The Aviary

Updates:

- The curse on my aunt's house seems to have lifted, in that nothing else has broken or gone wrong since my last post and most things seem to be improving. Also, my mom apparently had the mildest possible case of covid, which is a huge relief. Things appear very positive on that front. Hooray! (Knock wood for everything in the above paragraph.)

- It is weird to have Mom gone for this long. I love Dad and vice versa, but we basically don't ever spend time one-on-one, so conversation when we're the only people in the room is a little awkward. It's working out okay, but we're both very much looking forward to Mom getting back at the end of the month.

- I cannot wait for summer to be over. It's been relatively cool this week - only in the 70s - and a little cloudier, which has been such a relief. I'm so ready for autumn. The other day, I actually got enthusiastic about knitting, which hasn't happened in months. I bought new yarn and everything.

Things:

- We had a nice, quiet Christmas, which was lovely. And everyone liked their knitted gifts, hooray!

- My sister was at our house for 10 days - the 17th through the 27th - and that is entirely too long. I love her a lot, but she takes up a lot of space, both physically and otherwise - she's untidy and her stuff gets everywhere, she's loud and talks over people (mostly me), she tends to dominate any conversation or activity. It's a lot to deal with. Bits of her visit were lovely, but I'm mostly relieved that she's gone home now.

- I've been doing a lot of hand sewing - I'm making a pillow using English paper piecing - and it's really enjoyable. And I'm learning new skills! So far, I'm mostly learning how to sew with a thimble, but that's something.

- I'm not a New Year's resolution person, really - that kind of goal-setting doesn't really work for me. It makes me feel pressured, and then I don't do the thing, and then I feel guilty about it. I do love to have a project where I can make lists, however, and starting projects at the New Year is fun. Last year, the project was all the gift knitting and some experimental baking. This year, it's making lists of sci-fi novels to read, planning to knit down my sock yarn stash, and rejiggering my schedule to make room for regular music practice.

- Re: that last, I got my recorder out for the first time in probably a year last night. I've basically forgotten the few things I learned the last time I played it, but I still enjoying messing around with it. So now there's dedicated time in my schedule for doing that and hopefully this time I will stick with it long enough to actually improve.

- I have three hours left on my current audiobook and about 30% left of my current book. It's ridiculous, but I really want to finish them before January 1 because it will make my spreadsheet look neater. It should be entirely doable, but it's honestly stressing me out a little.

Things:

- This weekend, my mom and I went over to my sister's apartment to help her clean it, as she lives alone and it had gotten somewhat out of hand. (This is her slightly-crazy reaction to All of the Everything. My other sister read 450 romance novels last year. I made a huge spreadsheet cataloging all my belongings and made weirdly strict hourly schedules for my whole week to give my life a sense of structure and consistency. We are all Coping.) But now she can see the floor and her kitchen is clean! It was exhausting, but also I feel like we accomplished a lot.

- Also this weekend (not at my sister's apartment), I made cardamom buns! They are delicious. I should make more sweet buns.

- I ordered a darning loom yesterday, and I am unreasonably excited about it. I can darn things perfectly well with nothing but needle and thread/yarn, but now my darning will be pretty. And more even.

- My whole library is getting a new phone system - my branch had the new phones installed last week. It just occurred to me this morning that we now have a whole new phone number. I am childishly irritated about it. I've worked her for 16 years - I don't want to learn a new phone number now.

Walked unsuspectingly into the downstairs bathroom only to get the fright of my life as a humanoid figure loomed out of the darkness at me.

It was the dress dummy that usually lives in the hall. Mom had moved it in there due to imminent vacuuming and didn't think to tell anyone. "I didn't think it would be a problem if it was in there for a few hours - I guess I usually do that after you leave for work."

This is not the morning I wanted.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, my family has done a weekly Zoom call on Friday nights. It's not always my favorite thing, but it's nice to be able to see my sisters and sibling-in-law and mostly they're pretty fun. But we've noticed that they can turn pretty depressing if we don't have a structured thing to talk about and the conversation devolves into how things are honestly kinda terrible.

A few weeks ago, one of my sisters (who creates and runs Zoom programming for an organization that helps dementia patients) had put together an art appreciation powerpoint for a work program and wanted to show it to us. We had a blast discussing the art together and having a focused topic made the call a lot more fun. So, because we are definitely the coolest people, we decided that we would each try making a presentation on anything we wanted and present them to the group, one each week.

It's my turn this week, and my presentation is "An Intro to Jack Kirby's Fourth World*" because, again, we are extremely cool people and I am the coolest of all. Which has meant going through various Fourth World comics to extract panels that everyone definitely needs to see and rereading bits I particularly love and thinking about how to sum up what Fourth World is without running out of time or going off on weird tangents that would require a lot of explanation**. And, like, I haven't thought about Fourth World in at least a year but I still love it so much, you guys.

So now I'm going to have to read all my comics again.





*Not to be confused with Jack Kirby's Fourth World which is a different much later comic book that was not actually written by Jack Kirby. Comics!

**Look, no one needs to hear me pontificate about how Scott is the ultimate apotheosis of the gods of the Fourth World, due to Mister Miracle vol 2 wherein he settled down in the suburbs to live a quotidian human existence, because he thereby both transcended and renounced the eternal conflict between the forces of New Genesis and Apokolips and therefore he is the only possible wielder of the Life Equation because he's the only one of the New Gods that actually understands the nature of freedom. I'm right, but no one needs to hear it.

In theory, my family's weekly zoom call is a good idea but in practice, this is how it goes every week:

- my sister Megan does her best to monopolize the conversation for the entire 40 minutes. (I would be more sympathetic to the idea that she does this because she is currently isolated if not for the fact that she has done the same thing in every conversation our entire lives - Megan is very "I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me")

- my sibling-in-law Sean takes up the rest of the space (inadvertently, I think) because they are a big boisterous Golden Retriever of a person.

- my mom talks either talks over everyone or interrupts what conversation there is to bring up something completely different, usually a object she wants to shove in front of the camera

- my other sister Katie grows gradually more and more stony-faced and silent throughout

- my dad occasionally gets to say something (because he is the only one Megan actually respects enough to stop talking)

- I do my best to ask Katie questions about what she's been up to, in hopes that she'll feel better and also get to answer before Megan jumps in again

- (neither of my sisters ask after me at all because of course not, that goes without saying)

- this continues for 40 minutes, at which point Megan is inevitably cut off midsentence, the call ends, and I spend the rest of the evening feeling vaguely depressed



At least this week I had made Italian hot chocolate to fortify myself with.

(Pssst, hey, guess what, sister mine? I do in fact notice that you reply to texts when I talk about stuff you're interested in and then proceed to completely ignore texts about stuff I'm interested in. Especially when you do it eight or nine times over the course of a 15 minute conversation. I mean, wow, that's impressively childish and petty. Have the guts to actually say something next time, huh?)

A conversation from today:


Me: ::relays an incident I witnessed earlier, wherein a mother told her two children Wrong Information about otters in front of me and I had to restrain myself from correcting her::

Katie (my sister): Oh no, you can't do that!

Me: I will admit that I have done that, but only in zoos.

Katie: Parents are allowed to be wrong sometimes.

Me: Parents are allowed to be wrong sometimes. They are not allowed to be wrong in the zoo when the informational plaque is right in front of them.

Sean (Katie's husband and the one person I've recommended The Magnus Archives to who has actually become a fan): That is the most Jonathan Sims thing I've ever heard a real person say.



I am recording this conversation for posterity because I've never felt so simultaneously flattered and vaguely horrified at myself.

Also, if you're going to give misinformation to children because you are too lazy to read something a foot away from you, then you don't deserve to be at the zoo.

Things:

- Since November, I've been trying to write in my paper journal every day. I find this leads to not writing here. Sorry.

- Earlier this week, a notoriously child-hating patron of the library came in and handed me a box of candy canes saying, "There'll be kids in here soon, maybe you can hand these out." I thanked him, put them in the office, and didn't give them to anyone. They were still wrapped, so I'm pretty sure they weren't poisoned, but you never can tell.

- I am still reading a lot of Revolutionary War-related nonfiction. The thing about reading about Thomas Jefferson is that I want to make notes that just say NERD in big letters on basically every line, which is probably not helpful. (Oh god, he was so hilariously terrible.)

- Yesterday, I told a coworker my theory about Washington having magical powers. She nodded and then asked if I had read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and we talked about that for a while. Sadly, she works mostly at Poulsbo and was only subbing at Kingston, so she can't be my new work-best-friend.

- I went to see Deadpool yesterday and it was pretty much everything I wanted out of a Deadpool movie, by which I mean that it was full of stabbing and jokes I would feel uncomfortable about if my parents were in the room. Sometimes, that is all I want in life.

- For the past few weeks, I've been attending a Quaker meeting on Sundays. (You can be a Quaker and not be a Christian. Who knew, right?) It is immensely satisfying. Which is maybe a weird thing to say about sitting in a circle with a dozen other people and mostly not talking at all while you all think about god/the gods for an hour, but yeah, it really is. I won't be able to go next week, and I'm pretty sure I'm really going to miss it.

- The reason I can't go is that next week is my grandmother's 90th birthday and all the aunts are coming. Also my cousin and his wife. And my sisters. And while I'm super happy that they can all come to celebrate Granny's birthday, oh my god, where are we going to put them all, what are we going to do with them, I have never met my cousin's wife and will have to make conversation with her, oh no.



And that's what going on with me!

Things:

- Okay, so, I've been really terrible about actually posting of late. And that topic-a-day meme is going around again - I'm not doing that, but I am making a little resolution to post at least something every day in December, and we'll see if that gets me back in the habit of regular posting.

- Today was my first day back to work after my vacation. Which was great, btw - I had several days of doing nothing whatsoever, which is really lovely once in a while. I did some knitting, caught up on some tv (Gotham is ridiculous, but I kinda love it), played some computer games. And yesterday, I went to visit my sister and watch weird old musicals with her. We watched Yankee Doodle Dandy (which marks the first time I've ever actually seen a James Cagny movie), There's No Business Like Show Business (my first Ethel Merman movie), and 42nd Street. So that was cool. Megan has decided that next time we do a movie marathon together, we're going to watch Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933. Which is something to look forward to. Megan is great fun to watch movies with (when we're getting along) because we watch them in a very similar manner - we both talk all the time during the movie, we're both okay with rewinding several times if we miss something, we both like the subtitles on - and it's always better when you're watching with someone else like that. I like to discuss a movie while I watch it and so does she, but no one else in our family really does. (We both also do this while watching tv, but we usually have very disparate taste in shows, so it's harder to find one we agree on. Eventually, we're going to have to have a Flash marathon together, if only because it's a show we both watch.)

- Alas, the heating situation in the Kingston library has not improved while I was gone. When I got to work this morning, it was 49 degrees and when I left at one for my shift at Bainbridge, it had just hit 60. Too cold.

- My Christmas concert is next week, which seems entirely too soon. I think it's going to be a good concert, though. Our big piece is Z. Randall Stroope's Hodie and it is the most Star Trek-sounding piece of choral music I've ever sung. I can't wait to sing it with the instrumentalists.


And now, bed!

Things:

- This past weekend, my mother, sisters, and I went to Women's Own, which is Grown-Up Girl Scout Camp*. It was absurdly fun. The great thing about being at camp as an adult is that you get to do whatever you want. There were schedule events you could attend if you wanted and meals were always at a certain time but other than that, you get to figure out whatever you want to do and do it. We did various arts-and-crafts things, went swimming in the Hood Canal, did a little hiking, and spent most of Saturday sitting in a chair reading a book, which I haven't done for far too long. There was a camp fire and a talent show and a night we all dressed up in make-shift 1920's regalia to play bingo and roulette to win cheap-ass prizes. And everyone was friendly and helpful and welcoming, but willing to leave you along if that's what you wanted. We are already planning to go back next year and if you are a lady who lives in Washington and wants to go to Grown-Up Girl Scout Camp, I thoroughly recommend it.

- Also, I bought a gorgeous Girl Scout pocketknife in the camp store because I have always wanted a good pocket knife and it was beautiful and I am an adult and can buy myself knives if I want to.

- While at camp, I read about 200 pages of The Stand, which I haven't read in about 10 years. You guys, that book is still pretty great. Though of course I'm not quite sure if that's because it was definitely one of the Books Of My Adolescence. I read The Stand a lot as a teenager - it's one of those books I can point at and say, "That is where I learned this thing".*** It's not quite as scary as it once was, but the little creepy things remain very effective - the dead soldier with the soup in his eyebrows, those first few glimpses at Randall Flagg, "Come down and eat chicken with me, beautiful - it's so dark". (It's possible that I think that whenever I am in dimly-lit staircases.) I am unsurprised but a little ashamed to find that I still really identify with Harold Lauder in a lot of ways. Look, I was - am - a pretentious nerd and while I like to think that I wouldn't really go to the Dark Side, if you'd caught me at the right point in my lonely pretentious nerdgirl adolescence, I can't promise that I would haven't. Like Eleanor Vance, my identification with Harold is undeniably present and undeniably uncomfortable (I am not ashamed of my continuing love for the Trash Can Man.) The fact that I have never yet managed to read The Stand at a point when I don't have a runny nose always adds to the experience somewhat.

- It is the last week of Summer Reading which is always both a little melancholy and a little bit of a relief. Now, of course, we get a bunch of emails about our annual All Staff Day, which is coming up in about a month and about which I am not excited. The higher-ups really want us to be excited, though. This year, there is apparently some sort of after-party. I cannot imagine who will be attending that - after a mandatory 8 hours of meeting and socializing while seated in uncomfortable chairs, all I want is to go home. At least now it's on a Thursday instead of Monday, so I don't have to go to choir right afterwards.

- Choir starts in two weeks! I'm so excited! I haven't sung properly since April and my range has probably atrophied terribly, but I'm still so excited!






*My mother always wanted to be a Girl Scout but never got to be. Thus, all of her children were, for varying lengths of time**.

**I stayed in the longest and made it to Juniors. (Got my wings, baby!) Sometimes, I regret not sticking with it for longer, but my troop kinda sucked and I wanted to take taekwondo, so...

***I don't think it's the first book I read in which abortion was mentioned, but it's definitely the first book that connected it with coat hangers. What an odd thing to remember. It is also the book where I learned about That One Yeats Poem Every Horror Fan Knows.

Things:

- Apparently, I am really bad at updating lately. I'm going to try to do better about that. I feel better when I blog, I think, even if it's wholly inconsequential stuff.

- I found a semi-local (well, they're in Port Orchard) pagan meet-up group and I'm planning to go to my first meet-up this weekend. I am super nervous about it. I love the idea of having a group of people to to worship with but then I actually go to things and it involves a lot of talking to people I don't know and I freak out. Still, going at all is a good first step.

- This also neatly gets me out of feeling like I ought to think of something to do for Disting. (The thing I'm going to is really an Imbolc thing, but they happen around the same time, so...) I always have trouble with Disting.

- This is the week that Megan moves back home! She's coming up from Santa Barbara on Tuesday. So all the family will be back in Washington! She and Katie are planning to find an apartment in Seattle, but they'll both be living with us until they do. (Fingers crossed that we don't kill each other.) Honestly, though, I'm looking forward to having her here. 8)

- We are doing exactly two pieces in chorale this session. One of them is a Vaughan Williams piece (which I still don't have music for, despite there only being two pieces and the session having started 4 weeks ago) and the other is the Verdi Requiem. Which explains why we only have two pieces. I have read actual novels that are shorter than this score. We get to perform with the Bainbridge orchestra, in a venue that isn't a church! I'm so excited!

- The problem with Monday is that I don't get a break till 1 o'clock and I always want lunch at least an hour before. I am hungry.

Bad things about today:

- ( Family drama )


Good things about today:

- So, I saw Pacific Rim. Which was a movie about giant robots punching giant lizards and, really, I am totally down with that. And also with watching Idris Elba do just about anything. Plus, I didn't know Burn Gorman was going to be in it, and he was pretty much adorable. So that was cool.

- In a moment of beautiful synchronicity, I picked up the perfect book to go along with listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It is called American Elsewhere and is about a creepy town in the American Southwest that is, apparently, concealing many creepy secrets. I am about 100 pages in and I keep yelling things like "Do not look at the dog park!" at the protagonist.

- In April, a girl in choir invited me to join her gaming meet-up group, which I did. And it hasn't met all summer. Last night, I decided to find a place where I could RP online (with strangers, because apparently RPing online with people I actually know fills me with crippling anxiety and then I never post), specifically to play Call of Cthulhu. Because I've wanted to for years and have no one here to play with. So I found a forum and joined a game where we're all travelling on the Orient Express in the late 1930s. I am so excited! Also, I realized after I came up with my character concept that I had basically designed him to be played (in the Universal horror film of this game) by David Manners. That is hilarious.


We are going to concentrate on the good things.