Pretty busy for a holiday

Accomplishments For Today:

!. Shaved legs for the first time since August. This may be TMI, but I have a doctor's appointment and even though they're only looking at my shoulder, I have to be prepared.

2. Doctor's Appointment. I got my shoulder biopsied. I'm missing a chunk of me. As well as some leg hair.

3. I made a pie! Its called a Creamy Strawberry Pie. It's made of strawberries, jello, and ice cream. It's not as good as the homemade blueberry syrup I made the other day, but still pretty tasty.

4. I cleaned up for company. I even scrubbed the shower, which company isn't likely to see unless things go really bad.

5. I introduced company to the joys of Adagio fandom teas, Monsters and Mysteries in America (the puckwudgie episode), AND Expedition Unknown.

Critters

I just finished reading American Monsters and my favorite line out of the whole thing is: "As one of Edgin's companion eyewitnesses said, "There ain't nothing right about that thing." I love it. It sounds so formal up until the quote, as if some proper English lords were out on the moor when they spotted something unusual. They stop and stare and fidget and harrumph because there is no seemly way to scamper and it really is rude of this mysterious creature to put them in this situation at all. And then the peculiar beast begins to bound about on its hind legs and one of the valets turns to young Lord Edgin and says it.

Of course, it actually happened in the Ozarks, which isn't nearly as funny. Imagine the British actors of your choice in the role anyway. It's still good for a grin.

The book has also given me something new to look up and think about: the ringdocus! Is it a legendary creature, a wolf, a hyena, or just a botched taxidermy job? Whatever it is, it reminds me a lot of the Beast of Gevaudan.

Oh, I'm never gonna be the same again...

Is it weird that the main thing I carried all through 2015 was Strange Magic? I mean, it came out in January and I saw a preview maybe twice that had all the weird eyebrow expressions and “Yeah Right!”s in it and honestly, looked pretty terrible. But then I heard it had Alan Cumming in it and reconsidered, but still didn’t go see it until I saw a photoset on tumblr that someone had done of the big fight scene with Maybe You’re Not the Worst Thing Ever written on it. (song lyric from Galavant.)

So I went out to watch it by myself one afternoon. I admit I cringed a little when we opened with a song, but it was a good song, so I went with it and it wasn’t long before I was fucking delighted. I loved it. I clapped and chortled like a happy seal. I stopped at a Walmart on the way home to get the soundtrack and they didn’t have it, so I went home and bought it off itunes.

The next order of business was to get somebody else to go with me. I dangled the thought of Alan Cumming singing in front of Debbie until she gave in and went with me. I still loved it, but she ended up in a fetal position whispering “I can’t! I can’t!” by the end. However it only took her two days to decide that yes, in fact she could, because she wanted to see it again.

By then, it had mysteriously vanished from theaters. We got Fandango on it and found that three hours away, in Martinsville, there was a dinky little theater still playing it. We debated whether we were crazy enough to drive six hours to see a movie we had both already seen, but then decided that yes, in fact we were.

After that, we couldn’t find it playing anywhere at all, so there was nothing to do but wait for it to be released. Meanwhile, I wrote fanfiction and regaled my class with stories of fairies and goblins in love until they were as excited for it to be released as I was. When I finally got it, they all sat and watched it all day, which was a miracle.

And then I began to lend it to people. My mom teaches 8th grade and they loved it. My sister teaches 5th, and it was a hit with them. My nieces and nephew loved it so much, I bought them a copy. I lent it to the kindergarden class and they loved it. Everybody I lent it to thought it was great. One of the subs who only got to watch part of it looked me up later to find out what happened. Everybody loved it! So I can not for the life of me understand why it did so badly.

We also did a tri-state merch search to find any merchandise we could. There was NONE. I don’t get it. This is Disney AND Lucas here. They haven’t had trouble merchandising in the past. And it came out right before Valentine’s Day so there shoulda been all kinds of stuff! Like those cheap boxes of kids’ Valentine’s? That would’ve been PERFECT.

And even now, the fandom is amazing. There is so much good fanart and fanfiction out there that it almost makes up for no merch. This whole year has gone by with me just as goofy over it as I was at the beginning. Now the only licensed product I really would interested in is “The Art of-“ because I would sell organs for that. Maybe not my own, but still.

Be Gentle, February

Phew. January was the month of meetings. I’ve been a frantic little hummingbird going to all the meetings in relation to the pipeline they want to put right through our town. The big concern is the ground water because it tends to suffer in operations like this. Then there’s the 300 foot swath they want to cut through the state and I’ll be here all day if I list all the things we’re concerned about. Money has been a problem this month. It just keeps disappearing! It had me seriously considering salary vs lifestyle, if I have to give up my house or get a new job or just an extra job. I also don’t know if I’ll have my current job for much longer. If they don’t have the numbers by the end of March, I probably won’t be kept on. Stressful! I also have sheep now. Technically, they aren’t mine, but I’m keeping them until their new field is ready. Two of them are probably preggers. I just hope they don’t have any lambs until they’re safe in their new digs. I hope February brings me good news.

Here there be moon madness.

I could not figure out why the kids at work were so off the map into Crazyland today. Just nonstop bonkers from the time they fell through the door at 730 to when I had to pry my thumbs out of one's grip so I could fall out the door at 330. There's usually a reason everyone is squirrely, either a change in the routine or drop in barometer, or something to have everyone just a little off-kilter. There wasn't a clear indicator this time, until I walked out of the rotary meeting just a little while ago.

Wow.

One of these days, I have to figure out how to take pictures of the moon, because nothing I own can do it justice, but outside is the biggest, shiniest, turning the surrounding clouds into silver shapes like rabbits and pirate ship-iest full moon I've seen in a long time.

It explains everything.

It has happened again: A horse is being named after me! This time a real live horse.

I just finished Chuck Amuck by Chuck Jones. It tells of his life before and during and a little after his career as the genius behind Looney Tunes and so many other animated pieces of our childhood. I especially loved the stories of his family and his pets. The story of his cats alone is so funny I laughed out loud over and over again. It has good sense in it as well, and practical advice, such as this:

Father taught us to swim early- even before he taught us to read. So I learned to swim before I learned to read. The reason for mastering swimming, Father said, was because of his distaste for drowned children. "I never knew a drowned child that was worth much," he said. "Horrid, bloated things, fish-belly white, which, I suppose, is natural enough, since fish, like drowned children, spend a lot of time underwater."

Father's distaste for dead moppets was not shared by Huckleberry's friend Jim: "I alwuz liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em"- one of the sweetest and most mysterious statements in English literature.

Father had another simple straightforward statement about the ocean, the only valid one I have ever heard. "The ocean," he said, "doesn't care."

This is all you know about the ocean, and all you need to know. Over the seventy-odd years of my life I have seen the wisdom of this statement many times. I have seen powerful swimmers washed ashore dead in an apparently pacific ocean; I have seen infants carried out to sea by a frothing riptide only to be cast back by a succeeding breaker. I have seen a whale crushed by its own weight on a receding tide, and I have seen a strange and wonderful white mare ride a breaker from straight out to sea- we watched her from among other whitecaps on a wind-tossed autumn day, a mile or so offshore, until she breasted the last wave and galloped off down the beach. I knew then and I know now that she came from Tahiti; I've seen her in Gauguin's paintings.

"The sea," Father repeated, "doesn't care, but you do. Heed well." Father often talked like one of the wolves in The Jungle Book: "Heed well, Louis Pasteur: 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' A cat," he went on, "can adjudge the speed of everything of possible danger to him except an automobile; that's why cats get shot down so often by cars- their mind are not prepared. If you want to be smarter than a cat- which is unlikely- prepare your mind and your body for any contingency you can anticipate. It's the lazy person's way- and I do hope you are wise enough to be lazy- so learning to swim is not a sport. Being faster than someone else in the water is silly and ridiculous: a six-year-old child can trot faster than the best swimmer in the world can swim. The only thing you need to know about swimming is how to breathe when you're in the water; if you can breathe, you can swim, and the important thing about swimming is to get where you want or need to go. It may be six feet if you fall into a swimming pool (most children who drown in swimming pools do so within six feet of the deck edge). It may be a mile or so if your boat founders. But one thing is certain: water is an alien element- you can't breathe underwater. It's that simple. So, if you want to spare my feelings, learn to swim.

"Swimming," my father went on to say, "is a form of transportation. Like walking, it can be done for pleasure. But when you stop walking, you don't ordinarily sink, so never confuse the two."

See? Hilarious and a very good point.