Muddles, mistakes, and mumblings

Due to weather and tardy relief personnel at work, I got home well after midnight last night. Wasn't in the least sleepy, so I watched old movies until after 2AM. Slept until eleven this morning, and woke to find a message from Bear (who had gone to work hours before) saying he would bring home half-n-half for coffee. Which meant that there wasn't any in the house.

Being the culinarily adventurous person that I am, I had purchased, some days ago, a carton of the above-pictured "almond milk". Because I am on a diet, I purchased the unsweetened variety. Which, as it turns out, tastes like beaver spit (powdered wood with water added). Which I then tried to remedy with some Truvia - a no calorie sweetener made from the Stevia plant. Which made the stuff taste like very thick, fakely sweet beaver spit.

But, as there was no half-n-half in the house, I decided to make a single cup of drip coffee and use the almond milk as creamer. Huge mistake. Not only did it not "cream up" the color of the coffee, it also made the coffee taste like... you guessed it... hot, caffeinated, fakely sweet beaver spit.

The next thing I did after pouring the noxious potion down the drain was to wander over to my cell phone and find a voicemail notification from work blinking up at me happily. My adrenaline dropped completely... I had agreed to trade shifts with a co-worker on Sunday, and suddenly I couldn't remember what day it was. Was today Sunday? Had I slept through the shift I'd traded for? Was work calling me to ask where the hell I was?

Completely forgetting that the day and date was also available on my cell phone, I stumbled up the stairs to my computer and dragged the cursor across the time display on the lower right corner of the screen. A little tag popped up - "Saturday".....

I should have felt relieved, but instead I just felt wobbly and vaguely nauseated. I think the almond milk disaster in combination with the fear of sleeping through a shift might have been too much for me this morning.

Now Bear is home from work, I've had two great cups of proper coffee, properly creamered, and some breakfast. And I feel about as much like going to work as I do shoving bamboo slivers under my fingernails.

But off I go.

O Autumn!

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

- William Blake

Hey!

Wanna see?

UPDATE:

I woke up this morning to find I had another SALE! The Steampunk Mother and Child sold.... can I get a WOOOOOOOOT?!?!??! I must get back to the dungeon and create some more! Thanks to Celebrate Odd Etsy for the exposure boost!

These are a few of my favorite things

Spent all day yesterday in a complete funk. Descended into the domain of the doldrums. No particular reason that I could pinpoint, other than that the redcoats were stomping around unnecessarily on my womb (as I don't plan to use it), and the weather was dreary. The most I could bring myself to do was get the grocery shopping done, wash the dishes, and take a few pictures before throwing myself down on the couch, to cry, "Turner Classic Movies - take me away!!"

However, one of the pictures I took yesterday happened to capture several things that make me smile And I need to smile. So here it is. And here they are.

* Our cat, Widdershins. He was the first cat that Bear and I invited to live with us. His sense of humor, his unabashed affection, and his ability to know when you're feeling bad and help make you feel better are only a few of his amazing traits.

* Our silly Samhain tablecloth. Found this swatch of cloth one day while we were shopping at a local fabric store - all the witches' hats, black cats, and punkins have these funny little whiskers sticking off the edges, and it made me laugh.

* Our kitchen - the heart of the home, where Bear and I share the adventures of trying new recipes, making old favorites, and sit with friends to enjoy everything from eating and drinking to playing board games to making mead.

* The coffee maker. 'Nuff said!

* The red cyclamen that I just bought at the local nursery. Not because I went to the nursery to buy a red cyclamen, but because it was sending subatomic messages to the cyclamenoptic-aquirensis node in my brain and I had no choice but to obey. The fury with which it is blooming, the fiery color of the blossoms, the profusion of thick greenery... all of it flies in the face of dreariness, of dullery, of disheartenment. I can't help but smile when I look at it.

Droman Thugshot

(random thoughts)



This is my handsome, twenty-some-odd pounds lighter hubby working on his mook jong. What's a mook jong? It's that black tube-shaped thing suspended on wooden slats just behind where he's squatting. It has holes in it where "legs and arms" are inserted, and it's used to practise angles and strikes in martial arts training.



See, Bear spent a good part of his life studying martial arts, both in the USA and in Korea, where he was stationed while in the Army. As part of his getting back into good health and a healthy weight, he decided to put up the mook jong and build a proper patio on which to stand and put it to use.



It's now nearly finished, with only a little sweeping of sand and trimming of landscaping cloth around the edges left to go. Way to go, Bear!!! My happiness at the completion of this project has different facets. It means that a) Bear is getting inspired, and b) that previously awful corner of our yard is finally going to be neat AND useful!

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I just came back inside from a wonderful garden visit. The morning is incredibly warm and sunny. Steam rises from the damp leaves, blue jays scream overhead. A murder of crows visited while I watched, fighting over the feeder and causing a ruckus. Our Samhain jack o'lanterns are collapsing happily at the edge of the circle garden, showing evidence of being the main dish at recent squirrel and raccoon midnight feasts. Leaves fall steadily now, making a sound like skittering mouse feet. All of my garden beauties are turning golden and brown, drifting off to sleep for the winter. The air smells like heaven, the blue of the sky is nonchalant, as if it is too busy thinking about something else.

The chinese citron tree is coming into full vigor now, with its ornamental, odd-smelling fruit turning bright yellow and its huge thorns hard and sharp as razors.


Plans for the day:

* Trim the ivy crawling up the side of the cottage and remove it before it invades the attic.

* Get out the electric hedge clippers and cut back the giant euonymus shrub, which used to be so pretty and now looks like Lyle Lovett's head on a Saturday morning.

* Disposition the pile of brush that I cut down and left in the side yard to "thin out".

* Cut the former dish television cable that has been hanging off the roof like a rat tail and annoying the crap out of me for the past year.

* Get to the library and see if Battlestar Galactica 4.5 is waiting for me.

* Switch my summer and winter clothes out. Probably won't do this until after dark, since I can't stand to do anything inside when it's this pretty outside!


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In other news, I got a pretty little pair of silver "endless hoop" earrings on ebay for ten bucks. I wear headsets 8 hours a day, and they dig regular earrings into the sides of my head, causing more swearing than usual. I didn't want to leave earrings out altogether, because then the holes would grow closed, so these little hoop earrings give me a bit of bling without any of the accompanying pain. I love an easy fix!


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Marcheline's Movie Review of the Week:


Awesome. An action movie that fed my fascination with ancient Celtic / Norse stories, handsome men, and women warriors that KICK ARSE... with a little tiny bit of sci-fi thrown in, but only very peripherally. The action sequences are grip-the-armrests great, and while the emotional content of the story didn't have me swooning (this is no "Titanic"), it's definitely a movie I could pop in and watch on any given weekend. I would rate it right alongside the recently released "Beowulf". Rollicking good fun.


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Last but not least, we made a batch of eggplant lasagna the other day. Bear made the meat sauce, using ground turkey, tomato sauce, squash, onions, garlic, and baby portobello mushrooms. All I did was slice up a couple of eggplants, olive oil and onion salt them, and bake them in a 425 degree oven for fifteen minutes. Then I used the eggplant slices as if they were lasagna noodles - layering them with ricotta cheese, meat sauce, and shredded mozzarella cheese in a Corningware covered dish. Baked the whole shebang in a 350 degree oven until bubbly, broiled it a few minutes to brown the cheese on top, and .... YUMMMMY! It's a South Beach Diet friendly recipe, but I would eat this even if I wasn't on the diet. Eggplant rocks.

This is not where I thought I was going

This post was going to be all about how excited I was to have finally "wrapped up" (pun alert) my Faux Greenhouse de Herb Garden project. Which is actually my first real effort in attempting to make a rosemary plant live through the winter. Most of our herbs are not perennials, and our sage, mint, and thyme have lived through every winter since we planted them without any help at all, so really this is all about the rosemary.

I was going to detail the war between myself and the coiled chicken wire, in which I attempted to straighten it out, and it attempted to poke me full of ragged holes. I planned to re-enact the painstaking process (a pun! a pun! my kingdom for a pun!) of threading tiny bamboo poles through said chicken wire in order to hammer them into the ground for support. I had visions of chuntering on happily about the plastic and how soft and easy it was to work with, as the day was blessedly still - not a breath of wind while I worked.

Yes, that is what this post was going to be about, folks. And now, after seeing the picture I took of the finished product, I have only one thing to say.

Welcome to the morgue.

Meet Jean and Lionel!

Today was one of the most perfectly sunny, chilly fall days that ever fell off the tip of an artist's paint brush. Bear and I had decided to "bump" the weight-loss plateau we'd both been struggling with by going off the diet for one day, so we bundled into his vehicle and went to breakfast at Country Kitchen. We chowed down happily on biscuits, sausage, and gravy, eggs, hashbrowns, and coffee. It was bliss!

As we had to go down to the movie rental store to return a video, I suggested we swing by the little local nursery on the way home, just to see if they had any "winter's coming" sales, or any plants left at all. Happily, they did - both - and we got these two gorgeous beauty berry bushes for half price!




We almost always name our trees and shrubbery, and I dubbed this pair Jean and Lionel, after the two main characters in one of our all-time favorite British television series. Like the beauty berry bushes, Jean (played by Judi Dench) and Lionel (played by Geoffrey Palmer) are a little scratchy on the outside, but have a lovely and long-lasting relationship. Welcome to Thistlebright Gardens, Jean and Lionel! I hope you will enjoy living with us more and more, as time goes by...

The original Lionel and Jean

** Side note: I had to look up the word "series", as I wasn't sure what the plural was. Serieses? Surely not! As it turns out, it's one of those "irregular plural nouns", like fish and headquarters, which is used identically for singular or plural cases. You learn something new every day.

For Cait O'Connor

Silver Ravenwolf, the author of some of my favorite pagan books, had a contest on her blog last year. She posted this picture (above) and asked people to submit poems, stories, or graphic art involving the two girls in the picture. My entry was picked as the winner of the poems, and I was pleased as punch!

I am reprinting it in case my friend Cait O'Connor stops by for a keek, and also because it's a fitting poem for this Samhain season.

The Silver Chain

The sisters lived down in the glen
Beyond the grassy plain
Fair Ellen wore an angel’s face
Her twin, a silver chain

Ellen loved the wildling Hugh
All others she disdained
Her twin was left alone to sigh
And twist her silver chain

Her fingers worked a midnight spell
Fair Ellen to restrain
She wove a silken Samhain web
With threads of silver chain

But love, the strongest magick,
Sighed out its sweet refrain
Fair Ellen wore a wedding gown
Her twin, a silver chain