Jen

"So did you see the news today?" I asked Maximo, as we were out and running errands.

He gave me a grim look, like, yes.

We talked about it, briefly, just like — this is what's happening, truly, and I said out loud the thing I have been thinking for a long time but haven't wanted to give voice to, because giving voice to it makes it somehow real:

"I'm glad I'm not working outside the house right now. I'm glad we're in [OUR COUNTY] and that it's rural enough and white enough that raids have been limited to specific employers. If we were elsewhere..."

"If we were elsewhere you'd want to carry your passport, and even that might not be enough."

"Yeah." A pause, then: "If we were elsewhere, we'd be getting grocery delivery and I wouldn't be leaving the house. I have my fucking Real ID, but —"

"Yeah, they've arrested people even with Real ID."

Just exchanged a bleak look, like.

Cool.

Whenever I mention anxiety to him, it is with the hope that he will tell me that what-I-fear will not come to pass. Being able to basically feelings-barf on him and go, "I know this probably isn't real, but..." helps a great deal.

I don't get that this time.


I have never been ashamed of not being white. The way that I was brought up, I was supposed to denounce that part of myself, to pretend that I was something other than what I was, because we only look like those people, we are not Those People, as though the ones that divide everyone into Us and Them on the basis of skin color care about whether or not you are, in fact, One Of The Good Ones.

I have never been ashamed. I have tried to reclaim heritage, to reclaim pride, to feel proud of who I am and where my family comes from, what ties we have to what parts of land. I learned Spanish despite my dad telling me I didn't have to; I have tried to research tribal affiliation and piece together where my family is from, because none of them will talk about it. Arizona, but what part. Montana, but what part. California, but what part. Mexico, but where and when?

I remember being told that my English was "very good, considering".

I remember well-meaning people asking if I was sure I wasn't "something else". Indigenous, Chicana, okay, but what if you're actually southern European? Are you sure your mom's family isn't from, oh, Italy? Spain?

I always said, no.


Up until recently, I also would have said that I wasn't afraid.

Now, I'm trying not to be.

Bad migraine Thursday. Like, "I am not a functional human being" most of the day lasting into Friday.

Friday at least was better? but yeah. Most of the weekend was off-and-on "pain and anxiety", because that's also one of the weird migraine symptoms. Somewhere in there my major joints also decided that since it's cold as hell (in the 20s, in town, which is unusual for us), they were going to seize up, so. You know.

The upshot of it is that I was running on too little sleep this weekend, including Holiday Monday, and so I slept eleven hours today.

Which. Okay.

I'm glad I had the ability to do it, I guess?


One of the things that was contributing to "blergh" mood (besides, you know, pain) was that everything I tried to cook this weekend turned out awfully, mostly for reasons that weren't my fault. Like — mmm. Last night I made a dish I have made many, many times. Everything went more or less smoothly, except when Max took his first bite he gagged and had to go spit it into the trash, because the frozen vegetable mix I use as a mix-in apparently had a moldy bell pepper stem in it.

...yup. Also found a bit in mine. Thank God neither of us is allergic to mold?

(It was the "pepper stir-fry mix" from WinCo, on the off-chance that anyone else lives somewhere with a WinCo and uses it. Never had that issue before; had unfortunately already thrown out the packaging and taken the trash out as part of making dinner, so, you know. I'm out $3.)

Aside from that: tried to make bread Sunday and it was awful (new bag of flour; must have more water than the last bag I bought from the same brand, because I followed the usual hydration ratio and it was too wet — just did not have a good structure and didn't end up with a good rise, was more like flat bread); overcooked the protein for Saturday's dinner...

The moldy pepper was the real low point and that was the point at which I ended up crying, ha. Too little sleep, fucking up the dinner that spouse had specifically ASKED FOR...yeah.

Anyway! I redeemed myself tonight.

When we went to wine tasting weekend before last, we were given shooters of "Hungarian Mushroom Soup" to accompany their pinot noir.

Both of us tried it and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Max in particular was like, "That's really good!", so.

I looked it up and laughed, because it was a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook!

I told Max I could make it, so. Picked up oyster mushrooms at the store. Had everything else on hand.

Made a new loaf of bread tonight, reducing the amount of water, and it was fine.

Cooked the soup. Omitted the sour cream and the salt (I was using salted butter for the onion step, and like — tamari is pretty salty on its on, too, didn't want to overdo it). The sour cream omission was something I'd seen recommended online to drop the richness of it. Cheated, and instead of making a roux (because I can ALWAYS TASTE THE FLOUR, ugh, I would rather eat wallpaper paste than something made with a traditional French roux — yes, I am weird, and yes, that includes bechamel sauce), I whisked about a tablespoon of corn starch into the milk and added that for the final step with the stock.

Yeah, it was a good dupe of the soup we had at the wine tasting, so. Heh.

It was excellent. The bread was also very good, I put together a green salad to go with it, and on the whole was like, right, yeah, I do know how to cook, so. A much-needed win, I have redeemed myself.

Tomorrow is going to be an attempt at this, I think, so.


Quiet day, otherwise. I started reading Blood on Her Tongue, because my hold came in at the library after having waited for...long enough that I forget when I'd placed it (July, according to the library app). It's...mm. I like parts of it? I suppose I'll post an in-depth review when I'm finished with it. Right now I'm about a third of the way through and it's...something.

Before Blood on Her Tongue was — some dumb memoir by a trauma surgeon from the Rockies that was probably not worth the hour it took to read (dude is massively burnt out and I hope he's since gotten to take a proper vacation, but that doesn't make for good reading). Before that, dumb romance novels. I still have a bunch of stuff on my TBR, but the migraines have been frequent of late, and it's very difficult to want to focus on anything when you're dealing with that level of pain. It's part of why I haven't been posting much, here — when it's like, "well, today was another day, and all that happened was I had a migraine and so slept most of the day and I'm still in pain", why bother? so.


Other stuff:

-I'm doing getyourwordsout and I'm on track to meet my goal for the year! Which feels very nice, ha.

-If you're at all interested in participating in the tropes-based remix event I'm co-running with shadaras, entries are due on the 24th! Details at seasonalremix! Right now it's, uh...just me, I think? so as excited as I am to remix my own story, if you've been thinking about it, now's the time. :D

-I wasn't planning on being an official DEI committee member this year (because I forgot the fucking deadline, whoops), but apparently the city recorder has Thoughts On That, because I got an email today telling me nicely that there were still vacancies and would I be willing to fill one? She asked Manda, too, at some event or another, if I was going to be signing up again, as "the city would find it valuable", so. I filled it out. I was planning to volunteer in an unofficial capacity anyway; this is just — yeah. I think it's mostly that I'm used to running meetings in a very different context and have no compunction about telling someone, like, "that's great, thank you, we are not doing that" and getting stuff back on track.

-After a conversation with Ed (therapist) I am thinking about career stuff in a sort of different light. More on that to come, maybe, when I am up for talking about it — his perspective on things was difficult mostly because, like — I pay my therapist to be the voice of reason, right (among, you know, other things), and so hearing him be like, "I am wondering why you haven't thought about doing [thing I have secretly thought about doing like every day for the last four years] for work?"

I laughed when he asked, then got flustered and was like, well, because — and couldn't come up with a good answer. So.

(It is very boring, fear not, I am just sort of — mm. Fragile enough about it at the moment that anyone going, "Oh, really, are you sure that's a good idea?" will probably make me cry. Ha. :P )

Talked to Max about it and he was like, "huh."

So.

God, that's a really cryptic way to end an entry — I promise, I am not going to run away to join the circus, suddenly start training to be an Olympic gymnast (HA), or anything else that is wildly unattainable. It is very boring and staid! It's just...not something I had let myself think about, for reasons that are difficult to get into. So.


Off to go write, again. It dawns on me that part 3 of this project (which is, to be fair, an unedited nightmare) is at 75k words long. Good lord.

TOO MANY FEELINGS (and nowhere to put them), so I've been participating in threesentenceficathon and writing fanfic for the first time in, oh, 20 years?

Fills (in no particular order):

Secret Garden, Dickon/Mary, "April is the cruelest month/breeding lilacs out of the dead land"

Star Trek, Any F/F, otherworldly

Narnia, any, assign a dnd class to a character

Sinners, Stack/Mary, survivors

Any, any, He died alone. The neighbors buried him.

The Darkangel, Aeriel/Erin, star (or planet) gazing

Narnia, any, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

Grey's Anatomy, George, his last thoughts before he died

Narnia, Susan arrives in the true Narnia

The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai/Estraven, nightfall

Alien/Aliens, Ellen Ripley, haunted by everyone she couldn't save

Silmarillion/LOTR, any, came back wrong

Knives Out & any fandom, any, can Benoit Blanc solve the case in this canon?

Any, any, Cowboy AU (I went with Macbeth)


Am genuinely sort of impressed with myself that most of 'em are only 3 sentences (however tortured those sentences are).

Will update as I fill more, probably. Have left exactly two (2) prompts, have fun finding them (if that's your thing), they're for Weird Shit.