Listeme

Saturday, November 21st • 11:05AM

I like knots. One of my favorite things to do is to take a big knotted mess of thread and finger through it with patience and gentleness until the two ends are freed and the tangle is no more. Obviously this is not a hobby one can "pursue". But it is a thing I love.

I've been on a making binge lately. We lost Curie, and we need to fill the hole in our lives. We tore down wallpaper. We rearranged. We painted. And I pulled out some old crocheting projects from long ago, and I finished a couple of them. Crocheting is the opposite of knot-untangling. You take the two ends, you plan them into a big knot, and then you make the planned knot. There is nothing extraneous in a crocheted fabric. You can't just leave some of it undone in the middle. It's all necessary, once you know the beginning and the end, because it is an unbroken strand.

This is my constant goal for my fiction, to be a planned knot. Pull a loose strand, and you will see all the bits are connected, vital. Planned.

P.S. I feel like admitting that I crochet is like confessing something vaguely shameful. Weird. Maybe it feels like it's homemaker-ish? Well, I love to crochet. So there.

1 comment(s) | Leave one

Breathing Tuesday, November 3rd • 2:35PM

We're a bit under the weather and construction around here. A lot of changes, good, bad, important, and pointless, and debris to collect.

Leave one

So far this autumn Saturday, October 3rd • 8:20PM

1. My son has written his first novel. (Actually he wrote one in first grade, but it was short and it claimed that dinosaurs eat dirt.) I read a lot of it as it was being written, and I now have the whole thing to read and comment upon. He's been a faithful critiquer of mine; time for me to return the favor! He wrote it blazingly fast, the jerk.

2. We are getting some loose ends tied up in terms of putting our lives on the tracks we have chosen. I'm very encouraged.

3. The bikes have not been used enough, either for our health or the environment. That needs to improve.

4. I got a hole in my head fixed, and they tell me I need a "crown". They recommend porcelain or gold. Wouldn't it be cool to have a gold tooth? I would feel like a felon or something. A pirate.

5. The doc told me I had a very bad vitamin D deficiency. Since fixing that, I have felt surprisingly better. It's not fixed completely, but at least the level is measurable now. I am wondering if it is also helping my seasonal lows. They have not hit nearly as hard as usual so far.

6. I'm more convinced than ever that taking the high road is worth it.

Leave one

There's cotton in books, right? Tuesday, September 22nd • 8:48PM

Our second anniversary just happened to coincide with Margaret Atwood's newest book coming out, so... what else could we do? Date night at the bookstore. They even have slushy drinks with straws, which was good for the one of us who can't chew yet.

While we were there buying the books we intended (Dawkins also came out with a new book!), I accidentally bought Blood and Politics, which is a history of the white nationalist movement. And Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. And a book of spec-fic stories that feature evolution.

It was a terrible, wonderful splurge, and still cheaper than a "dinner".

Who am I justifying this to? The budget gods? I love the fact that we celebrate a year of living and loving and reading and writing by surrounding ourselves with books. There is not enough time in LIFE to read all that I want to read. I need to live a very long time.

We should start scanning freecycle for more bookshelves, though.

3 comment(s) | Leave one

Horizontality 2 Sunday, September 13th • 6:54PM

When last we left our stalwart defender of liberty, she was ignoring the plaque on millions of Californians' teeth and jetting around the world filing writs and things in states that she, well, doesn't have license to practice law in.

My mom used to play chess against my dad and do absolutely ridiculous things that would cause him to freeze in amusement and analysis. "Perhaps it is brilliance," he might have mused. And he would try to figure out what her plays meant. Well, her plays meant she was just doing random crap, that's what they meant, and the legal profession would be wise to learn this lesson from my parents and stop just staring in dazed fascination at this bleached crazy person from the west.

She has a known disbarred felon assisting her now. Her latest evidence was presented by a person convicted multiple times of forgery. Forgery! Really! "Evidence", I mean.

How does this tie into my life? Well, yesterday she was marching (or standing, maybe) against that usurpering guy in the White House, and so were Greg and Tina, and therefore I am only 2 degrees of separation from her and that is too freaking close for comfort. Greg and Tina, I hasten to add, were protesting his policies and thereby being a good example for the children by taking part in the political process. As far as I know, they did not meet her, but I plan to ask them, because that would be as cool as meeting Godzilla.

Actually, I'm not sure of the rules of the degrees of separation game. That's two degrees, right?

3 comment(s) | Leave one

optimism? Tuesday, September 1st • 8:54PM

Our nerdy Tuesday nights of pizza and Battlestar Galactica (no, I'm not joking) have changed to Fridays for this semester. The local writing group has just changed to Thursdays.

Do you know what this means? This means we might actually have a club night! The problem, of course, is that club is that big corporation influenced dictionary instead of the all-inclusive one world order dictionary that we rebels and socialists prefer. So we'll have to decide which principles to trash, but still.

Break out the tiles, baby!

2 comment(s) | Leave one

What we did this summer vacation Monday, August 31st • 8:46PM

Em and I got this brilliant idea to surprise everyone and show up at Dunn's. Heaven only knows what plans we interfered with by doing so, but so far no one has mentioned anything.

We teehee-ed a bit and kept checking in with various family while we drove, pretending to be at home. We had calculated it just right to arrive at sunset, but I didn't quite calculate the gas gauge and so we ended up stranded on the off ramp in New Hampshire.

That turned out fine.

We got to Dunn's at a little after 9, where we found that Glo had barricaded herself in her cabin with kids and wasn't letting anyone in. When we knocked, she asked who we were VERY suspiciously. Then she did a happy dance when she saw us. And she let us in.

Now, you have to understand that our family is crazy. We are cranky and creative and curmudgeonly. Every one of us looks FORWARD to being the one who sits in the lawn chair hurling soda cans at neighborhood kids and hollering "get offa my lawn!" This is partly because we think it will be hilarious to do this. It's mostly because we are crabs.

So every year we put ourselves through getting our surly children and understanding spouses all the way to camp. We do happy dinners and take a lot of pictures, for about 3 days. The cabins are rented for 14 days.

Then someone melts down (an adult, that is; the children melt down before the minivans arrive). Proclamations are made about how we are doing it DIFFERENTLY next year, and we're not going to REPEAT THAT FIASCO WITH THE DONUTS AGAIN. Etc. (One year it was tomatoes.)

When week two begins, everyone is mellower. The first crop of sunburns is healed. People have done the Things You Do At Camp. Usually someone has gone out for school clothes. The farm stand is on its fourth or fifth iteration. People are clumped instead of rioting.

That's when I arrived this year. People were already mostly finished with the silliness, just in time for me to arrive and make my OWN proclamations. I was a little limited, because I'd surprised people and had to basically sleep where they ordered me to sleep. This made it tougher for me to slam "home" to my own cabin.

All the siblings were there for several of the days, which was the first time in … 7 years? Something like that. We piled all of us for one brief completely insane moment into my mom's cabin. Five siblings. Four spouses. Our friends and their daughter (who is also a friend). Another friend and her daughter. Ten of the grandkids. A cacophony of cousins!
It was amazing.

4 comment(s) | Leave one

Not compliments Monday, August 24th • 4:25PM

The lady cutting my hair today (I don't know her name, because I don't go to the kind of place where you have one particular hair "stylist"; it's more like a lottery and they call your number and you are happy that they don't cut off an ear) said: "you have baby hair." This SOUNDS nice and kind, but it is not. It is usually said in a horrified tone. Think of babies. Think of their hair. That is the kind I have.

The phlebotomists love me, though. "Oh, you have WONDERFUL veins," they say, like they have been waiting for months to take the blood from one like me, and apparently they have. I have actually had one call another over to see.

Even though they do mean this as a compliment, I'm not taking it as one, because what it means is I'm easy to steal blood from, and that can't be a good thing.

3 comment(s) | Leave one

The House With Two Writers, Chapter 119 Thursday, August 20th • 12:10PM

J: i started dune. the pov stuff is interesting to track.
J: the book seems to lie at a certain point on a historio-literary axis, between the 'old days' of omniscient-pov, and the nouveau age of limited or close 3rd-person pov. he does it very very well, and it's quite appealing. Just a bit unusual to a "modern" ear
Marsh: i really enjoy it
Marsh: it's a fast adjustment
J: yeah
J: WAY more as-u-know-bob than heinlein. but than, which of us is not?
Marsh: i'm not
J: i know YOU'RE not
Marsh: i always err on the side of leaving out every important detail instead
J: my only question is: 'balance it out' doesn't quite connote causal
Marsh: "wtf, her main character is a staple gun??"
J: "is this a space opera-mystery-romance? or a COOKBOOK?"
Marsh: i'm cutting and pasting this into listeme, minus frivolous smooches
J: don't you dare excise my frivol

1 comment(s) | Leave one

What is your responsibility? Monday, August 17th • 12:51PM

Let's say you and your best friend live next door to each other in houses that used to belong to each of your parents. You go way back. Your kids are best friends. Your parents were best friends.

There is a piece of land behind the house that you have shared for decades. At one point, you, over beers, both declared that it was best friend land! The children played kickball on it. You had picnics.

You have recently discovered in your grandpa's papers that the land is actually completely yours, as you had long suspected. There is no doubt of this. The property is clearly marked, the deeds are completely unambiguous. You showed these to your best friend, while you were watching Independence Day over some more beers.

Suddenly your friend is insisting that the land be dug up to build an organic farm. His organic farm, which he has always wanted, he says, for a business that he has always intended to have. You had been recently musing that selling that bit of land would really help you and your wife with some unexpected medical bills. Your friend says, no, no, I don't plan to buy it. It's best friend land. He, however, when pressed, says that he does not intend to share any vegetable profits with you.

The next day, you look out and see your friend in a rented tractor, preparing to pull down trees and mark out fields.

It's your land. What is your responsibility here to your friend? To your family? To the ancestors?

Disclaimer: I own no land. I have no plans to build a farm on someone else's land.

6 comment(s) | Leave one

10 earlier

	Saturday, November 21st • 11:05AM

I like knots. One of my favorite things to do is to take a big knotted mess of thread and finger through it with patience and gentleness until the two ends are freed and the tangle is no more. Obviously this is not a hobby one can "pursue". But it is a thing I love. I've been on a making binge lately. We lost Curie, and we need to fill the hole in our lives. We tore down wallpaper. We rearranged. We painted. And I pulled out some old crocheting projects from long ago, and I finished a couple of them. Crocheting is the opposite of knot-untangling. You take the two ends, you plan them into a big knot, and then you make the planned knot. There is nothing extraneous in a crocheted fabric. You can't just leave some of it undone in the middle. It's all necessary, once you know the beginning and the end, because it is an unbroken strand. This is my constant goal for my fiction, to be a planned knot. Pull a loose strand, and you will see all the bits are connected, vital. Planned. P.S. I feel like admitting that I crochet is like confessing something vaguely shameful. Weird. Maybe it feels like it's homemaker-ish? Well, I love to crochet. So there.
1 comment(s) \| Leave one

Breathing	Tuesday, November 3rd • 2:35PM

We're a bit under the weather and construction around here. A lot of changes, good, bad, important, and pointless, and debris to collect.
Leave one

So far this autumn	Saturday, October 3rd • 8:20PM

1. My son has written his first novel. (Actually he wrote one in first grade, but it was short and it claimed that dinosaurs eat dirt.) I read a lot of it as it was being written, and I now have the whole thing to read and comment upon. He's been a faithful critiquer of mine; time for me to return the favor! He wrote it blazingly fast, the jerk. 2. We are getting some loose ends tied up in terms of putting our lives on the tracks we have chosen. I'm very encouraged. 3. The bikes have not been used enough, either for our health or the environment. That needs to improve. 4. I got a hole in my head fixed, and they tell me I need a "crown". They recommend porcelain or gold. Wouldn't it be cool to have a gold tooth? I would feel like a felon or something. A pirate. 5. The doc told me I had a very bad vitamin D deficiency. Since fixing that, I have felt surprisingly better. It's not fixed completely, but at least the level is measurable now. I am wondering if it is also helping my seasonal lows. They have not hit nearly as hard as usual so far. 6. I'm more convinced than ever that taking the high road is worth it.
Leave one

There's cotton in books, right?	Tuesday, September 22nd • 8:48PM

Our second anniversary just happened to coincide with Margaret Atwood's newest book coming out, so... what else could we do? Date night at the bookstore. They even have slushy drinks with straws, which was good for the one of us who can't chew yet. While we were there buying the books we intended (Dawkins also came out with a new book!), I accidentally bought Blood and Politics, which is a history of the white nationalist movement. And Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. And a book of spec-fic stories that feature evolution. It was a terrible, wonderful splurge, and still cheaper than a "dinner". Who am I justifying this to? The budget gods? I love the fact that we celebrate a year of living and loving and reading and writing by surrounding ourselves with books. There is not enough time in LIFE to read all that I want to read. I need to live a very long time. We should start scanning freecycle for more bookshelves, though.
3 comment(s) \| Leave one

Horizontality 2	Sunday, September 13th • 6:54PM

When last we left our stalwart defender of liberty, she was ignoring the plaque on millions of Californians' teeth and jetting around the world filing writs and things in states that she, well, doesn't have license to practice law in. My mom used to play chess against my dad and do absolutely ridiculous things that would cause him to freeze in amusement and analysis. "Perhaps it is brilliance," he might have mused. And he would try to figure out what her plays meant. Well, her plays meant she was just doing random crap, that's what they meant, and the legal profession would be wise to learn this lesson from my parents and stop just staring in dazed fascination at this bleached crazy person from the west. She has a known disbarred felon assisting her now. Her latest evidence was presented by a person convicted multiple times of forgery. Forgery! Really! "Evidence", I mean. How does this tie into my life? Well, yesterday she was marching (or standing, maybe) against that usurpering guy in the White House, and so were Greg and Tina, and therefore I am only 2 degrees of separation from her and that is too freaking close for comfort. Greg and Tina, I hasten to add, were protesting his policies and thereby being a good example for the children by taking part in the political process. As far as I know, they did not meet her, but I plan to ask them, because that would be as cool as meeting Godzilla. Actually, I'm not sure of the rules of the degrees of separation game. That's two degrees, right?
3 comment(s) \| Leave one

optimism?	Tuesday, September 1st • 8:54PM

Our nerdy Tuesday nights of pizza and Battlestar Galactica (no, I'm not joking) have changed to Fridays for this semester. The local writing group has just changed to Thursdays. Do you know what this means? This means we might actually have a club night! The problem, of course, is that club is that big corporation influenced dictionary instead of the all-inclusive one world order dictionary that we rebels and socialists prefer. So we'll have to decide which principles to trash, but still. Break out the tiles, baby!
2 comment(s) \| Leave one

What we did this summer vacation	Monday, August 31st • 8:46PM

Em and I got this brilliant idea to surprise everyone and show up at Dunn's. Heaven only knows what plans we interfered with by doing so, but so far no one has mentioned anything. We teehee-ed a bit and kept checking in with various family while we drove, pretending to be at home. We had calculated it just right to arrive at sunset, but I didn't quite calculate the gas gauge and so we ended up stranded on the off ramp in New Hampshire. That turned out fine. We got to Dunn's at a little after 9, where we found that Glo had barricaded herself in her cabin with kids and wasn't letting anyone in. When we knocked, she asked who we were VERY suspiciously. Then she did a happy dance when she saw us. And she let us in. Now, you have to understand that our family is crazy. We are cranky and creative and curmudgeonly. Every one of us looks FORWARD to being the one who sits in the lawn chair hurling soda cans at neighborhood kids and hollering "get offa my lawn!" This is partly because we think it will be hilarious to do this. It's mostly because we are crabs. So every year we put ourselves through getting our surly children and understanding spouses all the way to camp. We do happy dinners and take a lot of pictures, for about 3 days. The cabins are rented for 14 days. Then someone melts down (an adult, that is; the children melt down before the minivans arrive). Proclamations are made about how we are doing it DIFFERENTLY next year, and we're not going to REPEAT THAT FIASCO WITH THE DONUTS AGAIN. Etc. (One year it was tomatoes.) When week two begins, everyone is mellower. The first crop of sunburns is healed. People have done the Things You Do At Camp. Usually someone has gone out for school clothes. The farm stand is on its fourth or fifth iteration. People are clumped instead of rioting. That's when I arrived this year. People were already mostly finished with the silliness, just in time for me to arrive and make my OWN proclamations. I was a little limited, because I'd surprised people and had to basically sleep where they ordered me to sleep. This made it tougher for me to slam "home" to my own cabin. All the siblings were there for several of the days, which was the first time in … 7 years? Something like that. We piled all of us for one brief completely insane moment into my mom's cabin. Five siblings. Four spouses. Our friends and their daughter (who is also a friend). Another friend and her daughter. Ten of the grandkids. A cacophony of cousins! It was amazing.
4 comment(s) \| Leave one

Not compliments	Monday, August 24th • 4:25PM

The lady cutting my hair today (I don't know her name, because I don't go to the kind of place where you have one particular hair "stylist"; it's more like a lottery and they call your number and you are happy that they don't cut off an ear) said: "you have baby hair." This SOUNDS nice and kind, but it is not. It is usually said in a horrified tone. Think of babies. Think of their hair. That is the kind I have. The phlebotomists love me, though. "Oh, you have WONDERFUL veins," they say, like they have been waiting for months to take the blood from one like me, and apparently they have. I have actually had one call another over to see. Even though they do mean this as a compliment, I'm not taking it as one, because what it means is I'm easy to steal blood from, and that can't be a good thing.
3 comment(s) \| Leave one

The House With Two Writers, Chapter 119	Thursday, August 20th • 12:10PM

J: i started dune. the pov stuff is interesting to track. J: the book seems to lie at a certain point on a historio-literary axis, between the 'old days' of omniscient-pov, and the nouveau age of limited or close 3rd-person pov. he does it very very well, and it's quite appealing. Just a bit unusual to a "modern" ear Marsh: i really enjoy it Marsh: it's a fast adjustment J: yeah J: WAY more as-u-know-bob than heinlein. but than, which of us is not? Marsh: i'm not J: i know YOU'RE not Marsh: i always err on the side of leaving out every important detail instead J: my only question is: 'balance it out' doesn't quite connote causal Marsh: "wtf, her main character is a staple gun??" J: "is this a space opera-mystery-romance? or a COOKBOOK?" Marsh: i'm cutting and pasting this into listeme, minus frivolous smooches J: don't you dare excise my frivol
1 comment(s) \| Leave one

What is your responsibility?	Monday, August 17th • 12:51PM

Let's say you and your best friend live next door to each other in houses that used to belong to each of your parents. You go way back. Your kids are best friends. Your parents were best friends. There is a piece of land behind the house that you have shared for decades. At one point, you, over beers, both declared that it was best friend land! The children played kickball on it. You had picnics. You have recently discovered in your grandpa's papers that the land is actually completely yours, as you had long suspected. There is no doubt of this. The property is clearly marked, the deeds are completely unambiguous. You showed these to your best friend, while you were watching Independence Day over some more beers. Suddenly your friend is insisting that the land be dug up to build an organic farm. His organic farm, which he has always wanted, he says, for a business that he has always intended to have. You had been recently musing that selling that bit of land would really help you and your wife with some unexpected medical bills. Your friend says, no, no, I don't plan to buy it. It's best friend land. He, however, when pressed, says that he does not intend to share any vegetable profits with you. The next day, you look out and see your friend in a rented tractor, preparing to pull down trees and mark out fields. It's your land. What is your responsibility here to your friend? To your family? To the ancestors? Disclaimer: I own no land. I have no plans to build a farm on someone else's land.
6 comment(s) \| Leave one

Beyond Memorization