applenym

A few weeks ago I bought very comfy sweatpants at a consignment shop, even though the floral detergent they had been washed in made my eyes water.

But they were so comfortable! So I thought, "I can get that scent out! A couple washes should do it. Maybe a soak in unscented OxiClean?"

Oh foolish past self!

Here is what I've tried (the fabric is 94% polyester / 6% spandex):

Washed a couple times with my usual unscented laundry detergent and added Lysol Laundry Sanitizer Free & Clear to the rinse cycle
Hung outside in the sun for a few days
OxiClean soak
Vinegar soak
Original Blue Dawn dish detergent soak (because they use it to clean wildlife affected by oil spills, right?)
Super washing soda soak
Sprayed with unscented Febreze and hung outside
Rubbing alcohol soak (I had a couple bottles lying around, so why not?)
Baking soda soak
Ammonia soak (ugh! worse than the perfume smell, but at least ammonia washes out)

I also searched Reddit for unconventional methods and tried:

Tween (polysorbate) soak
Synthrapol soak
A mixture of tween and soy lecithin soak

NOTHING WORKS. The scent is maybe slightly less eye-watering, but I still can't stand it.

One more suggestion I have yet to attempt: hand scrub with a bar of unscented soap. I'm at a loss if that doesn't work, but I can't stop now!

Current Mood: determined

In mid-August I returned from a long road trip (Minnesota to Seattle) and was seized by the urge to declutter my basement.

Every so often I feel the need to weed out my stuff, and in this fortunate moment the desire and my energy levels aligned. I attribute this particular recurring bee in my bonnet to two (obviously linked) factors: 1) my anxious brain needing to catalog exactly what stuff I have and where it all is, and 2) a childhood split between parents who lived in different states (plus my dad moved a lot).

When this mood hits, it helps that I love to organize and I'm not very sentimental about stuff. But I do have a terrible weakness, and it is this: arts & crafts supplies. Not just the obvious tools for creating art, like paintbrushes and origami paper. Oh no — I save all kinds of detritus, anything that could conceivably be used to create an art project: empty toilet paper rolls, bits of ribbon and string, old T-shirts and socks with holes in them, cardboard boxes, seashells, buttons, pretty scraps of paper and packaging, old calendars, glass jars, lids from used toothpaste tubes, the inside workings of dried-out ballpoint pens (those springs are cool), flattened cereal boxes, promotional magnets, old keys, rubber bands, et cetera ad infinitum.

The problem is that there's no good place for this kind of stuff to live in my small house. It gets pushed into nooks and crannies all over, and the psychic weight gets heavier over time. Plus I haven't actually done many craft projects in the past decade or two. Maybe I’ll get back to it someday, but who knows when?

So I did the KonMari thing and pulled all of it out of hiding and piled it into one place. I'd made passes at doing something like this before, but this time something unlocked inside of me and I was able to get rid of SO MUCH STUFF. It was GLORIOUS.

Of course some stuff is starting to creep back into the house again, but that’s mostly because I have such a weakness for glass containers. They are so good! Non-toxic, clear so you can see what’s inside them, different sizes and shapes to hold all kinds of things! Who doesn’t want a good glass jar (or several dozen)?

Current Mood: accomplished

I’ve been making a batch of basil pesto every couple weeks or so and eating it over angel hair pasta and half a bag of frozen veg, with grated parmesan sprinkled on top. This meal has the advantage of being low effort (once the batch of pesto is made, anyway) while also feeling righteous because of all the vegetables. And I’m nearly always in the mood for it. I haven’t had the spoons to cook very much over the last year, but I’ve made pesto so often that it feels frictionless to prepare.

2024 was a lot. I have:

– been promoted into a sort of faux managerial role, managing other peoples’ workloads without any real decision-making power (and sans a salary increase) in an organization that increasingly feels like a sinking ship. I continue to rearrange the deck chairs and hope for a lifeboat.

– started going to therapy for the first time in almost 20 years. I feel like it’s helping, and we’re working on starting EMDR soon. (I’ve read that EMDR may not be fully supported by scientific evidence, but enough people have found it helpful that I’m willing to give it a try.)

– switched my weekly injection of arthritis medication to a different med (in daily pill form) that does NOT make me feel like I’m down with the flu two days out of every week. I’m SO thrilled about this change and wish I’d talked to my rheumatologist much sooner!

– accepted that my son, now almost in his mid-20s, will need a great deal more support to transition into independent adult life than my husband and I expected. My therapist has helped me a lot, both with planning and with acceptance, but it’s still an uncertain weight to carry.

I’d like to stop in here more often in 2025. We’ll see if that happens, but I’m hopeful.

Current Mood: contemplative

Life keeps happening and I have not been writing about it! But my 2024 theme is this: Doing something is better than doing nothing. So here is something.

Last year my teen discovered fanfiction. I think she was unsure whether she wanted to tell me; both of us like to hold lovely secrets close, like Mary Lennox's garden. But one day she said, “Mom…do you read fanfic?” And when I said yes, she was so excited to tell me all about her favorite stories and fandoms. She has her dad's filing-cabinet memory (mine is more like an amorphous cloud of butterflies), so she remembers the plots of everything she reads.

So I'm getting a working knowledge of fandoms I was only peripherally aware of, which is quite fun! We don’t share any fandoms (which is maybe just as well), and we haven't shared our fandom names with each other. Most of her interests are anime or manga-based, though she was very into the Dream SMP at first.

I only know what the Dream SMP is because she told me all about it. Video gaming is not my beautiful cake, but my husband and kids are avid gamers, so they tell me things. I've heard a lot about Baldur's Gate. My husband has played it through twice.

I wonder if she’ll become a fanfic writer? I did when I was her age, but that was a very different kettle of fish, being pre-Internet and usually read by maybe three people (including my sister). I hope she tells me all about it if she does.

Current Mood: calm

Time to emerge from hibernation! The ice on the sidewalks has finally melted, so it’s safe to go for walks outdoors again. Many mornings this winter I did the penguin walk on the slippery path out to my car, doing my best not to fall and break anything. It was scary! I’m unsteady on my pins at the best of times, being the autistic dyspraxic being that I am.

But now it’s almost May, and the snow has finally melted. Not to say that I approve of the temps climbing to 80F, as they briefly did. But the slow fuzz of green appearing on the treetops, the smell of petrichor, the trickle of meltwater in the streets—yes to all that! And now we’re back into temps in the 50s, which is just where I like it this time of year.

Here are five of my favorite things:

1) Homemade chai made with oat milk and rooibos. Oatmilk is the best dairy milk substitute for mixing with things, the closest I’ve found to the mouthfeel of cow’s milk (which is not my tummy’s friend anymore).

2) Two Dots, a game I play on my phone every day. I want to hug the UX and sound designers, because the way the game looks and sounds is so cohesive and appealing. I’ll even forgive them for constantly trying to push microtransactions on me, because I’m a grown-up and can ignore them.

3) Dame Arc, my very favorite vibrator ever. I wish I’d discovered the joys of vibrators sooner, but I didn’t try them till my mid-40s. What on earth took me so long?

4) The science-themed dot grid notebook I bought at the Field Museum in Chicago. You can also get them online from Cognitive Surplus—so many lovely designs! (Mine is the Ocean Planet one.) They have a ribbon bookmark built in, and the binding is sturdy and lies flat when you open it, and the smooth paper shows almost no bleed-through from your pen. I’m keeping a sort of half-assed bullet journal thing going in mine.

5) La Fermière yogurt, first seen at Whole Foods but now also available at Target. It’s very tasty, but too spendy* to be my everyday yogurt. So mostly I buy it because I love the little glazed ceramic jars it comes in. They keep producing new and different colors, and I use them all over my house to hold everything. Oh how I love containers! This lid-matching lady and her little gasps of joy are absolutely me.

*This is a word in Minnesota that means "oh dear, that costs a bit more than I'd really like to pay, and I'm not sure if it's worth it!"

Current Mood: okay

COVID took me down the week after Thanksgiving: chills, body aches, fever above 102 F, clogged sinuses, sore throat like stabbing knives, cough, fatigue, loss of taste/smell. I’m glad I was fully vaxxed, or I imagine it would’ve been much worse.

I’m guessing I caught it from one of my in-laws at Thanksgiving dinner. One of them has never been vaccinated, because he’s a Manly Man who’s gonna get his immunities the “natural” way. ::futile cries of rage::

I still have clogged sinuses, a mild cough, and fatigue, and smell/taste flickers on and off. But my energy levels are getting better every day. My rheumatologist suggested I isolate for a full 20 days since I’m immunocompromised. Fortunately my manager is fine with me working from home, though the three-hour meeting in which I was the only remote participant was something of a trial.

A local friend has also been isolating at home, in her case dealing with her third (!) case of shingles, and the flu on top of that. So we’ve been randomly texting each other idle thoughts as a way of keeping company, and also discussing whether we might never leave our respective houses again. Just to be safe.

I’m supposed to visit my in-laws again on Christmas Eve, and I must say the thought fills me with trepidation. I’ll hope for the best, I guess.

Have a story!

Batman (Comics): Into the Brighter Night (162,894 words) by shoalsea. “When an unknown enemy threatens Robin, Gotham's vigilantes come together to keep him safe. Unfortunately, they're protecting the wrong Robin. Or: Tim Drake plans his own rescue. Things get complicated.”

This story does one of my very favorite things! That thing where certain individuals—such as Tim Drake, my dearest Robin—show various people in his life almost completely different personalities. And usually there are trust issues involved, like, I trust my chosen friend group with my truer self, but I don’t trust my family like that, so for them I wear a mask. But then the two groups are forced together and secrets are revealed!! Oh, I LOVE that. I’ve read this story twice in the past year because it hits that button so hard, and boy am I here for it.

Current Mood: congested
Current Music: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (the version from the new Antman movie trailer)

I got the bivalent COVID booster a couple weeks ago on a Monday. Tuesday evening I had chills, a mild fever, body aches. But by Wednesday afternoon I felt well again. Glad to have that under my belt! Next I need to get the flu shot, but I’ve heard it’s best to wait till late October unless cases are on the rise near you.

My husband went in after work on a Friday and got both the COVID booster and the flu shot: one in each arm. By lunchtime on Saturday he was curled up on the couch in the fetal position, and his fever kept climbing and climbing. When it spiked at 103.8 F, I though we might be heading for the ER. But it started falling shortly thereafter, and by the next day he felt completely fine.

All the pharmacies near us are suggesting people get both vaccines in the same visit. And maybe he would’ve gotten just as sick with only one or the other? But I’m glad I decided to do mine separately.

Current Mood: accomplished

In August my family and I went on a week-long road trip around Lake Michigan. We stuffed ourselves and baggage for four into our tiny Toyota Scion, which left us just enough room to breathe.

It was great! We stayed in sight of the lake as much as possible but didn’t follow an exact Circle Tour plan. My husband, who’s a geography and maps geek, was super excited about experiencing the Driftless area. We had no firm itinerary: just a tentative list of places to go, a mobile app to book hotels, and a steady supply of snacks from gas stations. (Best discovery: Maple Pecans Glazed nut mix from Sahale Snacks. Very sugary, but so tasty!)

My favorite place by far: Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan. As you walk up from the parking area to the largest dune, one of the first things you see is a big sign warning that if you get stuck at the bottom, the charge for rescue is $3,000. How big can this dune be, you wonder? Then you crest the hill and look down, and realize how far below the lakeshore is! It’s not a steep drop—you can get to the bottom eventually if you’re careful—but I’m not sure how you’d scale it again. We saw a couple of ant-sized people at the bottom trying to crawl back up; I don’t know if they made it.

It’s hard to describe the feeling Sleeping Bear Dunes gave me. I’ve always been a lakes/hills/rivers person, not an oceans person: the Midwest is in my bones. This felt like the ur-Midwest, the place my bones came from. I wanted to stay so much longer, but like all the places we visited on this trip, our time there was brief.

( A few of the places we saw: )

And then we drove home to Minnesota and collapsed into our own beds.

A few travel lessons:

– Middle-aged bodies don’t bounce back from crappy hotel room beds as quickly as they used to. Before booking, look for online reviews that mention comfy beds!

– Sit on a seat cushion in the car! I have mild sciatica and rheumatoid arthritis. Wasn’t sure I could handle a long road trip. But this cushion did the trick. (I’m using it on my office chair now, too.)

– Bring your own pillow!

Current Mood: sleepy

Long time since my last post. There is too much! Let me sum up. (Ha ha not really; I have too many words. But I will try.)

But first, fanfic! Two very long series I’ve enjoyed recently:

Batman (Comics): Cor Et Cerebrum, by audreycritter. I continue to enjoy reading about the Batfamily, and this is one of my favorite series to date, with a well-developed original character who features prominently in many of the stories. There are 52 stories (but only four of them make up the main storyline; the rest are shorts). These are difficult to read at times because of the medical storyline about a very difficult cancer, and occasional violence/gore, so be warned about that.

Star Wars: Seire Kari, Horrible Goose Jedi, by Umei_no_Mai. Okay, so this series is the most fun. The stories are mainly standalones (a couple of them build on each other), but they all follow the same Jedi Knight, an original character. And each story explores a different point in the original Star Wars timeline when this OC could have…well, “kriffed up Palpatine’s plans” is really the best way to put it. And the author is still working on more of these, yay!

Huh. It occurs to me now that both of these series are centered around original characters. What these characters have in common, though, is this: they are both incredibly highly skilled and competent at their jobs. I guess I have a competence kink!

In May my mom had a “cardiac event,” which I discovered when I called on Mother's Day. Stepdad answered the phone with, “Applenym...your mom...” and then broke down. So I had a terrible few moments before he pulled himself together.

Mom’s heart started racing, so she went to the ER, where she tested positive for COVID. Stepdad wasn’t allowed to stay with her. The hospital kept her overnight and then put her on beta blockers and sent her home. They still don’t know what caused it (weird COVID effect?), but she’s stable now as long as she stays on the meds. She tried to go off them without telling anyone because she hates the way they make her feel, but her heart started racing again.

I’d already planned to fly out to Illinois to be with her while Stepdad went to Florida for his Tante’s 99th birthday party. We decided to proceed as planned and had a wonderful time together, though she didn’t have much energy; beta blockers make you very tired. And she was anxious and depressed. But I think I cheered her up considerably.

We visited the Chicago Botanic Garden and took the tram tour, shopped for groceries to fix yummy meals together, and watched the second Thor movie: our usual sorts of activities when we’re together, though she wasn’t up to most of the walking we’d usually have done.

But now she’s adjusted to the meds, so she and Stepdad plan to drive up to Minnesota at the end of August to go to the State Fair with me and the kids. (Husband hates the Fair, so he will happily stay home.)

My youngest kid “graduated” from 5th grade, in an outdoor ceremony with “diplomas” and speeches given by some of the kids. She starts middle school in the fall. We are done with elementary school! I have all kinds of feelings about this. Hugging both my kids a lot.

And in June, my stepmom (divorced from my dad in the 90s, but still family) visited me along with my youngest half-sister, who I haven’t seen much in the last 20 years. Sister’s gone through a lot recently: diagnosed with bipolar disorder, nasty divorce still ongoing, and moving across country to be close to her mom and our other sister. They are all out on the East Coast now.

My daugher and I will be flying out to visit them in October. So I’m hopeful we’re starting to build a closer relationship, even though my brain is Charlie Brown expecting Lucy to pull away the football. Settle down, brain! We’re allowed to hope for nice things!

I continue to check out e-books from the library, and they continue to pile up on my Kindle. And I continue to read fanfic instead. I am mostly okay with this, even though there are a few books I really want to read, if only my brain would allow it. Someday!

Recently I bought a new Kindle Paperwhite; my old Kindle Voyage is getting a bit glitchy. But then I promptly returned it, because the evil overlords have rewritten its software to be completely and hideously unusable for people who read a lot. I guess I’m going to hang on to my Voyage until it dies or stops working…and NEVER upgrade its software. We’re in Airplane Mode forever now, folks!

Current Mood: contemplative

This year I’m using tax software instead of paying someone to do our taxes. Last year we paid way too much $$$ to an accountant, and I know I can do our taxes myself even if I hate doing it. And even though doing taxes usually brings me to tears at least once. But we don’t have any unusual tax situations this year, so I’m giving it a go.

One of the hardest parts is locating all the tax forms and receipts, and I have to do that anyway, so I might as well go the extra mile and complete all the forms, too. Such was my pep talk to myself, helped along by a coworker who recommended the software and said, “Hey, if I can do it then you can do it.” And since I’m a very detail-oriented person and she is not, I thought that was a pretty good sales pitch!

So I’m slooooowly working my way through the process. I’ve been mostly laughing at the little encouraging notes it pops up—“You’ve Done a Great Job So Far!”—but I must admit they did make me feel a tiny little glow of accomplishment.

But then I finished the Child Tax Credit section and this popped up: “Raising awesome kids is its own reward, but a little extra cash never hurt. Thanks for all you do, super parent!” Hey, no…I do not want to hear any opinions on parenting from my tax software! And also that’s some kinda problematic messaging around money and parenting. I wish it hadn’t done that.

But at any rate...I just need to complete one more section and then I can file. So close!!

Current Mood: anxious

My jury duty is done! I served four days and didn’t get picked for a jury, though I was questioned on a jury panel (a process called voir dire). It was an unpleasant criminal case, so I was relieved not to be chosen. Maybe I was rejected because I said a close friend had experienced a similar crime? Or maybe because I was acquainted with one of the witnesses on the list they read to us. (And I realized later that the judge might have taken “a close friend” as code for “me”! But I really was talking about a friend.)

Downtown's new public library building is absolutely gorgeous, and I had a good long ramble around all the floors. Now that it's finally hooked up to the skyway system, I tried to get there without going outside, but eventually gave up and went out to navigate via the streets. Then I tried walking back to the government center via the skyways, and soon all was revealed. Turns out the entry to the new skyway is hidden behind a bank of elevators in Fifth Street Towers, and the security guard I'd asked for help had pointed me in the opposite direction! But I got it sorted in the end.

I also began eating my way through the chopped salads at Green + the Grain. Very yummy. I was a little sad I didn't get to finish trying all of them (though I wouldn't do more jury duty just for a good salad). But the place is closed on weekends, so I don't know when I'll get another chance to eat there.

I tried not to think about COVID exposure too much, since I had no choice about jury duty. I was masked and so was everyone else, and the skyways were practically empty. And at least I got a lot of free exploring time. My hips and knees were sore after walking so much more than usual, but I felt like the exercise was good for me.

ever after, a series by stranglerfig, is a fix-it for Harry Potter that I very highly recommend. The premise sounds like a joke—as a young child, Harry runs away from the Dursleys and lives with the basilisk under Hogwarts—but it's SO good! And extremely long, with seven novel-length stories plus some extra shorts, but it's worth the time. Excellent world-building for the non-human cultures like the merfolk, centaurs, and more. The storytelling reminded me of what it was like to read fairytales as a child: the sense of walking through a dark wood, of wonder and horror swirling together.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: "Blinding Lights," Pentatonix

Am I obsessive enough to re-catalog my entire home library in LibraryThing, even though I already did it once in Delicious Library?

Absolutely I am!

I should have done it in LibraryThing to begin with. I paid for a lifetime membership years ago, before they began offering accounts free to all. But I've only ever used LibraryThing for tracking books I've read, not for cataloging books I own. And Delicious Library 3 seduced me with its pretty 3D book covers: they appear on the virtual shelves in the correct proportions relative to each other. This is intensely satisfying to gaze upon.

But Delicious Library is sooooo far behind LibraryThing; it feels like abandonware. Pretty 3D book covers is about the only thing it does have going for it. And I really want the ability to search my library on my iPhone (mostly so I can avoid buying books I already own). There's no elegant way to do that with Delicious Library. You can export to an Excel or text file. Or export to a (hideously ugly) HTML website that doesn't even have a search function and that you have to manually upload somewhere so you can access it.

So this weekend I've been figuring out the best way to get my books into LibraryThing. It will import a list of ISBNs, but Delicious Library did not save the ISBNs when I scanned in all my books (ARGH). What it did save, however, is something it calls an "amazon link," which I discovered I could copy/paste en masse into the "Paste text (list or source code)" box on LibraryThing's Universal Import page. This got me most of the way there; the majority of the books imported, and only about 50 of them failed.

So now I have a tiny list of 50 books to add manually. A much faster process than I feared it would be!

I have not cataloged any of my husband's books, even though he owns nearly as many as I do. This works out because we don't have a lot of crossover in what we like to read, and our books are mostly shelved separately. (I'm willing to share my financial accounts with him, but not my book collection, I guess!) And I haven't cataloged either of my kids' book collections.

I decided to define any book as "mine" if I could safely give it away without anyone else in the house caring. This has worked out pretty well...so far, anyway.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "Alright With Me," Kris Allen

Recently I was called for jury duty (first time ever) and spent a day in downtown Minneapolis. About 15 years ago I worked downtown, but now I don't go there very often, though I live nearby. So it was fun to walk around the city on the lunch break and see what's changed.

One of the best features of Minneapolis is the skyway system—a series of "gerbil trails" that stretch between buildings above the streets below. You can walk almost from one end of downtown to the other without ever going outside. Very nice in winter! On my lunch I walked as far from the government center as I could, looking for a good place to eat and comparing what I remembered from the past. Several restaurants were shuttered and empty; I'd guess the pandemic means they're not seeing enough traffic. I ate at Naf Naf Grill, which I'd been eager to try; it was fine but not great. Next time maybe I'll try Green + The Grain, whose salads look amazing.

I spent just one day on jury duty, and all I did was read a novel in a big room crowded with other masked people. There are worse ways to spend a day! I got pulled for a jury panel right before the day ended and was supposed to report the next morning. But when I got home that night my son wasn't feeling well...and when we tested him, he was COVID positive.

So my jury duty has been postponed. But I don't feel I wasted that day. I was anxious about the whole process beforehand and now I know what to expect, so it will be much easier for me emotionally when I have to return.

My son was quite ill for almost a week: headache, fever, sore throat, chills, blocked sinuses. The fever was the scariest part. It went up to 102.6 F at one point, and bobbed back up to 101–102 whenever the ibuprofen wore off. His fever sweat soaked through all his bedding and into the mattress, and I had to strip the bed and use a hair dryer to dry off the damp spot.

But he did start feeling better around day five, albeit with a lingering sore throat. I called the nurseline to ask if we should maybe get a strep test in case he had that too, and the vibe was "please don't come in unless it's an emergency." And his sore throat went away entirely after a couple more days anyway.

The rest of us in the household continue to test negative. I suspect this is because my daughter just got vaccinated (as soon as the under 12s were approved), and my husband and I both got our boosters within the past couple of months. My son was fully vaxxed but hadn't gotten boosted yet, so he was the most vulnerable.

My workplace offered all employees the option to work from home through the end of January as a way of mitigating some of the holiday exposure risk. Very sensible of them! So I haven't been in the office since before Christmas. At least I don't need to worry that I might infect someone if I actually do succumb at some point.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "Uptown Girl," Billy Joel

Going back to work in an office building is exhausting, and I'm glad I only have to do it two days a week for now. Working from home suits my temperament much better.

A huge flock of geese was blocking the sidewalk on my morning walk break near my company's building. I gave them a wide berth just in case they took exception to me (and to avoid all the slimy goose shit). Large birds blocking my path appears to be a theme. On my way to our grocery co-op last week, I stopped for a flock (a gobble?) of wild turkeys crossing the road in single file. Turkeys are attractive in an austere, vulture-like way, with metallic glints of color in their feathers. I can see how birds are descended from dinosaurs. Their legs were so thin and stick-like, though—where does the drumstick come from for our turkey dinners? (My husband pointed out that these were wild turkeys, not farm-bred to be food.) I guess wild turkeys just wander the metro at will, which I find delightful.

All I've been reading lately is fanfic. My brain does not want new characters right now; all it wants is MOAR BATFAM. I get a teeny bit obsessive in the throes of new fandom love, and oh, I've been enjoying this ride SO MUCH—my heart overflows. I know eventually the intensity will fade, but till then it's sort of like when I was a kid and I'd buy candy by the pound at Mr. Bulky and shovel it straight down my gullet. (Except less tooth decay.) AO3, give me ALL YOUR ROBINS!!!

Jason Todd was my gateway, but I've since fallen hard for Tim Drake. Such a big-brained perfectionist fucked-up hyper-competent coldly logical (except when he's not) sweetheart! The nice thing about the Robins for story purposes is that none of them are actually blood relatives. Sometimes they're written as legally siblings, but not always. And none of them were raised along with each other from infancy. So you can write them as siblings or in a romantic relationship, and either works for me.

One of my favorite series explores the sibling relationships, and it's so well-written it made me cry several times. Other favorites explore a romantic relationship (mostly Jason/Tim, but not always). I've also been dipping into the Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson dynamic. So many rabbit holes to go down! When the floodwaters recede, I'll probably rec some of my favorite stories here. And if anyone has recs, please do share.

Will I get into reading the comics? Probably not. (Though I did pick up the newest Robins comic just to check it out.) Will I watch any visual media, like the Titans show, or one of the animated series? Maybe. Canon is so all over the place in comics-based fandoms that I don't think it's necessary to enjoy the fanfic, but I do like to get more visuals for my brain to add to the compost pile.

Current Mood: jittery
Current Music: "Butter," BTS

I’ve somehow fallen hard for Jason Todd (aka Red Hood in the Batman universe). And now I’m catching feelings for Dick Grayson, too. And maybe all the other Robins eventually; I can feel it happening. But I know almost nothing about anything to do with Batman comics fandom! Only what I’ve picked up from a handful of excellent fanfic stories and a quick skim of Jason Todd’s entry in a Batman wiki.

I watched the Batman live-action show from the 60s when I was a kid, but I don’t think that helps much. And the Tim Burton Batman movies (mmmm, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was my jam). But the nice thing about characters that originated in comics is that I feel no pressing need to learn what’s canon and what’s not, since it changes all the time anyway. So I’m slowly wading into the sea of fanfic available on AO3 and enjoying what washes up in my little net. (Recs always welcome!)

I made homemade applesauce this weekend. I highly recommend it. It will ruin store-bought applesauce for you forever, but it’s worth it. And also a good way of using up apples if you happen to get too excited at the farmer’s market. ::cough::

This weekend the apple vendor had Ginger Gold apples! My very favorite apple to eat out of hand. They’re in season so briefly that I had to buy them on sight, even though I already had a bin full of First Kiss apples from last week. No problem: time for applesauce!

( Make your own applesauce! )

Next week my daughter starts 5th grade: full-time in-person, masked. And I will have to return to work in an office building for at least two days per week.

My office will not be requiring that employees be vaccinated. They will require that everyone wear masks in “public areas,” vaccinated or not…but not while employees are sitting in their cubicles.

Since the SAME AIR will be circulating throughout the entire building, why allow people to remove their masks whenever they’re sitting down? I share a wall with the cubicle of the person next to me, for heaven’s sake.

At least I’m vaccinated…but my ten-year-old is not. This is all so messed up. But what can we do except be as careful as we’re allowed to be? At least I’m not forbidden to wear a mask. I expect many people will forget to put theirs back on every time they stand up from their desks, but I guess we’ll see.

Current Mood: hungry

I’ve read some books! No plot spoilers below.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown (Talia Hibbert): the first romance novel in a trilogy following three sisters. I’ve enjoyed Hibbert’s earlier novels, and I think she’s leveled up her writing skills in this one; it feels more polished. Chloe, the main character, has fibromyalgia, and Hibbert does not sugarcoat what it means to live with a chronic illness, which I really appreciate (as someone who has more than one). I’ve got the second book queued up already. We briefly met the other two sisters, who are both very different personalities. I’m looking forward to spending more time with them.

What Abigail Did That Summer (Ben Aaronovitch): Hey, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this novella as much as I did! But I came out of it really loving Abigail. (And the mystery was weird and interesting, too.) Abigail’s a bit like her cousin Peter Grant in that she doesn’t think very much about what she’s feeling, but you can see it poking out around the edges. I’m hoping we get more stories from her POV.

Across the Green Grass Fields (Seanan McGuire): Sixth in the series, I think? I don’t always dig the third-person omniscient POV of these novellas (though I’ve still enjoyed reading them), but in this one the authorial voice seemed less intrusive. I cared very much about Regan and what was happening to her, even though I’m not interested in horses/hooved creatures (the focus of her portal world). This story is disconnected from any of the characters or places seen in previous novellas, so it was built to stand alone.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (Lori Gottlieb): This non-fiction book read like a novel, and I was pulled along by the stories, including the author’s own experience in therapy. She makes it clear that even people who are therapists themselves still have their own blind spots. They might even use the same tricks with their own therapist that they’ve seen clients use, and might not even realize they’re doing it.

I have complicated feelings about therapy, which is partly why I read this book: to explore those feelings a little. I’ve been to some therapists that were very helpful, and some that were…not.

Lately I’ve been thinking about resuming therapy. I’ve lived with anxiety forever, and mostly I’m able to get along well enough. But this past year it’s been harder to manage. Sometimes I lie in bed half-awake as a nightmare morphs into a panic attack, and I try to calm my breathing and heart rate so I can go back to sleep. It’s been happening more than I’d like.

A friend came over recently for a Let’s Make Something night (we made mini cacti out of polymer clay, which I’ll probably turn into magnets—you can never have too many decorative magnets), and she talked about how she sees a therapist, her partner sees a different therapist, and then they see another therapist as a couple. Which seems like A LOT of therapy!

My husband is not keen on the idea of seeing a therapist. He worries they would "find things in my life to manufacture problems out of that I don't see as problems.” I told him a bad therapist might do that. But a good therapist would not do that.

He remains unconvinced. And tells me that maybe I should try doing yoga first and see if that helps. Which I should probably do anyway, for the increased flexbility if nothing else…

Current Mood: contemplative

My 72-year-old stepdad hit a deer while riding his motorcycle. It’s astonishing that he’s not dead; he was thrown from the bike and rolled about 20 feet away. He’s bruised and scraped but otherwise seems to be okay. He was wearing ALL the protective gear, head to toe, thank goodness; I’m grateful he’s never been one of those dudes tooling around in a tank top with no helmet. But he is a stubborn old coot, so he refused to go to the hospital, though he did get checked out by EMTs. His bike is totaled, which my mother says is okay because she’s never going to let him ride again. (We shall see if that holds true.)

Along with being upset by the accident, I’m also really sad because they were going to drive up to Minnesota this weekend. But now mom says they are just too shook up to consider traveling at all this summer. It’s an understandable reaction to trauma. But I am sad.

It’s been two years since I’ve seen my mom in person, so I’m making plans to go to them, but probably not for a few weeks yet. Our summer was already filling up with other obligations. But I’ll make it work somehow.

***

I tried out a paper bullet journal for about a month. It worked for a while, but then I started ignoring it for days in a row and it stopped working. I think the problems are: a) handwriting is somewhat painful for me (my finger joints don’t like it), b) my handwriting is terrible and hard to read since my eyesight is worsening, and c) I type SO fast that it was frustrating to try to keep ahead of my thoughts with handwriting.

So I've abandoned a paper journal. But I liked some aspects of the method, so I’ve adapted it to Dynalist, my favorite app for list-making. I’ve made a list for the current month (an inbox for everything I want to do) and a Today list (with sublists for This Week and This Weekend, because I’m granular like that). Plus I’m making all the other reference lists my heart desires (Shop, House Fixes, Books, Takeout Meals, Homemade Meals, Medical Notes, etc).

I like using tags, too. Mostly I need to sort by what kind of energy is required for a task:

– physical (a body needs to get up and do)
– mental (need mental energy to tackle)
– errands (need energy to leave the house)
– discuss (need another brain available to engage with me)

We’ll see how long this method lasts! But I’m working on acceptance of this fact: the best method is the one that works Right Now.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: I Fought the Law (The Clash)

My stepmom sold her house in March and moved across the country into a small apartment. Over the past year she gave me almost all of her books to haul away. I kept a few, but her tastes don’t overlap much with mine. I’ve had a wall of boxes stacked in my garage for months.

Now that I’m fully vaccinated, I’ve been whittling away at them. Half-Price Books only buys 100 items at a time right now, so I’ve been taking 3–4 boxes per visit over the past couple of weeks. There’s usually a wait because they're SO busy. I’ve had some nice long bookstore browses, which is not a hardship! Standard practice is to stay in the store until they page you, but during one visit they said I could leave and they’d call my cell. It took four hours! That’s never happened before. Everyone must’ve been sorting through their book collections while closed up at home this winter.

I only have two boxes left. One more trip.

I kept the Ruth Plumly Thompson Land of Oz books, because I remember reading them as a child.

I also kept six books from a hardcover series titled Best in Children’s Books, published in the 1950s by Nelson Doubleday. Each book collects a random assortment of short stories and essays, both fiction and non-fiction. They’re illustrated throughout: sometimes in just two or three colors (usually black, red and blue), and sometimes in gorgeous full color. Looking at these makes me feel very nostalgic, though I don’t remember the contents at all, just the experience of reading them.

They include titles like:

• Raggedy Andy Meets Raggedy Ann

• Be a Magician

• The Magic Porridge Pot

• Peanuts Are Not Nuts and Other Surprising Facts

• The Valiant Chatteemaker

• Exploring Caves (I would’ve been all over this as a kid)

• The True Book of Tools for Building (ditto this!)

• Hansel and Gretel (and also Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and more fairy tales)

Now I’m wondering where some of the other books I remember from childhood have ended up. Maybe my dad has them? He gave me and my sisters a lot of mythology and folktales: part of his attempt to discourage us from any religious leanings (he was raised a devout Catholic and then became obnoxiously atheist in college, and has remained so to this day).

There was a book of Inuit folktales I particularly remember because it had a few stories that scared the pee out of me. I’d love to re-read it and see if they really were that scary. I can’t remember the name of the book, though I can bring up a fuzzy image of the cover if I try. Maybe I’ll come across it in Half-Price Books someday.

Current Mood: nostalgic

I’m going to talk about the ending of the Narnia series, The Dark Is Rising sequence, and the Donna years of Doctor Who. If you don’t want to know how any of these end, go no further!

( But if you do, read on... )

Current Mood: geeky

I’ve been ridiculously busy in my offline life lately (mostly for good reasons). Not much time to spend online in my usual haunts. When I have free time again I’ll have more to say here. But in the meantime, I just want to share my VERY FAVORITE fidget toy. It’s become my steady companion during all the remote meetings I have to sit through during my workday.

Zongo ball!! I flip it in and out and in and out, and the soft spikes feel so nice on my face and hands, and sometimes I toss it around a little bit and play catch with myself. It is the BEST.

Current Mood: busy

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