Severely petty grievance

New season of Longmire is up on Netflix and there are no cans of Rainier anywhere in the state.

I DON'T WANT COFFEE, VIC

See also: reading Cormoran Strike novels and not being able to find any Doom Bar.

My cosplay skills start and end at eating/drinking whatever the main character enjoys.

searching pinterest for "10 best house plants to repel nazgul"

On needing more people, fighting with pensioners, and pink wine

It's the usual plight of adulthood: not enough time in the day to be good at each thing you want to be really good at. Working. Parenting. Making things. You cut yourself slack and carve minutes out of the weekends and get on with things. When the nebulous feeling of discontent starts getting pointy edges on it, you grind them off by laughing over sausages and beer with friends.

Only sometimes you don't have any friends, because you moved and bought a new house and had babies and you suddenly look around and realize there isn't anyone to hand a sausage to. Kurt Vonnegut, in a quote emailed to you five years ago by a distant friend, recognizes his cue and starts shouting in your ear while you're trying to type order lists at work.


"OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.

When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”

This happened some time around last Friday. "I need more people!" I complained to my mother. "Come over and drink pink wine!" she said. "No, I can't, I have to buy shelf brackets," I replied, because I am really bad at self care and that is why I am in this predicament in the first place. In the end I realized this and we met at a Scottish dance party, sitting with plastic cups of screw-top chardonnay (which I hate but drink anyway because I enjoy being in a social wine-sipping setting), and we nodded at each other like happy little nodding things, surrounded by people we have known for 25 years. 

And then I got in a fight with one of them over facebook messenger and ended up with one less person because I unfriended and blocked him (RON YOU BASTARD IF YOU ARE READING THIS, well, we should go drink some pink wine, probably). And this is the kind of thing that happens when you have lots of people, which is exactly why I didn't mind leaving them all to live like a hermit up on the mountain, but hey. We are alive for just a few speedy, terrifying minutes, and I always say you have to hang on to the people who are gripping your hand as you hurtle toward the abyss - although it makes it difficult if they are using the other hand to hit you in the face with shitty propaganda leaflets.

So of course, after wrenching my hand away, I went and complained to my mother again. "I wanted more people and now I have lost one! I am doing this wrong and I am upset because I care about this infuriating person!" "Oh dear. Hang on," she texted back, and then after a long pause she said, "There, I have bought opera tickets. You are coming with me in two weeks to see La Boheme, so find a dress. Your aunt is coming, too, and she will drive you. There will be booze." Have I said lately that I love my mother? My mother is the best mother. We get in arguments when we are jammed up in close quarters for long periods of time, because we are similar enough that it becomes a cat-fighting-with-its-own-reflection scenario, but adulthood is working well for us. I take all her orphaned chickens, she makes sure I get my ass out of the house before I have a breakdown. 

So expect some fussing from me when the dress situation gets going, because I don't wear them often and there is a lot in the way of structural garments required these days.

CONSTRUCTION HAPPENING HERE. Still. Forever.

So while I was busy having an existential crisis and fighting with veterans and taking it out on the house by bringing in armloads of potted plants and painting hippie stencils around all the window frames, the husband-person has still been working on the outdoor shower.

Let me remind everyone what our back yard looks like:

The house was built by a Japanese mason. On one side is a garden wall with a Japanese-mason-sized doorway in it, on the other side is a giant lychee tree with low spreading branches, and in the middle is a massive crumbling concrete fish pond. There is no place to move a 6-foot shower wall from one side of the yard into the garden except through that little doorway, I am saying. So when the man started building a 6-foot shower wall on the patio, I stood eating a banana and watching him from the window, wondering what his plan would be when he realized there was no way to get it into the garden. I am resolved not to badger him about this project, since he's excited about it and it's making him happy and I'm about as handy as a... very unhandy thing. A librarian eating a banana, maybe. I'm just staying out of the way and tossing bandaids and cold beer outside when needed.

"It's time to move the wall into the garden!" he finally called. "Help me lift it?"

"Okay." I went out and stood at the ready. "How are we doing this?"

He looked from the wall to the doorway. The wall. The tree. The wall. The fish pond. The wall. His face did something complicated and eloquent as the realizations fell into place. He suddenly lunged for the drill, and I went back to stenciling window frames while he disassembled the thing. This is a man who's first piano recitation was Bartok. When he saw me knitting and wanted to try, he made a cabled afghan. When he saw me learning to use the sewing machine, he free-motion quilted a baby blanket. A shower is well within his abilities for a first woodworking project. He came home yesterday with an industrial blow torch so he can learn to weld copper pipes for plumbing. I bought another potted plant and pretended not to envision his arm going up in flames.

Anyway, the walls are in the garden now, and nobody had to go to the hospital, so that's all going well. 

PICTURE TIME.

Actually, I thought I had pictures of the shower wall on my phone, but it appears I don't, so I'll just post whatever is on here.

My inability to manage bra straps is the reason I wear three layers to work every day.

I feel self-conscious about my smile wrinkles and so I am posting these anyway because, well, THAT IS LIFE and I'm glad to be living.

Audition time

Cheaper than therapy. Also, a yoga-topped tie-dyed skirt is not a dress, so it doesn't count.

Much stenciling. I went all around the other window after that one.

Pan's white armpits

Cousins playing D&D outside the Scottish dance party 

which I did not take pictures of

So. A dress. QUEST ACCEPTED.

Banned Books Week has never been more timely

I've been all hepped up on intellectual freedom proclamations, running around slapping quotes and big red construction-paper cutouts of flames all over the library - we look like a really subversive and low budget auto detailing shop.

Quotes like:

 Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. (Heinrich Heine)

and:

Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of American society and leaves it less able to deal with controversy and difference. (American Library Association)

and: 

 Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. (American Library Association)

I have opinions about politics and religion and science and justice like anyone, but whether I agree with you or not, I will throw myself in front of the flammenwerfers when they come for your books. 

To protect it, mostly.

I explained the Banned Books Week Proclamation at the Friends of the Library meeting, and showed them my display. "Unsurprisingly, sex, religion, and race are the topics which result in the most challenges," I said. One of them nudged me in the ribs, "How do they feel about potty training books?" SAD FACE, ED. People seem to like toilets just fine. I've been in two newspapers now for this cute little butt book, and I'm happy about that, but I did go straight home and wrote a "hold my balls" joke about meatballs into my comic book. It's like Neil Gaiman said, "You work at getting your books burned and I'll work on getting banned. We're only as good as our goals."

Not banned. Yet. I HAVE GOALS, ED.

comics continued

The girls have a chat about what has happened.

Text is just slapped in there again. Will get better bubbles/edited dialogue later.

a playlist for productivity and wretchedness

I slam earbuds into my ear holes the second lunch break starts, and I refuse to take them out for anything short of a crisis involving spurting blood (this has happened three times). I have sixty little minutes to myself, and I draw a hard line around every scrap of it.

Someone vomited on the sidewalk again? NOPE, I'm not here.

I eat a meal bar with one hand and draw with the other, and the playlist goes like this:

1. Sad sad bastard 

2. Slightly pissy about being a sad bastard  

3. Existential sad bastard 

4. Someone please just hit me with a chair

5. DANCE BREAK BEFORE I JUMP OFF A BRIDGE

6. Guilty sad bastard who has made terrible life choices

7. Dial that back a bit and relax, Jesus

8. Hobbitses!

BACK TO WORK. 

If you give a mouse a cupboard full of crap

The man has been outside, sawing and hammering and injuring himself on the construction of an outdoor shower. I had asked if we could install a shower attachment on the tub, but that would have required knocking out a cupboard, and so he decided to erect an entire roofed structure in the back yard, instead.

I AM SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR ENDEAVOR, I yelled over the power saw, and then decided to be a good sport and destroy the kitchen in solidarity. 

Budget: whatever is left after buying groceries

Inspiration: hippie who doesn't shop at natural food stores but wants to look as if they do

What I want is this:

Jars! Plants! Shelves!

What I have is this:

*sad trombone*

Clean is free, I said to myself, opening up drawers and cabinets. We've got your average Island Family Cupboards; big plastic lychee jelly jars filled with rice, half-empty bottles of shoyu and mirin, fish sauce sitting punitively in its own corner, humidity-wilted cardboard boxes of mochiko and baking soda, jars of seasonings with the little desiccant packets from nori snacks popped into them to prevent clumping and weeping, unopened boxes of jello we are too frugal to throw away but too frightened to open (Schrodinger's cockroaches).

 for all your storage needs

It was a mess. I hauled everything out. Everything needs to be in neat little jars! I decided, putting batteries in my label maker and assembling a fleet of mason jars from my last canning episode. And then I lost control of the thing.

* Got everything onto the counter and became horrified by the state of the old shelves.

* Tried to wash shelves - ran out of spray cleaner.

* Emptied food into labeled jars - ran out of jars.

* Gathered up child to go to store for jars and spray cleaner and shelf liner.

* Arrived at store, got into kitchen section, child suddenly needed to pee.

* Nearest toilet was a brisk jog up the road to Jack in the Box - ran with child on hip.

* Made it to the toilet, a bit winded. Child became excited about chicken nuggets just as I was feeling bad about using the bathroom without buying something.

* Sat and watched child eat chicken nuggets at 9:30am. She insisted on using toddler high chair, which she got stuck in.

* Walked back to store with child, who had to balance on every curb and smell every flower. Did likewise.

* Forgot why I was in the store. Became distracted by Halloween glitter skulls. Left with two big jars, a bottle of fancy seasoning, and a discounted cat scratcher. Forgot spray cleaner and shelf liners.

* Stopped at second store. Could not find shelf liners. Overcompensated by buying three types of spray cleaner.

* Drove home, got stroller, walked to hardware store for shelf liners. Let the child choose floral liner and an orange push-pop, because I was DONE by this point.

* Got home. Put things into jars. Lined shelves. Cats got loaded on cat nip from the new scratcher and stole the backing to 9 feet of contact paper; shredded it down hallway while I reassembled the kitchen.

TA DAAAA! It's... better? 

I don't think Pinterest Bohemians are supposed to have Pam and Crisco, but OH WELL.

So that was 5 hours of work.

For one cupboard. Which is still kind of ugly and not at all bohemian.

I'm going to win, kitchen. You will see.

Oh this effing book

If anyone has decided to read In the Woods because I went and said it had an engaging premise, get up and throw that book out the window right now. Spoilers: THERE ARE NO SPOILERS. Because she doesn't solve the old mystery of the lost children and the blood in the shoes, because she doesn't even know herself, it just sounded good and she figured she would work it out. And then didn't. It just ends. And I skulked all over for spoilers of the next books in the series and interviews with the author, and no, seriously, it doesn't get solved. It ends with hints and shrugs, Did it even happen? Is he crazy? Was it supernatural? OH WELL, NO WAY TO KNOW.

Also, when writing a mystery novel, if someone in the beginning says the weapon was wood and rounded like a broom handle, and then someone almost immediately yells, "hey who stole my spade!?" it is only going to piss readers off for 300 pages until the detective has his epiphany that it MIGHT HAVE BEEN A SPADE.

So annoyed. Still going to read the next one, though, because sometimes you just really want to make sure you don't like something.

I discover barnacle scale and now I have to burn my house down

Labor Day is one of those holidays I don't have a knack for, like 4th of July or Memorial Day. I use these holidays as an excuse to buy lots of food and clean for company, mostly.

So amidst the mopping and dusting and pie baking and meat marinating, I rumbled the green bin out to the front yard and noticed all the little white carbuncles growing on the lilikoi vines that cover our trellis and windows. Fungus? Disease? I poked one with the handle of the rake and it fell off too easily. I picked at one with my fingers and it gave a compliant little pop of release. My trypophobia shuddered gratifyingly. So I popped a few off in my hand, tried to get a close look, realized I've become blind within 12 inches without reading glasses, squinted at them from a distance, and suddenly knew I was holding something evil. Possibly alien. Definitely going to crawl into my ears and burst out of my orifices in the middle of the night.

So I brought them inside, of course. The teenager hauled out his crappy kiddie microscope and we looked at blurry blobs for a while before packing a few up in specimen jars to take to the high school science lab.

Then I did the worst thing I could do: I googled it. Do an image search for "barnacle scale", and then barricade your door and prime the flamethrower.

The next day, as I sat eating my meal bar and flicking through soothing Instagram pictures of fair-isle knitting and misty landscapes, my son texted me an image, and my screen filled with the larvae-filled underside of an insect carapace at 500x magnification. "Definitely a bug," he wrote. My phone and hands combusted.

Going to battle with gloves, a ladder, and a bandanna knotted around my face. None of these little fuckers are going to use my insides as an incubation chamber.

Well that was anticlimactic

Which is how you want your climate events to be.

Cleaning house and prepping food for the holiday bbq with all the cousins. Well, more accurately, sitting on rocking chair, taking a break from scrubbing toilets and cleaning the fridge and tracking down the dead-animal smell in the garage (it was a rat).

Here are more chickens.

Chuck and I get each other.

Bill Weasley the primordial chicken. He feels the dinosaurs stampeding through his veins. Mundungus the Pigeon, Raider of Chicken Scratch,  is going to feel his raptor wrath. As soon as he weighs more than a hunk of bread.

Sirius, the sweetest little baby hen. Never lose those wide innocent eyes, love.

Scorpius is a creature of the bushes, lurking and hiding and scratching and then LEAPING AT YOUR FACE. We don't know if this one is male or female, because Scorpius rejects our gender norms. Built like a hen, aggressive as a rooster, we just don't know what to expect from young Scorpius, and that's why we love... um, Scorpius.

Mundungus would like to submit an application to qualify as a chicken and live in the coop with free food, plz.

Zenny is mad I won't let her throw chickens like footballs. Life is hard.

Wherein I fail to set a man on fire with my eyeballs

Working: 
Big, hairy, half-naked man walks in to the library.
"Oops, sir, you need a shirt on," I say.
"I just have a few questions," says man, walking closer. He has beads of sweat glistening in the black hair on the tops of his shoulders.
"Okay, but you just need to put a shirt on."
"I'm not staying long, I just want to know -"
"Sir. You need to put a shirt on."
At this point the guy decides it is important to him to force a librarian to interact with a half-naked man despite three requests to put clothes on. "I'm not staying long," he says slowly, "I just have some questions and then I will go put a shirt on."
I fold my arms and stare at him, trying to ignite his chest hair with my brain. It probably would have worked if he hadn't been so damp. He realized he needed to say something, so he pretended to look at a takeout menu he was holding and said, "I understand there is a craft sale here."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"And... ummm.. if I used... a computer! There are computers over there. If I used one, someone could help me download things?"
"Yes. That would be me."
Silence.
"I'll go put a shirt on then."
"You do that."

And that was the worst patron of the week*. Well, him and the homeless couple who teamed up to steal all the used DVDs in the sale bin by splitting up and then claiming the other person had put money in the payment box when I had been looking the other way. Whatever, that is how we rotate inventory.

*AMENDED: Spoke too soon. That is what I get for writing my blog entries on lunch break. Mind you, I love my job and most of our adventures with weirdos, but this one wins the award for Worst Patron of the Week (warning: gross): lady who had explosive blood-laced diarrhea, tried to wipe up with an entire roll of toilet paper, realized it wouldn't flush, then ran for it and locked the key in the bathroom. The janitor had already left for the day, so I got to be the one who busted into the bathroom, discovered the gruesome scene, found the plunger, and fished a big dripping wad of used tissue out of the toilet with an extendable grabber.

I am going to assume/hope she ran out of the library to seek medical attention.

IN OTHER NEWS

Watching: The Get Down, on Netflix. Really good. Funny, smart, moving, almost makes me love Disco.

Reading: I have a 50-branch, multi-million-dollar library system at my fingertips, and I pick my books by getting annoyed when I don't have something to read at bedtime and arbitrarily uploading anything that's sitting in Google Drive onto my kindle. Last night it was In the Woods, by Tana French. It's an artfully written, grim-yet-wryly-funny Irish mystery about a detective who, at 12 years old, went missing with his friends and was found gripping a tree so hard his nails broke off, standing in sneakers filled with blood that wasn't his, with no memory of what happened or where his two best friends disappeared to. I'm one chapter in and hooked. So... who was it who recommended I read this? Thanks, friend/relative/patron - and sorry I can't remember who you were or why we were talking about it.

Drawing: I'm still working on the comic. Blocking out page 31 now. Something terrible has happened to the chicken.