miss you most of all. Or maybe -- oh Wikipedia... or Dogpile...

How am I ever going to survive??

Feel free to drop me a comment or email in support or commiseration. I'll at least get moral support in the evenings, when I allow myself to go online again.

(I won't miss Facebook too much, I think...)