Some doings

Two weekends ago we were in Dallas visiting the Wickeds, and last weekend I came down with a case of lassitude followed by headache (shh, don’t tell anyone, but it was actually a hangover [I had three whole glasses of wine! what a lush!]), so our refrigerator was extremely empty.

I ate some sad lunches last week, I tell you.

But this week there is so much yummy food. My breakfasts will be coconut-cardamom rice pudding with spiced plum compote on top, and if that doesn’t make you weep, you must keep your heart in a carved box under a mountain. Here’s the staging from last night’s dinner:

That’s pork with zucchini on the left and flavorings for borracho beans on the right, separated by a glass of extremely bad Riesling. Both recipes are from Rick Bayless’s Authentic Mexican, and the Riesling is from a box.

I was so pleased that I actually took the time to chop everything and have it ready before I started cooking. What do you know? It cut the amount of cursing down to zero.

In knitting news, I have secret projects going on, but I was able to finish up a project that languished for over a year. Behold the Weighted Companion Cube:

It’s a little smooshy-looking, but Dingo loves it. It was my first stranded colorwork project. After that experience, I do not anticipate that I will take up Fair Isle knitting.

In Jinx news, biting is down and snuggling is up. He continues to eat all the bugs. Good boy!

In writing news, my hand is about to fall off.

Correspondences

I’ve been writing a lot of letters lately (more even than usual): I have a friend laid up for months with a bum leg and a bunch who have moved lately. I figure it sets a good standard to receive a cheerful letter when you’re new to a home.

Letter receiving goes in cycles: people get on kicks, and for a while I was a member of an online letter-writing group that was mostly great, until I found myself scratching my head over one too many notes written to comparative strangers.

In general, it’s a very uneven thing: my ratio of letters sent to received is probably about 6:1. Mimi was a faithful correspondent, but I get more letters by FAR from Gwyn than from anyone else. She writes even more often than I do, and it’s fantastic.

This used to bother me (not the Gwyn part): I had a bug in my pants about “fairness.” Then I realized that I was being stupid. Yes, I love to receive letters. But I love to send them even more. It gives me pleasure to put time into choosing stationery and swirling words on a page. So I let go of the dumb idea that there is any sort of obligation involved in correspondence, and all of a sudden I sent more letters than ever.

For example: I have a friend who turned off blog comments on account of having a mild case of Being Famous. Now, every time I have something to say about her posts, I send her a letter. I hope she enjoys this half as much as I do. I’ve widened the scope of this idea, so that all sorts of random people have started receiving postcards containing comments to blog posts they made the week before. Perhaps this is confusing.

But I hope it makes them smile.

(Three letters sent yesterday, two today, plus two packages that I need to haul to the Post Office. I go through a LOT of stamps.)

Sometimes a girl has to fly

Last week I got an email that Continental had an e-saver to NC that would save me $300 on a ticket, so my sister and I cooked up A Plan. We pulled out our extremely weak and rusty deception skills, and I bought the ticket to fly home as a surprise for Mother’s Day.

Lissa picked me up, and when we got to Mom’s house she was working at the computer. I sauntered in, said, “hey,” and kept walking.

“Hey,” Mom said, and turned back to the monitor.

Then she looked up at Lissa, and it was a cartoon moment of BWAAAAH??!? as she turned slowly back to me, then jumped up.

She didn’t try to hug me or anything for several minutes, just touched my face, grasped my hand, and stared at me.

None of us remember what it is like to be an infant and be gazed at by our mother for the first time. But I imagine this moment was a little like that. She stared at me as if I were a secret wish that she couldn’t believe had come true.

And another one

My flash fiction piece “The Perils of Polarity” is up today at Everyday Weirdness.

A new story to read

My story “The Unkindness of Raven” is now available in the anthology Cover of Darkness.

Although Terrible Things tend to happen to people in my stories, I don’t often write horror. This story took a long time to find a home: I got a lot of very encouraging comments in the rejection letters, but I got the sense that many editors didn’t know what to DO with it.

It’s sort of a ghost story, and sort of not. The opening scene is entirely true, from an episode that happened one day many years ago when I was walking with my friend (and blog commenter) Gwyn up Damen Avenue to Village Thrift: a crow dropped its dinner on us.

Crows are often carnivorous. It was a disgusting experience. Things were poked. With a stick.

All of the home improvement stuff makes me miss my father more than ever. He would’ve been so relieved that we were finally fixing things up, and he would have wanted to know every detail.

He would’ve sent me endless emails with links to building materials and how-to videos.

At some point, he would’ve jumped in his truck and driven all the way down here to help, and I would’ve listened to him and Dingo outside working, joshing with one another.

That would’ve been a thing to cherish.

Ever so slightly busy

We had a board fall off our chimney during hurricane Rita in 2005. Nailed it back up.

Our chimney fell to pieces during hurricane Ike in 2008 (a very scary few days), and rain cascaded into our living room. We tried to escape to Austin for The Duration, but (a) the insurance company told us we had to “remediate” or they wouldn’t pay for any mold damage and (b) my workplace was only closed for one day. One day! Dang, it is not like I am mission-critical or I have anything to do with patients. I could’ve happily worked from Austin for a year.

But I digress.

Our excellent insurance company gave us some money to patch siding and replace carpet. Then a few Enormous Life Things happened, as they do, and we somehow got to last month without having fixed the siding. Then our neighbor invited us into her yard. Where about a quarter of the siding on that side of the house was lying in her yard.

I hate home ownership.

So there were phone calls and estimates and walk-throughs and blah-di-blahs, and then all of a sudden a crew was starting in four days. So we have had trees trimmed, fencing removed, a stump ground, insulation replaced, siding replaced and painted, and two window frames rebuilt (one with a new window). After a weekend of painting and cleaning, we still have a bunch of painting and gutter hanging left to go, but already we no longer have the ugliest house on the block.

That’s a relief, but UGH. Loud, messy, expensive. And one project always necessitates three more. One of the windows that needed to be re-framed is in the master bathroom, and now we have to replace the tile. That used to be low down on the list and has been bumped up to first place.

In the middle of all that, one of Dingo’s brothers got married (to a wonderful woman) in Austin on Thursday at this awesome place followed by a fun and yummy lunch here, and although it was a fun day and a beautiful wedding and I’m thrilled for all of them, we were a mite stressed out about a mid-week trip out of town while our house was torn up.

Somehow I have to stick it out until my vacation in July. How this will be possible, I do not know.

In the meantime, happy writing news:

My poem “Laying Small Ghosts” was accepted for Jabberwocky 5;

“The Wolf I Want” made the Locus Online recommended reading list for March!

Fun with vegetable matter

Last Saturday I took a class at the Museum of Printing History in which we bound a set of small books inspired by ancient Chinese books found at Dunhuang.

Whew, MAN! That was a fun 7 hours, I tell you. I have a few unfinished projects and a ton of supplies that my teacher gave  me, but here are the books I finished:

Whirlwind binding: the brown pages are paper made by our instructor and include bits of sewing patterns, in which there are tiny bits of words and numbers. The “spine” is made from strips of vinyl covered in cotton quilting fabric that I once used to make a set of cloth napkins for my sister.

Butterfly binding: tea-dyed  photocopies of antique court documents, joss paper “spine.” There’s a lot that I think is interesting about this super-simple binding technique, especially the possibilities of creating fake marginalia.

Stitched binding: this binding has folded leaves attached together, like the butterfly binding, but with the fold to the outside. Handmade paper again, and raffia poked through holes that run all the way through. I glued the ends of the raffia down, because I like how it makes them look like straps.

The inside:

Because of the folds, each of these “pages” could be turned into a pocket by gluing, or one can put totally inaccessible text inside.

Or!! Accessible text by using impermanent binding! Hey, that’s a good idea.

Pothi: isn’t this cute as hell? (in my language, “cyude as heyill”)

The pages are hand-torn, and the strap is twisted paper. The covers are pieces of vinyl (from venetian blinds) covered in paper.

So now I have lots of ideas. Now I just need to make myself sit down to play. My friend Sleuth S. asked me, “when are you going to start putting your own text inside your books?” which is an excellent question indeed.

Speaking of which, my poem “Laying Small Ghosts” was picked up for publication by Jabberwocky 5.

Two new recipes of note:

Stuffed pita pockets from Tea and Cookies. Tea writes a lovely blog full of beautiful pictures and yummy recipes. I don’t eat radishes that often, but I usually enjoy them. Instead of her cream cheese condiment, I used some artichoke-garlic dip left over from a Girl Gang party a couple of weeks ago, and it was a delicious little sandwich.

Egg muffins. What kind of genius idea is this? Frittata in muffin tins! I adjusted the recipe by using what I had in the fridge: feta, kalamata olives, chopped red bell pepper, sauteed leeks, and clippings from my shiny new herb pots. I haven’t had one yet, because their destiny lies as my breakfast this week, but they smell glorious.

I had sauteed leeks hanging around because I livened up Saturday morning’s cheese toast by layering them under some gruyere. My original idea had been mushrooms (a dinner last week), but alas! the mushrooms were beyond help. Still. WHY have I not regularly been putting veg under the cheese for my breakfast? Very yummy.

And finally, my Friday night and Saturday (all day) were eaten up reading Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis. It is terrific. I probably could’ve put it down, but I didn’t want to.

Oh yes: it gets worse

It’s not only the smooth tactility of writing with a good pen that draws me: it’s also the ink: Pantone charts of colors, mixing them, the  way a color graduates when you’ve changed the cartridge without cleaning the nib.

I use a screw-piston ink converter when I can, but given that my converters were all purchased at one point in time and my pens vary in age, the converters don’t fit every pen, but disposable cartridges do.

I like the J. Herbin cartridges, because (a) those colors! and (b) they come in those boffo little metal tubes.

Pear Tree Pen Company also sells a set – really a syringe – for refilling those little cartridges. ALSO ink samples!

Let me tell you about Pear Tree Pens: first, ink samples. Also, I got a handwritten note with my order. I asked several pain-in-the-butt questions, all of which were answered promptly and kindly. I totally recommend them.

The refill kit:

The refill process:

The samples I ordered:

From left to right, Noodler’s purple wampum, Rohrer & Klinger goldgrun, Noodler’s squetegue

A writing sample:

Squetegue (oh hey look, I spelled it wrong) is a fantastic greenish-greyish blue that I know I will use a lot. Right now I have the goldgrun in my everyday (fine-point) pen, and although I think it’s hideous (like baby poop), I also sort of love it.

Nerdery!

Some time along the mid-1990s, I thought that I did not have quite enough hobbies, so maybe I should take up collecting.

The obvious choice was fountain pens. Great! I love them. Then I discovered that many people collect fountain pens that don’t work. This perplexed me. What’s the point? That idea was a non-starter.

(Then I attempted to collect deviled-egg plates. I got to four of them and realized I would never actually feed a room of people that many deviled eggs, so my “collection” topped out at four. I’ve since sent two of those to other loving homes. THEN I made 108 deviled eggs for a party [all but six were eaten]. But I digress.)

When I was a kid, Dad had two cheap, scratchy fountain pens in the jar on his dresser: some kind of disposable thing with a green barrel, and they leaked like sieves, but I loved them. (I would not be surprised if they’re still there.) So I got the idea that I wanted my own fountain pen.

I got a very nice Pilot pen for Christmas. Unfortunately, I was 19, and it was pink. So while it was a lovely pen with a beautiful smooth line and a wonderfully skinny barrel, all I could ever think is how much I hated pink. (I no longer hate pink.)

Then I bought a Waterman, without thinking that perhaps it was 50% off for a reason. That thing scratched and leaked across 2 years of my life, and I cursed all the while.

Then, round about 1996, my friend Gorgeous Girl and I went to Pearl Art Supply on Chicago Avenue in Chicago and I found the Rotring Art Pen. That original pen, with a medium nib, has been worn down to about a 45 degree angle on the nib: it writes just fine but really only shows its true colors if I use it on an angled surface, like the Levenger editor’s desk I have at work.

Several years ago, Rotrings got difficult to find (certain ones are easier now), so I collected a bunch on eBay, from extra-fine to double broad. I sent the empty tins to my late friend Gill and the calligraphy nibs to my friend Aria. I have 11 of them, and the width of the nib I’m using is a direct correlation to my outlook, much like the length of my hair.

(At present: fine, chin-length. Things have been worse, but the mood is not particularly expansive.)

To be continued.