woman who reads too much

12:55 am: The good news:

One of the tunes Mungo is learning to play on his euphonium is the Monty Python theme song, a.k.a. Sousa's "Washington Post March".

Nixie scored 800 on her SAT math Subject Test.

10:44 pm: Okay I figured that a REALTOR® would have to be a person who liked to talk to people[*], but aiee! I don't know if I can do this.

Today I got to look at a house. All the other houses I called about were already under contract. All the realtors I spoke to asked lots of nosy questions, of course, in order to help them find other houses I might like to look at, but today's realtor -- the first who could show me the house I called about -- was also the first who asked, in that initial conversation, (1)what kinds of dogs I have and (2)what my children's names are.

She isn't free during Mungo's summer Band class, so we meet right after Band, so Mungo is with me. The first thing she says is how nice my voice sounded on the phone; it made her think I'd be the nicest person she ever met. I smile politely and say no, I just have a nice phone voice. Then she turns to Mungo, greets him by name, and exclaims, "You have great eyes!"[**] Neither Mungo nor I know how to respond to this. "How old are you?" she asks. He admits to being thirteen. "That explains it!" she says.[***] "Pretty soon, girls will be telling you that all the time."

To cope with two people who don't talk much, this realtor talks enough for three. She doesn't know how old the roof is, or what the crime rate in this neighborhood is, or how much the house next door is under contract for, but she can find points of commonality even with me. I tutor math; she tells me about her professor -- who she's still friends with -- who teaches teachers to teach math. She admires my "calm energy". She asks if she can give my contact details to a friend of hers whose daughter can't graduate from CSU because she can't pass algebra. She asks, again, what kind of dogs I have, and exclaims, "I love that you have mutts!"

A few hours later, she calls to tell me that her office has received an offer on the property I looked at. I don't call back.

I agreed to meet her on Wednesday to look at three other houses. Part of me wants to cancel. Another part wants to go, with a tape recorder, to collect samples of a character who, cheerfully and with all goodwill, would drive a character like me insane.


[*]although I can see an empty market niche: REALTOR® to introverts! No unnecessary communication! As much as possible, all communication through email! When face-to-face meetings are unavoidable, I only speak in response to your questions!

[**]This is not as insane as it sounds. He does have startlingly beautiful eyes.

[***]No. It has nothing to do with being thirteen. Perhaps the realtor comes from a culture where it is polite to give a compliment on meeting; for Mungo and me, personal remarks from strangers are the opposite of polite.

11:18 pm: self-pity fail.
+ New computer came!

- It doesn't have a modem. I didn't realize dial-up made me a Special Interest Group.

+ I can install a modem,

- using up one of its card slots.

- I was thinking STRUCK BY LIGHTNING meant involuntary hardware upgrade, but no. The only involuntary upgrade I got is

- Microsoft Vista.

I do not yet know whether new computer can run Microsoft Vista and chew gum at the same time, because it doesn't have a modem.

11:51 pm: First pesto!
OM NOM NOM

Summer goes by, and you eat pesto every week, and it's always good: you don't perceive any decline in pleasure. And then winter comes, and you eat the pesto you stored in the freezer, and you know it doesn't compare to the picked-chopped-eaten pesto of summer, but that was summer and this is winter, and it's still good. Then comes spring, and you plant new basil, and then comes summer, and you take the first harvest, and Oh! My! God! suddenly those arguments that misery exists so that we may appreciate happiness seem to make sense.

12:00 am: the spirit of next month
So much seems to happen in so few days, these days! Also we have had some weather.

In the four days I was away the grass grew knee-high, the weeds grew hip-high and flowered and set seed, the magpie babies hatched, the potatoes needed hilling, and and and.... There was a toad in the driveway when Nixie and I got home. Its eyes were open and its mouth was opening and shutting, but it didn't move, even when I wrapped my hands around it. It may have been laying eggs, or thinking about laying eggs, or just exhausted and confused by hopping through the tall wet grass. I carried it to a recently-weeded flowerbed near the house, where it hopped away.

We continued to have some weather. The surge protector failed to protect my computer. When I get my new(-to-me) computer, I'll see what I can salvage of my old data, but most likely, if you sent me anything in the last week of May, it's gone.

Then Hugh and Nixie and Mungo went to North Carolina, where they stayed in a lodge that only hikers, llamas, and, in emergencies, helicopters go to. They hiked to the top of what's called a mountain on the East coast, but could not see anything but fog. They visited Asheville and the raptor center in Charlottesville, where they were scandalized to learn that they name their educational birds.

I did really amazing amounts of work in the garden. I come in when it's too dark to tell weed from desired plant, whining, "But I just got started!"

Garden pics and details will follow.

11:22 pm: Y HELO THAR CAPN OBLIVIOUS
I just realized that when [attractive person I only talk to at Wiscon] said that their [relative] lives in Denver and they really should visit them, I could have said, "If you're ever at loose ends in Denver, I'd love to hang out with you."

L'esprit du mois prochain, c'est moi.

11:10 pm: Shiny happy Wiscon
Don't know what to make of this dream: I was in a small group of people having a Wiscon wrapup discussion. A woman was expressing strong opinions in French and English. A man was condescending to her. He shrugged dismissively at her and turned to ask me about something she'd said. She was very angry. She leaned over him in his chair, getting into his line of sight, demanding that he respond to her. When he continued dismissing her, she bit off the tip of his nose. He grabbed her and a pair of scissors and snipped off the tip of her nose. I started crying. I picked up their nose tips to give them back, but I mixed them up. Then I was running down halls and escalators, sobbing, trying to get them bags of ice and transport to the hospital.


The real Wiscon was wonderful. It's always the high point of my year, but this was the best yet. There was a certain amount of needing to be Nixie's mom instead of enjoying myself, but it was more than outweighed by the pleasure of sharing something I love with someone I love.

I was anxious about moderating my first panel but it went very well. The only difficult bit was a panelist who didn't know how to stop talking. I helped him find stopping points, using several of the techniques suggested by wild_irises, and he thanked me for it afterwards. I got positive feedback from hobbitbabe, kalmn, piglet, and Nixie, who decided to attend after I promised not to point at her and say, "That Girl can tell you whether I walk my talk."

Now I am all RAWR! Give me the panel on "Male Genital Mutilation: Religious Freedom or Human Rights Violation?" I can moderate anything!

I expect I will come to my senses before panel sign-up comes around again.

I was gnawing my fingers off at the Mod Squad panel on Friday. Then the person I sat next to said, "Oh, you're boxofdelights!" We had a brief intense conversation about whose comments threads we knew each other from (jonquil) and the LJ to Dreamwidth transition, and then I said that I had to meet people for dinner, but if he'd like to get together later to continue the conversation, and he looked flustered and said he had to meet his partner. Ha! All the rest of my life I am perceived as a sexless being; I forget that at Wiscon it ain't necessarily so!

Shiny Wiscon people, I know that my delight in your conversation seems very much like flirting -- probably because it is very much like flirting -- but I assure you: no matter how much I like you, I will not imagine that you want to do with me anything other than talk.

Tags: nixie, wiscon

12:57 pm: signal boosting
If you identify as a person of color and as a science fiction/fantasy fan, this LJ comm would like to know.

Thanks to schemingreader for the pointer.

11:40 pm: Okay! I called my mom on Mother's Day and made her very happy.

My stepfather, who has diabetes, has an infection in his foot. My nephew Sasha has swine flu. I am wishing them both well.

I still have Dreamwidth invite codes. Comment with your email if you want one. Comments screened.

12:35 am: After nine days of no self-pity, I have to reset my count.

Not sure why. Today was full of small annoyances and disappointments, with no particular delights, but that's more likely a result of my mood than the cause.



Try again tomorrow. (I'm going to kick tomorrow.)

09:44 pm: invites
Also I have Dreamwidth invites. Email me if you want one.

Tags: dreamwidth

09:38 pm: magpies
I love magpies. I love their beauty. I love their brains. I even love their unlovely voices.

This spring, there's a magpie who often hangs around near me while I'm gardening. Not within six feet, but not all that much farther. I assume it's one that was born here, and perhaps learned in its early days that



the digging woman is not much of a predator.

Perhaps it has also noticed that the digging woman unearths more grubs than she eats.

However, I am wondering: are magpies -- I'm not sure how to ask this! -- are they predators? I know they'll eat other birds' eggs and nestlings, and I assume they'd eat a nest of baby mice if they found one, but I recently watched a magpie carry a dead adult mouse into a flower bed and hide it under the mulch. Could it have killed the mouse? Is this normal? Am I witnessing something like the opening scene of 2001?

Three days with no self-pity.

Tags: delights

11:54 pm: "Pain and conflict are, to a large extent, the result of a discrepancy
between the way we think others should treat us, react to us, and
appreciate us, and the way they actually do. Many of our miseries are
thus rooted in self-pity, the most worthless of all human emotions."

--Ann Davies, Qabalist teacher


Got that from Rob Breszny this week. He has a gift, that man, for telling me things that may not be true but are certainly what I need to hear.

I'm going to see how long I can go without feeling sorry for myself. I expect self-pity to be back for a visit in a month-ish; that's getting harder and harder to predict these days; but for now I will count One! One wonderful day without feeling sorry for myself! Ahahahah!

11:23 pm: Local girlchild is sitting next to me prepping for the ACT, which she will take tomorrow. Her test prep book, for which I paid $34, is a feculent heap of falsehoods[*]. nellorat, the field is wide open.

Nixie will do very very well. When I am sitting next to her, she knows this. She sails through the practice exams. When I try to leave, her brain freezes. Unfortunately she is not the sort of person who would benefit from a magical presence-of-mom token. But she will do very very well nevertheless.


[*]Here's a typical example, demonstrating that Mark Alan Stewart, the author of Peterson's Ultimate ACT Tool Kit, does not understand the difference between speed and distance:

If a train travels r + 2 miles in h hours, which of the following represents the number of miles the train travels in one hour 30 minutes?

a. (3r + 6)/2h
b. 3r/(h + 2)
c. (r + 2)/(h + 3)
d. r/(h + 6)
e. 3/2 * (r + 2)

The correct answer is a. This is an algebraic word problem involving rate of motion (speed). You can solve this problem either conventionally or by using the plug-in strategy.

the conventional way: Notice that all of the answer choices contain fractions. This is a clue that you should try to create a fraction as you solve the problem. Here's how to do it. Given that the train travels r + 2 miles in h hours, you can express its rate in mph as (r + 2)/h. In 3/2 hours, the train would travel 3/2 this distance: (3/2)([r + 2]/h) = (3r + 6)/2h

The plug-in strategy: let r = 8 and h = 1. Given these values, the train travels ten miles in one hour. So, obviously, in 1.5 hours the train will travel 15 miles. Start plugging these r and h values into the answer choices. You won't need to go any further than choice a. (3r +6)/2h = (3[8] + 6)/(2[1]) = 30/2 = 15

11:01 pm: While cleaning the gutters, Hugh found this

unidentified object

inside one, tied to a gutter spike. Is it supposed to stop things from blocking the downspout? And if so, how?

Tags: unidentified object

11:23 am: The Big Orange Splot
"My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be, and it looks like all my dreams."

I may be misquoting. I could not find Daniel Pinkwater's The Big Orange Splot to check my memory against the text. But this expresses my hopes for Dreamwidth. I'm boxofdelights over there too.

Tags: dreamwidth

11:32 pm: ow!
As a tiny kid, I got paper cuts all the time. Eventually my skin thickened until I could turn pages without getting sliced. But I get to revisit this sensation every spring, as I pull out dead plant material and burgeoning weeds with winter-soft hands.

Why don't I wear gloves? I do! Until I get carried away by those perennial weeds. When you're pulling a really weedy weed out by the roots, you can feel whether the next tug is going to get a significant chunk or just pull off the top -- but you have to take your gloves off to feel it.

So I was pulling this very vigorous grass out of a flowerbed when a dried blade from last year inserted itself into my thumb. I have two parallel wounds a half-centimeter apart. One is just like a paper cut; in the other, the grass didn't slice my skin but went under it and broke off. Yes, I stabbed myself on a blade of grass.


Then this evening I was playing Make The Big Dog Run. He runs beautifully and efficiently; my best gait is a gentle jog for him. To get him to gallop I need another person to stand at the other end of the driveway and call him back and forth. Alone, if I catch him in a playful mood, I can get him to lope in big circles while I dash this way and that. Kitsu helps by trying to bite him whenever he comes near.

So he came lolloping toward me where I stood on the gravel driveway. I feinted to the right, and my left foot slid away from me, dropping me on my right knee. Two pieces of gravel made it through my pants and into my knee.

The knee wounds look more impressive but don't hurt nearly as much as the thumb.

Tags: garden

10:03 pm: So far this spring I have planted:

19 Jerusalem artichokes
48 cloves of garlic
10 Red Norland, 8 Inca Gold, & 18 All Blue potatoes
3 summer and 3 ever-bearing red raspberry canes
12 pinks

and from seed:
peas
spinach
lettuce
perennial peavine


Also there is a mouse in my room. A VERY LOUD mouse.

Tags: garden

10:09 pm: I finished planting potatoes today. Which is a lovely feeling, since with potatoes, well begun really is half done.

You guys all saw Alison Bechdel's review of Jane Vandenburgh's A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century, right?

Tags: garden

04:32 pm: SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): If you ever wanted to learn how to do lucid
dreams or out-of-body travel or shamanic explorations that help you
retrieve lost portions of your soul, this is an excellent time to begin.
You're in an astrological phase when the veil between this world and the
other side is thinner than usual, and that means you could make
connections that haven't been possible before. If the things I mentioned
in the beginning are too woo-woo or scary for you, there are other ways
to take advantage of current conditions. First, you could conduct
productive imaginary conversations with the spirits of dead friends and
relatives. Second, you could do intense meditations in which you imprint
the future with scenarios you'd love to see come to pass. And third, you'll
probably be able to incubate a highly informative dream by asking your
unconscious mind a well-formulated question that you'd love to get
guidance about.

The Two Paths spread provides insight into an important decision ahead of you, the possible outcomes, and the forces that draw you towards each of these outcomes.

The top left card represents the first possible outcome. The Sun: A time of contentment and freedom from restraints. Creative inspiration. Achievement, success, and warmth. Light and love in personal or business matters. Happiness and faithfulness in a relationship.

The top right card represents the second possible outcome. Nine of Wands (Strength), when reversed: Delayed preparations for an impending trial. Efforts compromised by traitors or saboteurs. The scattering of forces before the conclusive battle is fought. Ill health and faltering of the will.

The middle left card represents the force drawing you towards the first possible outcome. Ace of Wands, when reversed: The seed of a new crisis - perhaps as yet unseen. The start of an explosive situation threatening to consume all who get too close. The herald of birth, invention, or upheaval. An innate and primal force unleashed. May suggest a surge of vitality, creativity, or fertility that can set dangerous events in motion.

The middle right card represents the force drawing you towards the second possible outcome. Two of Cups (Love), when reversed: Instability in romance, friendship, or business. A deep infatuation that excludes existing friends. A false promise or premature commitment. The entanglement of male and female interpreted in the broadest sense. The profaning of the sacred through the introduction of base desire. Folly, depletion, and waste. May suggest conflict, divorce, or a severing of ties.

The bottom card represents the critical factor that decides what will come to pass. Four of Pentacles (Power), when reversed: Using your power freely for your own enjoyment and the betterment of others. Coming to grips with progress and using your position to help it along. Finding security and identity someplace other than in the possession of material things. Letting go and encouraging others to find their own path. Being magnanimous and generous with your success.

Tags: tarot

04:42 pm: alan garner interview
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j6xxz/Alan_Garner_The_Return_to_Brisingamen/

Thanks to eegatland

02:31 pm: blizzard
March woke up and said, "Hey, I'm supposed to be the snowiest, aren't I? I'd better get busy!" Schools closed three hours early. We're all home safe, and even still connected to the internet. I hope I don't have to drive at all tomorrow.

08:54 pm: yay spring
81 degrees today, snow tomorrow. So they say. Yay spring!

Mungo and I have been spring cleaning the house and readying the garden. His motivation here is to earn video game time, but we have not forgotten to have fun doing it. Tomorrow he goes back to school.

Nixie and Hugh are in Portland for a couple more days, visiting Reed. It is so! quiet! here without her.

10:47 pm: anhedonia
A person I care about -- let's call her Anne -- says she's never been less happy than she is now. She has no desire to live, she just needs to. For a few more years. (Until her kids are grown, I think she means.) She has no suicide plans, she just doesn't expect to be around much longer. Work is deadly. She experiences occasional brief moments of joy when her kids do something great. Despite all that, she's not depressed.

I say, I don't know what you think depression is, but that's what I'd call all that.

She shrugs. Whatever. Is it not depression because she doesn't feel sad? Is it not depression because it doesn't keep her from getting up and going to work every day? She shrugs. She doesn't argue when I call it anhedonia.

She has felt like this for a few years. She has given me a few glimpses of it, but this is the first time she's laid it all out.

She brushes me off when I talk about trying to change this. What does it matter?

She stops brushing me off when I say this is bad for her children. How, exactly, she asks, is she harming her children? I don't know how to answer.

As a parent, a depressive, and the child of a depressed person, I have never tried to put into words why a depressed parent is bad for kids. Isn't it obvious?

Well, it's obvious when you leave your three- and five-year-olds in the bath for hours, because you can't cope with them; but Anne never does anything like that. She copes.

It's obvious to me when I snap at my kids undeservedly, or spread a miasma of misery, or fail to let them know that the world is a better place because they're in it; but I don't think I would accept someone else pointing that out to me when I didn't see it.

Help?

02:53 pm: shilling
Go take a look at http://42magazine.com. It's a work of art, a labor of love, the launch of a new magazine about Peace :: Justice :: Ecology :: Economy :: Self-reliance :: Simplicity :: Reason :: Joy :: Love :: Art and everything else that gives life meaning. Go look!

09:08 pm: Evil.
Everyone I know personally who believes that abortion is morally wrong is in favor of preventing unwanted pregnancies by making complete, truthful sex education and contraception readily available. Even my mother. I feel moved to say that because I am going to talk about one of the other kind of anti-abortionists.

Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis voted against a bill requiring doctors to test pregnant women for HIV unless they opted out, because it tended to remove the negative consequences of sexual promiscuity. He later clarified that, telling the Rocky Mountain News,

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

Does Dave Schultheis want to protect innocent babies? No, he does not. He wants to punish promiscuous sluts who have sex he doesn't approve of, and he hopes that innocent babies contract AIDS in order to help him do that.

07:46 pm: My potatoes and garlic and Jerusalem artichokes have come!



Now I must choose when to plant them. The planting guide included by the grower says two weeks before the last frost date, but that would be late April. I've never left it that late. March 17 is traditional of course, but that tradition didn't come from this climate. I want to do it now! Look at my beautiful trenches!


Okay maybe they are not beautiful. Except to me. Here are some beautiful little irises sticking their tongues at you!


Tags: garden

11:58 am: I proposed this Wiscon panel, and said I wanted to be on it, and offered to moderate:

Open and Affirming Childrearing

What do you say when a child you're coaching uses the word "gay" as an insult? If your brother tries to protect his son by suppressing his nelly behavior, how can you help? When your preschooler has an argument with a friend over whether girls can marry girls, how much should you explain? How can we treat the children in our lives with respect for their sexuality, their gender identity, their gender expression, and their privacy? Let's share stories about and ideas for doing this better.

Moderating, I thought: posing topics, asking questions, noticing who wants to speak, calling on people; I can do that!

Then I read badgerbag's and src's descriptions of the Scalzi Rule panel at Potlatch, and I realized that in order to be a good moderator I'm going to have to be able to shut people up.

(I might not have to do it, but I think I have to be able to.)

Advice, please?

07:11 pm: theme
My son is watching V for Vendetta and I recently recommended Daughters of the North to my husband. I thought, I should get Nixie to read The Good Terrorist and then we'd have... some really interesting dinner-table conversation!

Alas, Nixie, being a teenager, is out with her friends this evening.

What should I read for thematic unity?

09:52 pm: Spring is coming
and global warming is already here, so why aren't my potatoes? I have dug over this year's potato bed and now I want to plant! But my seed potatoes are not even in the mail yet.