Whew.. big day.

The real post is here: www.crankandflaire.com

But also noteworthy that is not fertility related is that today was day one...
OF DRUGGING MY INSANE CAT!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Pook, my crazy-cat is now on a teeny-tiny daily dose of kitty-prozac to help her chill the hell out. We haven't noticed any changes yet, but it might take a little while to build up a baseline before we see it working.

And the best part?
It's easy to give her. Our vet gets it made into little salmon-flavoured treats which she practically inhales. Seriously... sniff sniff, AHRM NARM NARM... and then does a little "more please!" dance and follows me around for a while. No prying her mouth open to squirt a liquid or jam a pill down her throat... just give her a tasty little treat that she likes.
So. Awesome.

every second day...

Seems daily posts have turned into every second day posts. But whatever, I'm not gonna beat myself up over it, I've got a ton of stuff to deal with these days.
Frank is home right now, seeing our hot water heater get installed, which is yay.
And also yay, is the news on our fertility blog about today's visit to the hospital:
www.crankandflaire.com

Yesterday's post

Gah, no time to write these days!
Today's post is here: www.crankandflaire.com
and this is for yesterday/today:

My hot water heater died Monday night.... good thing I discovered it when I did or it would have been a lot worse. Also good that it hadn't shorted anything out, because I discovered it by stepping in about an inch of water.
Frank & I both took yesterday off to deal with it. Up all night mopping up, and no hot water in my house till it's replaced. We took six garbage bags full of nasty wet clothes to a laundromat & managed to save most of it, except for the stuff that got colours bled onto them. Frank arranged for an electrician to come today to try to upgrade our wiring to accommodate a better tank, but apparently that has some drama with it. We're supposed to get our new tank installed tomorrow, so we'll see what happens there. We're also finally biting the bullet to replace our dying dryer (and the washer too), so it kinda feels like we're bleeding money right now. Thousands of dollars in IVF treatment costs, new hot water tank, new appliances, installation, electrician, plus a couple more hundred for some closet/storage solutions for that room.

Also, I have a sore throat = beginning of a cold.
Fuck the world.

Busy weekend

Nope, no NaBloPoMo posts this weekend... I was too busy shaking my tushie at the Taboo Revue, and jabbing myself with needles. Oh, and bottling our cider & red wine from the U-Brew. Nom.
Today's post, however, can be found at www.crankandflaire.com

Ringy dingy

Well, it's official.
My incredible shrinking husband has officially lost enough excess baggage that his wedding ring can fly off his hand, so I'm keeping it safe for him until we get around to getting it resized.

Autumn Leaves

Autumn is my favourite time of year. Sure, I like the blooming of spring, and the hot of summer, and even the snowy winter, but I love the fall.
Some of my earliest memories are of being out in the leaves with my grandmother, back when she still had both her feet and could take me out & about. She'd let me kick around in big piles of leaves, when I was so short that even a little pile would have me up to my knees. Even years after, when she was housebound and we didn't go walking together anymore, if I saw a beautiful leaf on the way home from school, I'd pick it up and bring it home for her. I'd clean off any grit or dirt, and she'd press it in the pages of her Friendship Book. Bright red maple leaves were her favourite. Like this one:

Her birthday was September 22, and every year, I celebrate both the changing of the season and her life with a little tea party.

I made a point this autumn of taking a few pictures. Now that I have a husband that takes amazing photos, I realized that I don't bother anymore. Often I just point and say "take a picture of that for me please", and he does, and it's great. But sometimes it's nice to have a little project, even if you know it's not going to turn out perfect.

There's something about seeing colour scattered all over the place like that - it makes me a bit giddy. It happens in the spring too, when the cherry blossoms are exploding. I'll walk down a petaled street and feel a bit high... like I've got kaleidoscope eyes. Frank laughs at me because I still kick along through piles of leaves and petals. Makes me happy.

Another random tidbit

(Bhyrn, your comment on my visual story inspired me to write this one down too).

Once upon a time...
Not sure how old I was - less than five for sure, I was playing in the living room while the grownups were makin' dinner or something. My mom was an avid knitter, and her basket of wool & needles etc were left unattended.
For whatever reason, maybe it was the novelty of being left within reach of real ones, I picked up the scissors.
Don't fret... I didn't run with them.
I picked up the loose end of a ball of wool and snipped a piece off. Maybe it was just to be mischievous, I'm not sure. She wouldn't notice one little bit cut off.
But it sounded surprisingly cool....
So I snipped again.

There was a satisfying crunchy-snippy sound. A really multi-layered sound. The crunch of the fibres being cut, and the schwip of the metal scraping against itself.
I snipped again.
So cool.

Snip.
I listened again, trying to separate the two sounds.
Snip.
Snip.
I listened again, trying to mash the two sounds into one sound.
snip...snip...
I was completely hypnotized by that crunchy, snippy sound.
It was so... satisfying.
snip...snip...snip...snip...snip...snip...snip...snip...

I got so caught up in the sound that I didn't really notice that I was cutting up THE ENTIRE BALL OF WOOL. In fact, I don't even really think I thought about that at all, and I might have just lost interest and wandered off once I was either a) satisfied or b) out of wool. In fact, I may have forgotten I'd even done it, by the time my mom discovered the wooly massacre and flipped out. Well, I shouldn't say flipped out - she wasn't mad, she was just spectacularly confused.

"Why did you do this?!"
blink blink
"Why?"
blink blink blink

I remember thinking that telling the truth, if I could even have articulated it properly, would likely not be enough justification for wasting an entire ball of wool. In retrospect, if I'd been able to articulate that motivation, she probably would have been amused.

So I said: "um... I don't know?"

Always makes me wonder now, when I hear kids say that. Wonder if they really don't know, or if they're scared to tell the truth, or if they just don't have the language for it yet.

today's NaBloPoMo

is here: http://crankandflaire.com/

Zombies!

I dream about zombies fairly often. I haven't quite figured out why, or what they're supposed to mean for me & all that oneirological hoo-ha, but I accept that I have 'em, and in fact, I kind of like them. Being a lucid dreamer takes the nightmare quality out of the equation, so I usually find them to be more entertaining than scary.

Most often, they're pretty standard format. It's a lucid sort of chase dream, and of course, since I'm a huge horror movie fan, I know all the tricks for defending & getting away, and I can usually anticipate what horrible thing is going to happen next. For example, I had one that was set in a house with a group of panicked people who were desperately trying to board up the doors. I let out a heavy sigh and shook my head, pointing out that their efforts were useless unless they planned to board up all the windows too. Sheesh...amateurs.

But you know, the thing about zombies is that you never get away from them. They'll eventually get you, no matter how good you are. I don't really WANT to get my brains eaten, but I do eventually get tired of the chase/defend, and since I tend to lucid dream, I just check out when I get bored/tired/frustrated. Once, my subconscious decided it would be hi-larious to play a trick on me... waited till I was nicely involved in a new (zombie-free) dream, set in a house, and then rang the doorbell. When I answered it, it was a zooooommmmbie! Oooh, very scary brain, now quit it, I said I was bored of the zombie dream.

Recently I had one where Frank & I were zombie-surviving together. We were hiding in a building & he went outside (presumably to do something important), but when he came back, I saw that he'd been bitten. Being a good zombie survivalist, I knew there was nothing I could do, and it was only a matter of time before he turned. Without hesitating, I shouted: You have to go! and shoved him back outside. There was a window in the door, and I looked at him, looking back at me, confused and terrified. I watched the zombies closing in on him, as I stood safely behind the door. Suddenly, with Frank gone, it didn't seem worth it anymore, so I opened the door and walked outside to let myself be eaten too. Awww, twue wove.

But anyway... I had one last night that was particularly interesting.
I was in a city that had both live humans AND zombies, and they were sort of cohabitating. There seemed to be some rules that I hadn't quite figured out, but was really trying to, because obviously, I didn't want to get eaten. So I was going all over town, trying to get help/get informed, without much luck, since nobody would talk to me.
Alive people had their houses enclosed with metal bars to keep the zombies out. I tried to talk to a family (through the bars) about how they did this, and how they didn't get eaten while putting it up... did they still go to work? How did they get food? I asked to be let in, but they wouldn't, and they didn't want to talk to me either.
There was some sort of transit system for the alive people - so that nobody had to be vulnerable waiting for transit, there were big buses that drove along with their door open, and alive people could hop on. I tried to get on one, but the driver wouldn't slow down enough to let me get up, he just drove on past.

It wasn't until this morning when I was telling Frank about it that something occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before.... what if I was a zombie in that dream, and just didn't know? That would explain why I was walking around in broad daylight & not being eaten, and why the alive people wouldn't let me in/talk to me, and why the bus driver wouldn't let me on the bus. Frank said "but you were doing a lot of thinking and talking in the dream - if you were a zombie, would you just be thinking 'braaaaains'?" I said maybe, but we never see zombie movies from the POV of the ZOMBIE... maybe they DO think they're normal, and don't realize that they've become the living dead?
Hmmm....
Now I want to see a movie done from the zombie POV.

I has a cozy

We had a delightfully busy day today, to make up for the flail of yesterday. Out early to visit the fam, then off to a rehearsal, then to an epic grocery-shopping trip, and finished off with a trip to the cold beer & wine to grab something to go with dinner.
I realized that I'm likely feeling all crappy partly due to my sudden loss of iron, so Frank cooked me up a yummy steak. He also cooked up those pumpkin seeds into tasty little crunchies for us.... as you can see:























While we were out shopping, we indulged in some of the tempting seasonal cozy things... such as microfibre jammies and an electric blankie. Here's Pook, warming herself on my electrically warmed legs. I love that she matches.

Punkin Soup

Frank & I both had bad bellies today. Him from some sorta food poisoning, and me, well, mine was just the monthly horrors.
We weren't of much use for anything other than lolling about and complaining, although I did manage to make it to rehearsal.
And this evening, I made us a nice soup to calm our tummies. A coconut cream & pumpkin soup out of my Caribbean cookbook. Turned out fairly well, although I think it could have used a bit more kick. It is lovely though, to have a nice bowl of warm when the bellies are bad.
Here's some pictures:

2 lbs of pumpkin!























Cubed... and seeds set aside for toasting tomorrow.























2 stalks celery & 1 leek, about to be diced.























Garlic, ready to be added to the onion, leek & celery pile.























In the pot, cooking in some olive oil, with a carrot too.























Veggie stock, water, tabasco, salt & pepper, starting to boil.























With a can of coconut milk, some nutmeg and cayenne.























In mah bowl, ready for om nomming.

Goodies!

My Amazon order arrived! I'm very excited.
I've had a wish list for ages, and finally ordered everything on it so I feel like a kid at Christmas today.

It all started when I saw this image on a friend's blog (photo credit to her).



It stirred me instantly, but took me a moment to realize why it was so familiar:
I recognized it from a book I was obsessed with as a child.

I've spent the bulk of my life studying world mythologies, world religions, and psychology... how that came about is a long story, but it's one of the most important aspects of my life. Although I don't subscribe to any one particular religion, I feel deeply connected to the great mystery, and it's largely because I've woven mythology into the fabric of my being.

That giant book was the very first book of that sort I ever read. I wasn't even on a path yet - I didn't even know I was going to be on a path. It was in the library at my elementary school, and maybe I was attracted to it because it was so big, or because it had Pegasus in it... either way. I took that book out of the library over and over and over again. My teachers encouraged me to read "age-appropriate fiction", but I really just wanted to read about Zeus and Persephone, and Ariadne and the rest.

And the funny thing is, now that I have my very own copy in my hands, it doesn't seem so big anymore. It really is a kid's book, but I love it just the same. Perusing the pages, seeing all the familiar illustrations, reading the "for young readers" versions of stories I know by heart - it's like being reunited with an old friend.

I also bought the Norse Mythology book by the same author/artist, which I've never read before. Very keen about that. And, my very own copy of the very best soup recipe book I've ever seen... which I've had on loan from some friends for an inappropriately long time. And if that wasn't enough, I've also now got my very own copy of Zen and the Brain, which I've been too cheap to pay twice as much for at the only shop that sells is locally.

Also in my order is a double disc Billie Holiday set that I've been trying to replace for years. Essential Billie, as far as I'm concerned... if you have this and a "greatest hits", that's really all you need.

Memory, myths, zen, soup, and Billie. Quite a recipe for happy.

double post... to make up for yesterday

A random tidbit of memory from back in the early days of my brain. This story is about my first recognition of 2D vs 3D perception.

When I was a kid... I mean a really wee little munchkin, I was sitting on the floor of the kitchen, playing with something, and my mother and grandmother were sitting at the table, talking.
I looked up at them, and watched them talk for a while, until my perception changed.
At first they looked completely normal, like they always would. But then I imagined them to be two dimensional cutouts of themselves, playing against the yellowed wall like a cartoon. My eyes traced the profile of their faces, and I looked at the shape the wall made between their faces. (Grown up artists call that negative space, but I wouldn't have known what the hell that meant at the time.)
I played with it, and imagined the other side of their face spontaneously creating itself so I could see it if they turned their head.
But then the whole 2D thing started to creep me out. It was cool at first, but all of a sudden, it all felt unreal, and I looked down at my own hands and they looked two dimensional too and I got scared - started to wonder if I was real, or just a cutout. I wanted it back to normal.
So I plumped the image up. I looked at their cheekbones and chins and let them pop up from their flat faces. I popped their silhouettes off the flat wall and looked at the their shoulders slopes and shirt wrinkles until they felt solid and three dimensional again.
Then I looked at the wall, and didn't know how to make the wall "real", so I imagined the space beyond the wall... the next door neighbour's kitchen, and beyond that another wall, another kitchen, another wall, and then maybe the street.

And then I went and got a hug. :)

lol, day 3 fail

S'alright though. I can forgive m'self.

I did write though, I just didn't post. I've been writing a big thing about my parents, but I wasn't (and probably am still not) ready to post it. Not even really sure if it belongs on a blog, so I'mma just sit on it for now.

Yesterday was a whirlwind and feels like it never stopped. Breakfast with good friends returning from a trip, late for the conflict resolution workshop at work, racing to finish work tasks before the end of the week, rushing off without dinner for rehearsal, home to rehearse the duet Frank & I are cooking up, frantically trying to find misplaced costume pieces, too late to bed, one cat mrowling at 5am, and another cat trying to eat electrical cords at 6:30, and finally being woken up by tandem alarms at 8am to huff my fertility meds. Head to work & forget my access pass. More rehearsals tonight.

It's harder now that I'm on the hormone treatment, because I'm so tired and cranky all the time. I imagine I'll have to slow down soon.

accidental NaBloPoMo

Whoops...
Looks like I posted on Nov 1 (on my fertility blog, not here)... and now it's only Nov 2, so I don't have the "oh well, I missed the start" excuse.

I've never done the NaBloPoMo before, but since I posted yesterday, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Some things of note:
-I'm tired and stupid all the freakin' time, thanks fertility drugs.
-I just got my 5-year recognition at work
-turns out I pulled an A- in that Java programming class I was so worried about flunking. Go figure.