I’m in an odd sort of mood. It happens, I know. Random wisps of nostalgia floating around in my head, spawned by a trip home to attend a once-fond childhood tradition, combined with the continuing emotional fall out of the last year and change really couldn’t result in anything else. In the interest of fair warning, I’m likely to wax a little poetic, or even melodramatic, in the following. Eh. My muse is fickle, and I’m loathe to defy her moods lest she abandon me altogether. *smile*

It’s always sort of surprised me how many of my friends from growing up fell in love with and married their high school sweethearts. Not in a bad way, really.. more in .. well, it’s sort of a little awe-inspiring. To know so young, and to love so strong. To openly embrace the growth and change in each other, and encourage it, even as it changes the material foundations of your world. That level of certainty.. of commitment to another soul.. there is magic in our midst.

Family, both biological and chosen, and the connectedness of people, the importance of those ties, even when we don’t renew them.. maybe especially when we don’t.. there’s something.. *there* that I’m not able to articulate. Nostalgia and remembrance.. *shrug*

I was reminded, in my mind’s meanderings as I wended my way south on Highway 52 this afternoon, of Ambrosia. The .. urgency of my quest for freedom, and for identity, has waxed and waned in the 10 or so years since I wrote it. Despite the apparent prophecy in the line “I want to form my life again and again from the raw clay of my soul”, I’ve lost and found myself – not the same myself, to be sure, but still, at the essence, me – more times in the last decade than I expected. More deeply, or completely.

And yet, the weaving continues, telling stories – my stories, our stories – in myriad colors and textures, flowing like water – sometimes placid and smooth and sometimes churned to a great tumult. Like fine silk, the threads of connection seem so terribly fragile, so easily snapped and severed. And yet, in truth, they are so very resilient. Our humanity, the simple coincidence of having known each other once, then, is enough, sometimes, to bring the color and vibrancy of a faded strand to light. I’ve let too much of the tapestry of my life fade, neglected and untended, and while doing so is alternatively so simple as breathing and so terrifying as leaping from a great height, it’s past time to begin the mending.

It is, however, a line from something else I wrote – or rather, something I spat at a friend (then and again) in (admittedly somewhat eloquent) anger and frustration – that still haunts me. I’ve turned it into a challenge of sorts, a hurdle over the black abyss of a moat surrounding my deepest self, a moat that despite my best attempts to bridge seems some days unfathomable. It’s a test, administered in jest, or at least seeming so. I don’t know what will happen when someone answers it in truth. I don’t really even know what that answer is, or will be, or whether there is one. It’s somewhat of a romantic, fairy tale notion, but one rooted in an all too real need. I know it should be unnecessary, that I should be more trusting, more self-reliant; that it’s a shield behind which I hide, a crutch upon which I lean instead of learning to strengthen myself to stand without it. But I also know that, as the soul of my soul once said, healing is a spiral and sometimes we have to move a little backwards before we’re able to move forward again.

I have at least three nascent spiral posts started, and at least one of those actually finished, but keep losing the ability to be coherent about the topics in them before I get them to the point I would be comfortable posting them in what is, ultimately, a public (though hardly widely read) medium. I suspect that a lot of that feeling is getting to a point, inevitably, at some point in all of them when I realize that I’m just one voice, and not an especially expert or authoritative one at that, and that the inner workings of my head, how I navigate the world in which I live, how I rationalize and justify the myriad decisions and inconsistencies and hypocrisies, is ultimately meaningless. Useful to me as introspection, at least to a point, but likely of little interest or benefit to anyone else. My spirals are rarely about activism or consciousness-raising in the way many would define those ideas, so perhaps rather than struggle to expose my own navel-gazing, I should either hush up or go back to posting about the minutiae of life.. the things I create or grow, which are are arguably more interesting to whatever “audience” I may have in this forum. *shrug*

That said, likely because I do, I think, spend a fair amount of time (or have in the last year or so) in self-reflection, it nonetheless surprises me when other people .. don’t. I’m willing to believe that I live within the confines of my head more than I should – it’s comfortable and warm and there’s no one there to ridicule or judge or misunderstand – but it still baffles me to some extent to realize just how many people simply go through their days, their lives without ever turning the focus of their curiosity inward. The unexamined life and all that.. which leads further into the knowledge that the freedom to examine my own life, to wander the halls of my mind more or less at will, is a privilege afforded me by virtue of the fact that I’m fairly secure, socially and financially. The ennui born of living a comfortable, safe life.

None of which was what I thought I would end up writing about when I opened this post this morning. I expected instead to prattle on about recent acquisitions to my music collection (this morning’s being Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and Prince’s The Hits/The B-sides 3.. *shrug*) or fretting about the tomato plant that overbalanced its cage and my neglect in righting it sooner or about the old school sci fi kick I seem to have been on lately (Orson Scott Card and Heinlein have been living in my head – and on my iPod – a lot this month*). Ah well. C’est la vie.

* Because that actually may be of some interest, I listened to Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow in rapid succession, and am currently listening to The Speaker for the Dead. I’ve never read anything by Orson Scott Card before and have enjoyed both his writing style and the worlds he creates, though they are very definitely of a style I tend to identify as “classic sci fi” as opposed to some of the newer sci fi I’ve read (or more accurately, listened to). It’s a style I like – a reasonable balance of grit and social commentary that is both easy to relate to and at the same time removed enough not to be in your face should you choose not to give it attention. I queued up Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which I apparently originally purchased some three years ago.. fortunately, Audible remembered that so I just had to download it to my current computer instead of purchasing it again) and Starship Troopers after a conversation I had earlier this week brought them up. I’ve read both of them before, but not for some time. Moon is, as should be no real surprise, one of my favorites of his, though in general Heinlein’s endings tend to annoy me – not because they’re necessarily bad stylistically, but because I tend to feel they’re less true endings than they are simply points at which he decided to stop writing. I’m also increasingly thinking I need to re-read or at least purchase and listen to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy again as it’s come up in conversations with friends at least three times in recent weeks. Not sure I’d want to listen to those, though, and it seems that I’ve had little patience for actually reading lately, which is odd and somewhat troublesome, but not enough for me to angst about overmuch.

From Shakesville last week, “Lessons from the rape culture” (emphasis is mine):

It’s only a kiss. Don’t make drama over it; he’s not hurting you. Besides, you like kissing, right? And it’s not like you’ve got a boyfriend, so you can kiss whomever you want. What’s the big deal? “See? Good kisses.” He says it as if he’s showed me something. As if telling me to like it will make it so. I don’t remember his name. We only met that night. I extracted myself from his presence as quickly as was polite and never spoke to him again.

From LiveJournal, cereta posts “On rape and men (Oh yes, I’m going there)” (via) (emphasis in original):

Because men raping women is systemic, and cultural, and yes it is the patriarchy and it is misogyny and it is men thinking they are entitled to women’s bodies. “Well, what did she expect, getting drunk like that?” isn’t salt in the wound, it is the foundation of the problem. The idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she’s an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him, IS THE PROBLEM.

From Sociological Images, “Do You Love Animals? Do You Have Lady Bits? Take Off Your Clothes!“

I know, PETA is low hanging fruit, but the pictures so nicely illustrate the difference between the roles that men and women are supposed to play and what about a woman is supposedly important.

From the Rochester Post-Bulletin, “Man given jail, probation for sexual assault“.

A Rochester man has been ordered to serve 90 days in jail and be on probation for 30 years for sexually assaulting a teenage girl

Edited to add one more.. from the Houston County News, “Hokah man charged in sexual assault” (emphasis mine):

A 21-year-old Hokah man is accused of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman while she slept.

Ryan Blexrud entered the woman’s Onalaska, Wis., bedroom early June 30 after a stream of harassing telephone calls, according to the complaint filed July 15 in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

…

Blexrud was charged with second-degree sexual assault and returns to court July 29 for a preliminary hearing.

He is free on a $5,000 signature bond.

From Flowing Data:

“The lesson here isn’t about global warming. It’s that you shouldn’t take data lightly. When you’re dealing with data, you have to look past the numbers.”

I feel like this has been my mantra since I started my current job (November 2004), which it seems surprises more people than it should. From my blog, written in September 2005 (emphasis added):

“As I sit and ponder this confluence of things fibery, specifically knitting, though I imagine the same would hold for weaving as well, and number crunching, there’s a certain .. something that connects the two. I’ll try to explain, at least how it works in my head, but it might get tangled. Essentially, when I look at data, I’m trying to draw out the pattern, or the story, the data tells. Another way of thinking of this is trying to create the picture of what’s happening by finding the strands and threads that weave the whole together. A single data item, like a single strand of fiber, may be beautiful, but is rarely complex. Only by combining it with others and teasing out the patterns does the larger picture, in all its glory, become clear. Sometimes, like when working a delicate lace motif in a fuzzy mohair, the pattern stays diffuse and difficult to perceive until you set it off against some contrasting background. Sometimes, like when working cables in 100% cotton, you have to exert a fair amount of effort and a not-insignificant amount of force to bring the pattern out, but once it’s there, you can’t miss it. And sometimes, like when working with hand-dyed variegated yarn, you start out expecting a certain pattern only to find a completely different one emerging as you go. Of course, there are also the times, like when working with a luscious and soft wool in stockinette, when the pattern comes out exactly as you expected without an undue amount of effort. So, when I think about it that way, it makes a certain sense that data geeks are also commonly fiber geeks. It is, after all, sometimes easier to just follow the pattern than it is to find it.”

It’s nice to have some external validation of this approach, especially lately. My life has been consumed by work this summer.. sorry for the radio silence, but sometimes that’s just how things go. Major data systems conversions will do that to you (but I can now add the development and delivery of a two day training workshop on PeopleSoft Query to my resume). *shrug*

My garden is growing; I ate my first peas yesterday (yes, they’re very late) and have several squash and cukes and tomatoes and even a  pepper, and more onions than I’ll know what to do with (not really) happily ripening. I think the watermelon vine has bit the proverbial dust, however, and the birds are eating all the strawberries and not leaving any for me, but for now I can deal with that.

I’m also knitting some, but you’ll have to wait until I replace my camera to get updated pictures, which will have to wait until someone more knowledgeable about cameras can accompany me to a store to check some out. I finished the back of Celtic Icon, though, and the right front. So that just means the right front, the two sides, the two sleeves, and the hood and seaming.. *sigh* Baby steps for now. (Though I’d love to have this one done by fall.)

I’ve also been reading and listening to books (always am really). I’m about an hour and a half from finishing listening to the third book in Karl Schroeder’s Virga series, which has been amazing, though I have to admit I’d expected him to follow different characters for the second and third books than he did.

Just as I was starting to wonder if my asparagus experiment was going to be a complete and utter failure, on my way to the garage this morning, I noticed some very encouraging signs of life!

(As usual, clickable thumbnails.)

The stalks are teeny tiny – really more slender than the grass in my lawn – but they’re definitely asparagus. Next spring I should be able to do a light harvest of some young stalks, and the following year I’ll be able to do a full harvest. Mmmm.. I *love* asparagus, so the idea of being able to walk out in the morning and harvest some fresh to pan sear with a little butter and some scrambled eggs for breakfast is simply divine.

The strawberries have been showing more regular signs that they’re getting well established as well:

I am not sure if I should expect to actually get fruit from the strawberries this year – they’re an everbearing variety, so it’s definitely possible – but even if not, the prospect of a nice full bed of beautiful red fruit next summer is rather exciting.

Late last week I finally managed to get all the seeds in the raised beds – cukes, radishes (yes, I know, terribly late), snap peas, summer and winter squash, and lettuce. I have one bed still empty for tomatoes and peppers (which should arrive later this week), and room still in the other beds to do another sowing of lettuce, radishes and peas, so here’s hoping I planned better this year and don’t end up with the jungle of tomato doom that overshadowed everything else I planted two years ago.

Unfortunately, I also have one quarter of one of the beds that’s been overrun by grass; I dug out as much as I could, and have covered the area up with big rhubarb leaves in hopes of starving it of light, but the roots are so embedded in the soil that I think I may just have to resign myself to Round Up at the end of the season to kill it all off.

I also, for the first time since I moved into the house, harvested some of the monstrous rhubarb that grows in the side patio bed. I brought 8 or 10 stalks to my sister’s yesterday since my brother-in-law is a rather avid cook and I figured he could find something fun and tasty to make with it. I picked that much again tonight, cut it up and stuck most of it in the freezer. I’m planning to  make at least some rhubarb cordial*, but may also do a rhubarb cake or some such as well. I expect that I’ll be able to harvest quite a bit more over the next couple of weeks, but I’m pretty sure it freezes quite well and frozen fruits (though I’m pretty sure it’s not a fruit..?) are always good to have on hand.

I’m also thinking ahead a bit to later in the summer when the cukes start coming in and contemplating making dill pickles. I’ve never done it, but I *love* crunchy dill pickles and I will likely have more cukes than I’ll ever eat fresh, so I’m thinking this might just be the year to try it out. Hrm. Which pr’bly means I should plant some dill, too.

* Cut up rhubarb. Fill a quart jar with as much as will fit. Pour 1 c. or so of sugar over fruit. Fill jar with vodka or white rum. Shake daily until the sugar is fully dissolved. Let age until it tastes right or the fruit turns white. Strain out the liquid and bottle for a taste of early summer in the dead of winter. This general recipe – cut up fruit to fill a jar, 1 c. sugar, fill with vodka – will work with most fruits to make cordials and I’ve found it considerably easier than the recipes that require simple syrup.

This morning seems to be one for getting the word out a bit more on a couple of links to some very seriously nifty artists, one that is new to me and one by whom I own several pieces already but who has just launched a new web home for her work.

The new to me one is Gerard Ferrari (fair warning – some of the pieces may not be entirely safe for work), who is a ceramacist and found-object artist with a bit of an absurdist bent. Several of his pieces also strike me as having a particularly steampunk feel, but that may just be because steampunk seems to be all the rage with the kids these days. *shrug* I have to wonder if he reads Girl Genius – some of his pieces seem as though they’d be right at home with Agatha’s clanks and at least one teapot might be able to double as a death ray in a pinch!

The other is Ursula Vernon, who announced today that Red Wombat Studio is now live! Ursula mentioned that the new website is much easier to update, which makes me very happy as her digressions are always amusing and fun. Also with a distinctly absurdist bent, I’m particularly happy with the ability to take a sneak peak into her Sketchbook as well as the links to all her books for easy ordering. As I mentioned, I own several of her pieces already and fully expect that more will find their way into my collection over time as well.

Done!
(All are clickable thumbnails.)

Isn’t it beautiful?

I feel like I have a brand new back yard now.

Pergola on the left, extended deck on the right, strawberry and asparagus bed in front of the pergola.

This has to be the perfect place to spend a warm spring evening.

]]> http://prioritizingtheparanoias.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/love/feed/ 1 Teej Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket http://prioritizingtheparanoias.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/supporting-a-fondly-remembered-childhood-author/ http://prioritizingtheparanoias.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/supporting-a-fondly-remembered-childhood-author/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 23:06:47 +0000 Teej http://prioritizingtheparanoias.wordpress.com/?p=562 ]]>

I have very fond memories of the animated Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn – both of which I now own on DVD – and am saddened to learn that Mr. Beagle has fallen on hard financial times. It’s hard to make a living as an author, harder still, I’d imagine, in these tough financial times; if you, too, have fond memories of Mr. Beagle’s work, please take a moment to help him out. (I just ordered the unabridged MP3 audiobook of The Last Unicorn and can’t wait to listen to it!)

A PERSONAL REQUEST TO ALL MY FANS
by Peter S. Beagle

If you’ve ever read and enjoyed one of my books or stories, or seen and enjoyed one of the films that I scripted, I’d like to ask a favor of you. It’s simple, really — if at all possible, within the next month please do one of the following things.

1) Go to www.conlanpress.com and buy a subscription to my year-long 52/50 Project (more about which, below).

2) Go to www.conlanpress.com and buy any single book or DVD of my work, either for you or as a gift for a friend.

3) If you can’t make a purchase yourself, try and get someone else interested enough to take the leap.

As for why I’m asking, that’s even simpler: you will change my life.
If you make just one purchase, or convince someone else to do so the same…and if enough of the other readers who get THE RAVEN do likewise…if that happens, then the financial crisis I’ve been in since my mother died in 2006 will finally be over. If that happens, I’ll be able to pay back all the money I’ve had to borrow to survive. If that happens, the Last Unicorn audiobook and the special hardcover Two Hearts will come zooming out at last from Conlan Press, along with Writing Sarek and the hardcover editions of my two new novels, Summerlong and I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, and more. Better still, if that happens I’ll be able to buy the thinking and writing time I need to tell the rest of Sooz’s story — i.e., the full-novel Last Unicorn/Two Hearts sequel that I’m eager to bring to all of you (but which no publisher anywhere has so far been willing to pay me enough to live on while I’m doing the work).

Okay, Beagle. Deep breath. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Except, of course, being fairly shy about these things, it was.

There are lots of authors who are good at self-promotion. I am definitely not one of them. All I can do is work up my courage and ask, which I have now done: the rest is up to you.

To that end, I want to publicly thank the 53 people who have so far purchased subscriptions (58, total) to my 52/50 Project, in which I’m writing 52 original poems or song lyrics, one per week, for a whole year. The money from these subscriptions paid most of my rent last month, for which I am amazingly grateful.

copied from his newsletter, The Raven. Peter Beagle is an awesome, fabulous talent and it would be a Good Thing to throw a little support his way.

(Yes, yes, the deck is almost finished; pictures pr’bly tomorrow.)

I’m afraid I may have found a new cure for bad weather. It’s not one I’m likely to attempt regularly, though.

This morning dad and I awoke to overcast skies that quickly opened up into rain. Given that we were planning to start the deck construction this morning, we were a little concerned, but decided to run into town for breakfast and to run a few errands and see what things looked like when we got home. Some $300 later, the sun was breaking through and we were back on our way home to begin the framing for the deck. I’m trying not to think about how monetary “sacrifices” to the weather deities might work, but I am hoping the storm we’re getting now moves through before morning!

Even with a somewhat truncated working day, we did get the deck framed and the decking down:

View standing at the back door (As usual, all are clickable thumbnails.)
View standing under the pergola on the patio, with a bonus shot of the little black pig

Yesterday dad pressure washed the existing decking, so while the color shift from the old to the new is noticeable it’s not nearly as glaring as it would have been had he not taken the time and effort (thanks, dad!). He also built the railing between the house and the stairs and on the stairs, all while I was at work.

At the moment, the deck is quite lovely and even though it’s only 8×16, is rather large enough for my tastes. Here’s a shot with the deck furniture (a decent chunk of the “sacrifice” from this morning) we assembled this evening for some scale:

The table is 42″ and there are four rocker chairs, all of which fit comfortably on the new part of the deck. It may feel a little more enclosed tomorrow once the rest of the fence and the railing is in place, but even so it’s a grand little spot to sit and watch the birds. I can’t wait to be able to step out on a sunny morning with a cup of coffee and watch the neighborhood wake up!

It’s been an absolutely beautiful weekend here, after a dry but slightly chilly end of week; all of that was much appreciated, however, after the rain from last weekend prompted some jostling of plans. (We had been intending to pour the concrete footings for the deck extension last weekend, but the rain (which was much needed and therefore will be spared the full force of my wrath *smile*) delayed that.)

Note: I’m beat, so this post may be lacking in poetic phrasing and.. yeah, all that. While the tone may not convey it, I’m rather terribly excited and happy with everything we’ve accomplished! Since this one has lots of pictures, I’ll throw a jump in here for those using a feed reader.

Dad came down Tuesday morning to start digging for the footings, at which time he confirmed once again that  my back yard is made of Hate(tm). Dad sunk two approximately 10-inch diameter holes into solid clay, a feat for which I’m eternally grateful (both that it’s done and that I wasn’t the one doing the digging!). He also discovered that the people who installed the rather fort-like fence around half of the back yard were a little.. overzealous. The uprights are a full 12-feet and have some sort of cross bracing secured to the bottoms.. we ended up cutting the one by the new deck footing below the ground and burying it since we couldn’t get it out.

Wednesday we poured concrete and Thursday and Friday, dad began removing the pieces of fencing and other bits that weren’t in the new plans for the deck:

(As usual, all photos are clickable thumbnails; click them to load larger versions.)

For point of comparison, here’s a photo of the back patio from when I bought the house:

(Excuse what I think is a finger or thumb in the frame on that one.. ugh!)

In case it’s not immediately obvious, yes there was a six foot tall fence around two sides of the 8×8 “deck” out the back door. Dad removed the fencing from the frong (which is where we’ll be extending the deck – another 8×8 foot section) and dropped the fencing on the neighbors side so that it’s about hip-height when standing on the deck now.

While the deck is the  main event this week, it’s in danger of being upstaged by what I think is the most visibly impressive of the changes so far, especially compared to the photo above, (and the one that makes me sigh great big deep sighs of satisfaction and contentment). Behold the pergola:

With some help from a good friend Friday afternoon, we set up the pieces of the pergola that dad had pre-cut like Lincoln Logs in about 2 hours. It is, quite simply, gorgeous and a truly lovely addition to the patio. Even though it’s very open, it breaks up the sun throughout the day and makes what used to be an uninviting concrete slab a rather comfortable and beautiful gathering space. The photo below is the sky taken Friday evening from one of the Adirondack chairs on the patio; the last set of braces was not yet in place, but the pergola was functionally complete (and lovely).

Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, if a little chilly in the wind during the morning. It was a perfect day, however, to make lots of progress without it being too hot. We spent the morning and early afternoon moving the stairs on the deck to their new home:

And taking delivery of 7 cubic yards of pulverized black dirt:

.. which is destined to raise the level of soil in the raised garden beds. I’d spent the last couple of weeks clearing them of the deadfall from last year (during which they were rather terribly neglected), and the last part of this past week weeding and tilling them in preparation for the new soil:

I worked on cutting a new garden bed in the back yard, while dad finished the last bits of bracing on the pergola in the late afternoon. We rounded out the day with a trip to pick up the lumber for the deck, with hopes of finding some additional bits for the garden.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find most of the bits for the garden, so we ran around some again this morning and picked up bird seed for the feeders as well as a lovely geranium and some snap dragons for the front yard:

I think they go rather well with the phlox, vinca and daffodils that are already blooming and should add a nice splash of color throughout the summer.

Dad spent the afternoon tilling some sand into the new bed I cut in the back yard:

.. which is now all ready for the strawberries and asparagus to arrive (hopefully this week). I’m going to pause for a moment here to reiterate that the back yard is made of Hate(tm), so the tilling was quite a job. But knowing that there’s about 8-10 square feet less of the grass that eats things that I’ll have to mow made cutting the sod by hand worth it! Dad also tilled sand into the side bed by the patio:

.. where I plan to eventually plant wine grapes that will vine up over the pergola. For now, though, I have four hanging planters at the corners of the pergola that have moonflower planted in them as of tonight:

I found it somewhat fitting to cap the evening by watching the moon rise up through the pergola while sitting on the deck steps. *smile*