Apparently I tend to switch back and forth between angsting and crafting on here. I suppose that's sort of what a blog's for, but I'm not sure if the angsty stuff is the best use of my time. It does serve to get the feelings out, and that's a hell of a lot more constructive than some of the other methods out there, but I don't know if it's actually worth putting on here or if I'd be better off just journaling.
I'm tinkering with beads lately, in the world of crafting. I signed up for a table at a local festival in September and now I'm in the process of making sure I have enough stock for the day. I have a lot of bracelets put together, and a bunch of glass bead necklaces of the random multi-coloured type, and I've been on a bottle pendant kick the last couple of weeks. I've been sticking dried flowers and sea shells and rock salt and other bits and pieces into little glass bottles, attaching wire to the corks, and then gluing the corks in.
My knitting group has provided feedback so I'm under orders to make a few more sets of earrings in a specific type, and I have a few ideas of things I want to try out. I have about six weeks to go, which is both exciting and terrifying. I'll be getting around to taking pictures at some point, so I'll share a few of those then.
30 July 2016
22 July 2016
never-ending tragedy
It's hard, some days, especially after the last couple weeks, to think about what's going on in the world without wanting to swear copiously, or bang my head against the wall, or just huddle in a ball on the floor. I'm currently far from most places where the world seems to be going to hell, but that doesn't mean I don't care.
And it's turned into a polarizing mess. I got into an actual shouting match with someone who called me up to yell at me about something I'd posted on social media. That was new, and it really sucked, especially when I realized that I wasn't the better person - I shouted back and it got more than a little nasty.
I have nightmares about Trump getting elected. The kind of nightmares that make me wonder if, in a few years, it'll even be safe for me to visit friends and family in the States like I do now. I already get twitchy visiting the States because the gun laws are so lax. The more sensible part of my psyche reminds me that borrowing trouble isn't worth it; I have enough to do as it is and don't need to fixate on worst-case scenario stuff that may not happen.
I've discovered that I fucking hate systemic racism and that it makes me really, really angry. I hated it before but being more aware of it just intensifies those feelings. I hate bombings and shootings and I just want people to stop killing each other already.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I suppose that's the point of writing this. Getting some of it out helps. The anxiety's been crappy, the depression's just there, and every time I check the news it gets worse, so then I feel worse. It's like it never stops.
18 June 2016
a reaction
So, we were out of town on Sunday, down in the States for a week, visiting my family. And then we heard the news about Pulse.
The first news I heard didn't mention that it was a gay club. The next news I heard, about the rising death toll, also didn't mention that. I don't think I realized it until I managed to read something that mentioned that little fact on Monday.
We were down in central-eastern Oregon, out in a rural area, with no cell phone coverage and while there was wi-fi where we stayed, we spent a lot of time hiking and so didn't exactly have 24/7 news constantly available.
It didn't really seem real at first, and like a lot of things for me, it took a few days for the emotional reaction to really hit. And then it did, a couple days ago.
I've never been a club person, but I know how important they are to the LGBTQ community. They're a sanctuary, and that sanctuary has been violated. These are my people, for all that I don't really get much of a chance to spend time with the local community at the moment, for all I wonder how welcome I'd be sometimes, given I'm bisexual and married to a man. But I don't really care right now, about bi erasure and all that.
What I care about now is the horrific loss that we've just experienced. I hate guns, and I hate violence, and I hate the facets of this culture that have helped create an environment in which events like this happen. I hate that so much of the religious right is expressing sympathy now for people in death when they've been doing so much to dehumanize us (and it's seemed so vocal, their hate, in the last year).
I don't like hate. It's one of those negative emotions I tend to shy away from, but it has its place. Anger has its place. And it should be part of the reaction to this. I'm angry, and I'm sad, and I hate that this happened.
And that's where I am now. Perhaps I'll have something more useful in a couple days.
The first news I heard didn't mention that it was a gay club. The next news I heard, about the rising death toll, also didn't mention that. I don't think I realized it until I managed to read something that mentioned that little fact on Monday.
We were down in central-eastern Oregon, out in a rural area, with no cell phone coverage and while there was wi-fi where we stayed, we spent a lot of time hiking and so didn't exactly have 24/7 news constantly available.
It didn't really seem real at first, and like a lot of things for me, it took a few days for the emotional reaction to really hit. And then it did, a couple days ago.
I've never been a club person, but I know how important they are to the LGBTQ community. They're a sanctuary, and that sanctuary has been violated. These are my people, for all that I don't really get much of a chance to spend time with the local community at the moment, for all I wonder how welcome I'd be sometimes, given I'm bisexual and married to a man. But I don't really care right now, about bi erasure and all that.
What I care about now is the horrific loss that we've just experienced. I hate guns, and I hate violence, and I hate the facets of this culture that have helped create an environment in which events like this happen. I hate that so much of the religious right is expressing sympathy now for people in death when they've been doing so much to dehumanize us (and it's seemed so vocal, their hate, in the last year).
I don't like hate. It's one of those negative emotions I tend to shy away from, but it has its place. Anger has its place. And it should be part of the reaction to this. I'm angry, and I'm sad, and I hate that this happened.
And that's where I am now. Perhaps I'll have something more useful in a couple days.
30 May 2016
music education
Recently, I decided to try to get E. listening to more music, in an effort to help her improve her speech. So I pulled up some children's music on YouTube and tried listening to it with her. After a few songs, I went back to the computer and switched to a channel of Broadway songs. Much better. But it got me thinking.
I was a 90's kid, but I know next to nothing about the music of 80's and 90's. My family listened to NPR and to a collection of records, tapes, and CDs that, while diverse, skewed heavily towards classical, folk, and Broadway music. I could blame my lack of knowledge about pop music on my parents (Mom always said she needed to give me something to talk to my therapist about), but that's not really fair. They love music and listen to a lot of different things, but they also have well-formed opinions about what they want to listen to, and well, a lot of pop stuff isn't really on that list. We did listen to a number of Christian artists, but all of them were more musically interesting than a lot of the popular worship songs today seem to be (at least as far as I remember; I've been in the Anglican world of hymns for the last couple years and completely out of touch with what's in with the rest of the North American church right now).
I was content to listen to what we had available at home for a long time and didn't start seeking other genres out until I was nearly out of high school, and even then I limited myself mostly to Christian pop music because that's what a lot of my friends listened to and I wanted to know what they were talking about. And it seemed safer; like I was exploring something that was off-limits but wouldn't actually get me in trouble. My teenage rebellion was very reserved in that way (my really big rebellion was going to a play audition without permission and then I felt horrible about it and cried for hours).
These days I'm thinking about how I knew most of the words to all the songs in The Secret Garden and Les Miserables but had only the faintest idea of who Madonna was. Angsty teenage me wasn't listening to Ani diFranco but to Simon and Garfunkel. I was busy memorizing lyrics to traditional British folk songs while some kids I went to school with were starting a metal band. Picking up a few CDs of Christian rock music when I was about sixteen seemed edgy in a weird way. It wasn't what my family listened to, and Avalon and the Newsboys were out of place in my collection that included the cast recordings of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked and the second CD by Nickel Creek. I was still the geeky teenager blasting PDQ Bach's "1712 Overture" out the windows as I drove to community college. But I listened to my new music religiously (hah) and sang along when I was alone in the car and then when I went off to university, I got another music education from my peers.
My roommate introduced me to a few other Christian bands whose music I still actually enjoy sometimes and my boyfriend made me listen to The Arrogant Worms. I listened to more Celtic music and cemented my love of it and then borrowed my brother's Celtic CDs whenever I was home from school. I got more daring in the music I listened to - I learned that I really did enjoy rock music and sometimes found it excellent for studying. Another friend was playing Regina Spektor once and I found myself hunting through the CD section at the store for one of her albums.
Later my knowledge of music broadened as I listened to podcasts and then more as I watched the first seasons of Glee and got my first real exposure to pop music. I swear, I don't think I'd ever really heard any of Brittany Spear's music until the episode featuring her songs. I admittedly don't like all pop music but I do enjoy some of what's out there. I sometimes pick up other songs that I like from music used on television shows that I enjoy. I found a couple of artists I really enjoyed from watching Castle, for example.
These days, our go-to car music is CBC Radio 2. E. is growing up listening to the variety of music they have on offer there, paired with whatever my current obsession is. Last winter it was most of the songs in Rent. Right now it's a mix of folk and indie music, and occasionally Broadway songs and a lot of Great Big Sea. I'm sprinkling in some children's music, too, just so she has stuff with vocabulary that she can follow more easily. There was a mix of children's music I picked up at the library recently that's performed by a variety of different artists and I liked most of that.
The appreciation of music I gained from my parents' choices in music has made me want to impart that to my own child. My parents didn't censor our music - I learned about prostitution and suicide from Les Mis and adultery from Into the Woods, and realized after a while that one of the really lovely songs from Once on This Island was basically about the main characters having sex with each other (also learned quite a bit about racism from that musical). Our family typically didn't listen to things with profanity in them (other than Paul Simon's The Capeman but my mom usually skipped the songs with swear words or very explicit lyrics in them when we kids were in the room), but otherwise didn't fuss so much about the content of the songs. I don't object to the occasional swear word, so there are a few songs that I will listen to around my child that other parents would probably skip over (though there are some that I still object to, like Book of Mormon's "Hasa Diga Eebawai" because holy profanity, Batman! That one goes way too far for me - there's judicious, thoughtful use of profanity and then there's that).
I'm still searching out more children's music that we can all enjoy. I can listen to Raffi and Fred Penner without the songs driving me nuts, but there's a lot of really mediocre children's music out there. To be fair, there's just a lot of mediocre music out there in general. If that means we're listening to Candide instead of whatever's in for E.'s generation, well, she can always catch up later, like I did. And then she can complain about how we deprived her of the music her peers liked to her therapist when she grows up.
13 April 2016
Adulthood, one bowl of pasta at a time
While making spaghetti sauce this evening (Bolognese-ish style), I suddenly found myself remembering one of those days when it had hit me that I was turning into an adult. I don't ever feel entirely like an adult, but I have moments where I have the sudden realization that I am not a child. Oh, I know that, all the time, and go about my day, but it's the sort of knowledge that resides in the back of my mind.
The day I remembered was an afternoon in late autumn when I was in my third year of undergrad. I was hanging out and doing homework in the common area of my boyfriend's dorm. At that time, he lived in a dorm with a big shared kitchen, and it was always fun to camp out and watch the guys he lived with figuring out how to cook edible food. While it wasn't a new skill for many of them, some of them got more than a little creative in their efforts. We kept wondering if the guy who literally lived on meat and potatoes, no salt, would develop a vitamin deficiency. J.'s roommate seemed to mostly subsist on instant kimchi noodles. And J. himself was a big fan of orange juice smoothies. Made mostly with a can of orange juice concentrate and very little else.
Anyway, that day, J. was still in class and I was doing homework, and one of our mutual friends was making spaghetti. He could definitely cook, and cook well, but he preferred non-Western food. This was his first time making a spaghetti (Bolognese) sauce. He called me over to taste it. He felt like something was missing but didn't know what. "Needs more oregano," I said, almost without thought, after tasting the sauce. So he added more oregano and went on with his dinner preparation.
I remember the moment because I then noticed I had become someone who could figure out what a sauce was missing, a skill I had mostly attributed to adults. And all of sudden, I was one of them.
Adulthood, in my experience, is something that comes in small experiences which add up to a large whole. It doesn't happen instantly, overnight. It's a process. It doesn't mean I have to act like the token grownup 24/7, but it does mean that those responsibilities of adulthood, of being the grownup, become more familiar every day. Sometimes it means that I floss my teeth every day, whether I want to or not, as an example to my daughter and to avoid massive dental bills in the future, and sometimes I means I can tell when a sauce needs another spoonful of oregano.
The day I remembered was an afternoon in late autumn when I was in my third year of undergrad. I was hanging out and doing homework in the common area of my boyfriend's dorm. At that time, he lived in a dorm with a big shared kitchen, and it was always fun to camp out and watch the guys he lived with figuring out how to cook edible food. While it wasn't a new skill for many of them, some of them got more than a little creative in their efforts. We kept wondering if the guy who literally lived on meat and potatoes, no salt, would develop a vitamin deficiency. J.'s roommate seemed to mostly subsist on instant kimchi noodles. And J. himself was a big fan of orange juice smoothies. Made mostly with a can of orange juice concentrate and very little else.
Anyway, that day, J. was still in class and I was doing homework, and one of our mutual friends was making spaghetti. He could definitely cook, and cook well, but he preferred non-Western food. This was his first time making a spaghetti (Bolognese) sauce. He called me over to taste it. He felt like something was missing but didn't know what. "Needs more oregano," I said, almost without thought, after tasting the sauce. So he added more oregano and went on with his dinner preparation.
I remember the moment because I then noticed I had become someone who could figure out what a sauce was missing, a skill I had mostly attributed to adults. And all of sudden, I was one of them.
 |
| My current version of spaghetti, which includes carrots, cheese, and pork. |
07 April 2016
assorted things I read and write
It feels like most of my recent posts have been on the heavy emotional side. Well, that's where I was when I wrote them, so it's fine, but I'm having a good day, so I figured I'd write something less serious. Earlier this week I had a couple of bad days which reminded me to appreciate the good days when I have them (oh, the joys of depression).
My recent reading has been a tad bit eclectic. I skimmed through The Selection by Kiera Cass after picking it up on a whim at the library. Hints of fairy tale plus the Book of Esther plus a dash of dystopia with a side of teenager. Enjoyable but not particularly remarkable. Typical for a lot of the romance dystopia teen books that seem to be popular right now.
I'm working my way through Kate Bowler's Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. I've never completely understood the full-blown prosperity gospel, though I do get some of its milder forms. My parents have never been excited about it. I remember my brother once saying, "God is not a vending machine." At any rate, this text is certainly informing me about where on earth this all came from. I'm still in the section on the late 1950s/early 1960s. I hadn't ever noticed the connection to the Pentecostal movement but that actually makes a great deal of sense. I might write a little more about it once I've finished the book.
And, as usual, I've been reading fanfiction here and there because I am hopeless geek. It's my friend Sarah James Elliot's fault. Years ago she got me into Harry Potter fanfiction, which eventually led me to Sherlock fanfiction, and it sort of went from there. I've been reading a lot of Avengers stuff lately. It's addictive, I swear. Plus, in the universe of fanfiction, Tony Stark does things like invent sentient toasters. (This, among other reasons, is why I haven't finished Ley Lines yet).
I tried reading a chapter book to E. recently. She was really into it until the last few chapters and then she got bored. She's only 2 1/2 so it's a tad early. My Father's Dragon seemed like a good start (she likes dragons, she likes animals, there are pictures) but she prefers Where the Wild Things Are most nights. I have that and a few other picture books just about memorized.
I've hit pause on my NCIS watching for the moment. I did seven seasons, one after the other, as I got them from the library (have I ever mentioned just how freaking awesome the library is?), and I think I need to take a break. Otherwise I'll end up dreaming about a body turning up at Rock Creek Park (is there no other park nearby for the show's killers to dump bodies?). I have a book to finish, a couple submissions to tweak and send out, and a handful of knitting projects to complete.
I worked on Ley Lines this week. Really. But then I got lost in a side story about a character from what will be a companion series to Comrades. After Ley Lines, and the third book, Sword Song, we're scooting back in time to check out some of Peterkin's predecessors and their adventures. I have a couple other plans in mind for different books that are unrelated to the Comrades universe, so I don't know if we'll be getting the Greatmagi series going right after Sword Song or if I'll tackle something different first to take a break from that world.
And with that, we'll call this update complete. Time to do something besides typing for a little while.
My recent reading has been a tad bit eclectic. I skimmed through The Selection by Kiera Cass after picking it up on a whim at the library. Hints of fairy tale plus the Book of Esther plus a dash of dystopia with a side of teenager. Enjoyable but not particularly remarkable. Typical for a lot of the romance dystopia teen books that seem to be popular right now.
I'm working my way through Kate Bowler's Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. I've never completely understood the full-blown prosperity gospel, though I do get some of its milder forms. My parents have never been excited about it. I remember my brother once saying, "God is not a vending machine." At any rate, this text is certainly informing me about where on earth this all came from. I'm still in the section on the late 1950s/early 1960s. I hadn't ever noticed the connection to the Pentecostal movement but that actually makes a great deal of sense. I might write a little more about it once I've finished the book.
And, as usual, I've been reading fanfiction here and there because I am hopeless geek. It's my friend Sarah James Elliot's fault. Years ago she got me into Harry Potter fanfiction, which eventually led me to Sherlock fanfiction, and it sort of went from there. I've been reading a lot of Avengers stuff lately. It's addictive, I swear. Plus, in the universe of fanfiction, Tony Stark does things like invent sentient toasters. (This, among other reasons, is why I haven't finished Ley Lines yet).
I tried reading a chapter book to E. recently. She was really into it until the last few chapters and then she got bored. She's only 2 1/2 so it's a tad early. My Father's Dragon seemed like a good start (she likes dragons, she likes animals, there are pictures) but she prefers Where the Wild Things Are most nights. I have that and a few other picture books just about memorized.
I've hit pause on my NCIS watching for the moment. I did seven seasons, one after the other, as I got them from the library (have I ever mentioned just how freaking awesome the library is?), and I think I need to take a break. Otherwise I'll end up dreaming about a body turning up at Rock Creek Park (is there no other park nearby for the show's killers to dump bodies?). I have a book to finish, a couple submissions to tweak and send out, and a handful of knitting projects to complete.
I worked on Ley Lines this week. Really. But then I got lost in a side story about a character from what will be a companion series to Comrades. After Ley Lines, and the third book, Sword Song, we're scooting back in time to check out some of Peterkin's predecessors and their adventures. I have a couple other plans in mind for different books that are unrelated to the Comrades universe, so I don't know if we'll be getting the Greatmagi series going right after Sword Song or if I'll tackle something different first to take a break from that world.
And with that, we'll call this update complete. Time to do something besides typing for a little while.
15 March 2016
adventures in jewelry making
My experience has been that learning new crafts takes time and often what I make starts out looking pretty messy until I've had some practice. This has been true for sewing (still is, sometimes), for knitting, and definitely for crochet. Oh, and ceramics. I spent three terms in ceramics class, loved it, and was only just starting to get out of the clunky Paleolithic stage by the end of the year. I'd still love to do ceramics, but I'd need a few hundred dollars going spare (which isn't really the hardest part) and someone to look after the tiny one a couple afternoons a week so I could take classes at one of the local art centres.
As I've been experimenting with jewelry, I've learned a few things. Wireworking, the kind that looks absolutely amazing, takes practice. Manipulating wire isn't a skill that comes without effort. To that end, I've been getting books out of the library and looking at online tutorials, and tinkering. Yesterday I pulled out my kitchen torch to see if it was high-powered enough for me to do some basic metal-working. I learned that no, it really isn't, but it will definitely get copper wire hot enough to burn. My fingers didn't really thank me for that lesson.
One of the books I've looked at is Handcrafted Metal Findings, edited by Denise Peck and Jane Dickerson. I don't have the tools to do most of the projects in there (see above paragraph about my kitchen torch), but there are a couple that are on the more basic side. Like the one below.
I thought those links and clasps looked like a great idea. I had wire, I had pliers, I had a hammer. That's all I needed, right? The first one might look a little wonky, but it'd be fine once I practiced tinkering with the wire and twisting it for the centre bit. I measured and cut my wire and I was off.
Yes, well, good ideas and best laid plans and all that. As you can see, my first forays into this particular piece were not precisely how the book intended them to be. The tight centre spiral is harder to produce that I thought it would be. Next time I'm double-checking to make sure the label on the wire says "dead soft." I need all the help I can get. And the leaf shaping on each side will take some more practice to get it looking the way I'd like. I don't need them to be exactly like the picture (as that's rather boring), but it would be nice if my version wasn't quite so, ah, messy, in appearance.
I'm going to give another go at some point. I'm trying something a little simpler from a different book by the same authors right now instead. Coiled links, using a crochet hook as my mandrel. So far, much better.
As I've been experimenting with jewelry, I've learned a few things. Wireworking, the kind that looks absolutely amazing, takes practice. Manipulating wire isn't a skill that comes without effort. To that end, I've been getting books out of the library and looking at online tutorials, and tinkering. Yesterday I pulled out my kitchen torch to see if it was high-powered enough for me to do some basic metal-working. I learned that no, it really isn't, but it will definitely get copper wire hot enough to burn. My fingers didn't really thank me for that lesson.
One of the books I've looked at is Handcrafted Metal Findings, edited by Denise Peck and Jane Dickerson. I don't have the tools to do most of the projects in there (see above paragraph about my kitchen torch), but there are a couple that are on the more basic side. Like the one below.
 | |
| From "Handcrafted Metal Findings" edited by Denise Peck and Jane Dickerson |
I thought those links and clasps looked like a great idea. I had wire, I had pliers, I had a hammer. That's all I needed, right? The first one might look a little wonky, but it'd be fine once I practiced tinkering with the wire and twisting it for the centre bit. I measured and cut my wire and I was off.
Yes, well, good ideas and best laid plans and all that. As you can see, my first forays into this particular piece were not precisely how the book intended them to be. The tight centre spiral is harder to produce that I thought it would be. Next time I'm double-checking to make sure the label on the wire says "dead soft." I need all the help I can get. And the leaf shaping on each side will take some more practice to get it looking the way I'd like. I don't need them to be exactly like the picture (as that's rather boring), but it would be nice if my version wasn't quite so, ah, messy, in appearance.
I'm going to give another go at some point. I'm trying something a little simpler from a different book by the same authors right now instead. Coiled links, using a crochet hook as my mandrel. So far, much better.
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