This poem is spillover from the September 1, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from Dreamwidth user Librarygeek. It also fills the "How do you want to do this?" square in my 9-1-20 card for the I Want Fries With That! Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Not Quite Kansas.
Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the more detailed warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes feeling lost, a headless chicken running around, a fight with bit character fatalities, moderate injuries to a main character, messy medical details, an imprisoned demon, torture, binding magic, demonic healing, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.
A new analysis dates three Homo erectus skulls from central China to about 1.77 million years ago, making them the oldest securely dated hominin fossils in eastern Asia.
That older age shifts the arrival of early humans in the region back by roughly 600,000 years and compresses the timeline of how quickly our ancestors spread across Eurasia. [---8<---] The same layer holds stone tools and animal remains, tying the skulls to a specific moment nearly 1.8 million years ago rather than the younger dates long cited.
I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows plus one female and two male cardinals separately.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I planted 3 peonies 'Sorbet Mixed' under the apricot tree. The mix includes white, light pink, and dark pink. These cost $14.98, so about $5 a root. That's a great bargain for peonies, which average $20-30 each and catalogs and the high end is downright exorbitant. So if you want peonies, look for cheap ones at home or garden stores this time of year. Due to the unseasonal warmth, the ground here is unfrozen, so I was able to plant them immediately. \o/
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I labeled and mulched the new peonies.
I put out a fresh cake of peanut suet.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I started the process of trimming dead stems from the wildflower garden, which is going to take a while.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I did more trimming in the wildflower garden. I discovered a little wildflower putting up leaves, probably echinacea, possibly penstemon or something else.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- I did more trimming in the wildflower garden.
EDIT 2/22/26 -- We hauled in the potting mix bags from last night.
Fandom: Stranger Things Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler Rating: Explicit Length: 59,047 words Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia. Creator Link:harriet_vane Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters
Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.
"I have an idea," says Mike.
Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"
"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."
"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.
Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.
Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.
"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."
"As your date."
Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.
...Cake! This one combines two hot and happening trends: gray and ombre. Plus polka-dots, which will never go out of style.
Let's hope gray doesn't, either, because pretty much my entire house is painted gray. Some people might think that sounds depressing, but just look at this cake:
Then I learned that it was modeled after a Vera Wang gown, and I felt totally smart and stylish for a second. Then I looked down at my ensemble of mismatched sweats and slowly lowered my hands from their 'raise the roof' position.
Isn't it great how all the ribbon and fabric look like actual ribbon and fabric? Just amazing.
I sure hope you enjoyed today's gorgeous gray gateaux and that your Sunday is especially sweet!
******
P.S. I was browsing "gray whale" things to link today - because whales are awesome -but then this blue whale butter dish popped up and it's so stinkin' cute you get it instead:
noun: 1 a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things. 2 (in literature) a piece created from diverse resources. 3 (in art) a piece of makeshift handiwork. 4 the use of multiple, diverse research methods.
Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth’s mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, these elusive quakes turn out to cluster in regions like the Himalayas and near the Bering Strait. By developing a breakthrough method that distinguishes mantle quakes using subtle differences in seismic waves, researchers identified hundreds of these hidden tremors worldwide.
I had a good morning in the Dotson Family Marsh today, not the morning I'd hoped for as there wasn't any more water in the marsh than in December even though it rained just a few days ago. Almost the first thing I saw was an Osprey with a fish, carrying it aerodynamically in this instance. That was the start of a nice raptor list, not only the White-tailed Kites that I think breed there but a Northern Harrier and a beautiful male American Kestrel that that sat on the bridge railing until a runner went by. After the Osprey I watched the colorful combination of Western Bluebirds and Yellow-rumped Warblers in bushes and on the ground. So many Yellow-rumped Warblers! There were ducks in the large pond by the bridge, fives species of dabbling duck and, unsurprisingly, a couple of Bufflehead. They are so tiny that they don't need much depth for diving. Best bird was nine (9) Wilson's Snipe camouflaged in the weeds beside a shallow pond. I might not have noticed them had not one flushed, prompting me to look at where they'd flushed from, whereupon I saw one, and then another, and another, and another.... Seeing Snipe is often that way, they're hidden in the weeds but once you see one, you keep finding more. ( The list: )
The Red-shouldered Hawk really kept me waiting. Not until I was almost back to the eucalyptus did they start to yell. Such restraint!
Earlier in the week, a flock of robins and a flock of starlings descended on the small ornamental cherry (?) (I'm not so good with ornamental trees) and devoured all the remaining fruit.
For the last two days, I've heard the geese overhead and today I saw a pair scrambling at speed for the pond in the woods behind my house. I love living here so much.
I put a suet block out for the winter - the birds in Texas usually devoured it, but it looks almost completely untouched. Maybe all the birds leave? I'm still adjusting to life in the northern forest, and I don't remember enough about how it worked when I was growing up in the mountains. Surely cardinals stay all winter?
I'm planning to clean out the seed feeder and get it out tomorrow. Maybe that will be more tempting.
Tomorrow is the last day of the half-price sale in Not Quite Kansas. fuzzyred is running a pool that will close later today, so if you want in on the quarter-price sale, now's the time to make your selections. If you're still shopping solo, the sale as a whole will close Sunday night.
People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.
Is it right or wrong that everyone seems to be accustomed to the fact that all of humanity and most of the life on Earth could be wiped out at the whim of a handful of people?
I picked out what to get from Edible Landscaping. There's not much left this season. I should try them in fall to see if they have a better selection then.
Because it's nice to let people know that we appreciate them.
In the spirit of love memes, this meme is a place to thank someone who's created something you love, or done something kind that you still remember after all this time, or who has made your fandom life (or your life in general!) better in some way.
Fandom: Heated Rivalry Characters/Pairings: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, numerous Reddit OCs. Rating: Teen Length: 20,175 Content Notes: No AO3 warnings apply. Some of the Reddit comments contain terrible advice! Creator Links:OpalApparition on AO3 Themes: Inept in love, Canon LGBTQ+ characters, Humor, Unusual format & style, Epistolary, Outsider POV, Angst with a happy ending
Summary: I (26M) want to invite man I sleep with (26M) to my house to spend the weekend. Help me not ruin it.
Or: Ilya Rozanov goes to the internet for dating advice
Reccer's Notes: This is a long (9 chapters) social media epistolary fic based on Reddit, where Ilya asks the internet for advice before the tuna melt hookup. It's funny, very cleverly done, and the responses from Reddit users are often hilarious. We start with Ilya's post (he's orangespyder617 - his sports car name & Boston area code), and later, Shane (gingerale_MTL) also separately posts after he's bolted in panic and is dating Rose, and has realized he's really messed things up. There's some fun for the Reddit users in speculating about who these two rich, inept in love guys might be, and also later after Shane posts as Ilya has wiped his former thread by then but some users remember it and join the dots. Rose herself (kidnapped4times) also posts wanting advice about how to tactfully tell her boyfriend he's gay, and finally Ilya posts again. It reads exactly like Reddit, although I suspect with way fewer trolls, and the users often post memes and links to vids which work, and add to the realism. Throughout, Ilya and Shane amply demonstrate their ineptitude in love, starting with POSTING TO REDDIT ABOUT IT AT ALL! I grinned a lot.
In the spirit of love memes, this meme is a place to thank someone who's created something you love, or done something kind that you still remember after all this time, or who has made your fandom life (or your life in general!) better in some way.
One username per comment, but leave as many comments as you'd like! (Nominating yourself is fine!)
Feel free to nominate or leave appreciation anonymously, but the default is set to show who you are when you reply.
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