Grab-Bag Quickie

At work. I need a little break from writing, so I thought I would write on my blog.

Yo dawg, I say you like writing.

I like the idea of some shorter, structured posts. I have Future Fridays (awesomely alliterated!), which have potential to be a blast. How about a Grab Bag Quickie? I'll take a topic (and please suggest topics, gentle readers) and search on Google with the I'm Feeling Lucky button, or if a topic doesn't strike me, I'll go to a random article on Wikipedia. And I'll try not to cheat. Also, I'll choose how to use a topic.

Today, I'll write on the Grab-Bag Quickie for 10 minutes--that's what I have left on my break.

Alright. This is a challenge. Timer is going.

Today's Grab-Bag Quickie Topic Seed: Karl Leister, German clarinetist.

Hmm. German clarinetist. Okay, let's see where this goes.

My mom plays the clarinet. Or, she did, in high school. She would pull it out when my sisters and I were little, and us girls would play with it, or really, make it go HONK after much effort, then my mom would wow us with her scales. We were kind of a musical family, sort of half-heartedly so. We had a keyboard growing up--no space for a piano, really. I took lessons, and my younger sister did as well, from the same teacher. I hated that teacher, (how cliche, I know, I know) and the minute she tried to cajole me into practicing by saying 'well, your sister is getting ahead of you in the work book,' I said see ya, lady. I don't know if my mother was ever disappointed that piano lessons never really took; she never really let on either way.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday, and after we had dinner and cake, the year book came out. Oh, there were some wonderful pictures in there, and some hairdos that I just died over. That got me thinking, about where my mom is in her life, and where I am in mine. Her mother, my grandmother, died three years before I was born. My mother never got to call her mother, at three am, with a screaming baby, seeking advice, comfort or just her mom's voice. Now that I have a Darling Monster of my own, I don't know that I ever called my mom at three am, but I definitely called her frantically when Baby Monster had a fever, or when I couldn't remember a recipe that I swore I wrote down last time, or for whatever reason. It hadn't ever struck me what it must have been like for my mom, to be 2,000 miles away from her childhood home, with a small baby, and then two and then three small children, and essentially going it by herself.

So, Mom, if you are reading this, thank you. It must have been difficult, but it didn't really show.


Ha.
There goes the timer.
Toodles, peeps.

HTML

I learned HTML when Angelfire was just getting established, when Netscape was the cool alternative to IE, and when Lycos was a thing. And I haven't really used it since. I used to know hex colors and I totally knew how to use that new-fangled Google thing. Other than that new-fangled Google thing, the rest has rather fallen by the wayside.

And I just spent about half an hour, cutting and pasting a bunch of code all over the HTML for this blog, playing hide-and-seek with a silly Twitter 'follow me' button, all for the sake of.. what? Do I need to beg people to look at what I do online? Do I need to be in constant connection with the interwebs? What's my goal?

What's my motivation?

I know I want to develop my writing muscle--without use, any muscle atrophies. So, this, this blog, is an exercise. Exercise takes time, effort and discipline. I don't have a great track record as far as sticking with something that requires those ingredients. This may be my training arena. If I can stick this out, can make this go, what else can I do?

I can put a silly button on a blog, I know that.


Follow @knottyknitter

This is a test.

...this is only a test.

I have a silly little phone that wants to do lots of silly things, like have a blogger app.

If the photo portion worked, that's a necklace holder and earring frames that I made.

Thanks for hanging out for the test!

Jammin'

First there were these:

lots and lots of brambles!

Which means that there are these:

oh, look at those berries!

Which means that there are lots of these:

so ripe!

Which means that I got lots of these:

so many berries!

 So I made lots of this!

jam!

more jam!

I had some time to myself while picking and picking and picking berries, and I got to thinking about the phrase a peach out of reach, a phrase meaning a lovely thing that you just can't have. So, if a peach out of reach is something that you want and just can't have, would a blackberry out of reach be something lovely that you want and can't have, and will end up bleeding if you try to obtain said lovely thing? Thing is, the latter phrase looses all the flow of the rhyming phrase of a peach out of reach.

Hmm.

Some suggestions: A berry that will parry? A bit esoteric, perhaps. A fruit that will fight? Doesn't really convey the message.

What do you think? 

Future Friday!

Friday is for the Future!

For the First Future Friday, I have this dashing fellow:

He is a dashing fellow.

Nikola Tesla.

But, wait, you say. Tesla died in 1943! How is this handsome fellow appropriate for Future Friday?

Tesla's innovations and inventions laid the very groundwork to where we are as far as our technology today. We will be reaping the benefits of his hard and un-thanked work for years to come. And thanks to the generosity of geeks, nerds, and all-around neat people all around the world, his final laboratory will be able to be made into a museum and historic site, protecting it permanently. Learn more here, via the Oatmeal.

I may have found a soap box...

Blag. Blarg. Blughugablugablug.

I am absolutely blocked. 

Wait, no, that's hyperbole. I have all of these ideas of what to write about, but they all require research. By the time that I have a couple of moments, after the darling monster has gone to bed, and I've pretended to clean up after dinner and maybe thought about starting a load of laundry or even the dishwasher, I am wiped out. I have so many ideas about what I want to do, for this space, and elsewhere, but no time at all. 

Growing up, we heard from so many sources that we needed to follow our hearts or dream big or that you are all unique (no I'm not--for the Python fans) or some other Disney-esque bullshit that's fed to children now. We learned through TV and magazines and any other form of media that we could get our sticky little paws on that we were all special shining stars and that all we had to do was be special and special things would happen to our special selves, if only we would believe. Can you tell that I think that's bunk?

What did that do for me? I can't tell you, but I can tell you that, though I might have believed at one point, that I was a special snowflake of a shining star, I don't believe anymore. I'll leave behind my unrealistic expectations of actual adult life behind and take a good dose of reality. You don't always get to follow your special star to your special place. Not when there's rent and a car payment and shoes and food and, and, and. Someone has to do the dirty jobs, and I can tell you that cleaning up funky toilets in hotel rooms isn't anyone's big dream.

I guess what I am getting to, in quite a round-about, unintended soap-boxy fashion, is that I need to learn to make this, right now, my special-snowflake-shining-star place. Not having any time, running around, chasing a darling monster needs to be my special place. And I will come to terms with that.

~~~~
Holy zombie jesus, that got a bit maudlin.
I will say, for context's sake, I have my Pandora set to Dengue Fever, and a very sad-sounding song was on, Amorino by Isobel Campbell. I think that had something to do with the direction of this post. Ack. I'm going to bed now.

Faites de beaux rêves, mes petits choux.

this one is the quick post

This will be a quick post. I said that to myself last night, and that dug a little bit deeper than I had anticipated.

I got to meet and spend time with a new person, not connected with work, or something that I was obligated to do, and had a great time. I had forgotten what that was like. My life has gotten so full of necessary obligations that when I had a chance to slow down and spend time with friends and meet new people, I jumped at that.

I forgot how invigorating it can be to spend time with folks you click with, on personal and creative levels.

In other words, I had a nice evening. And now, I am ready for bed.

Faire de beaux rêves, mes chéris.

not-so-quick of a post

It's after 11 and I want to go to bed, but here I am keeping a promise (of sorts) to myself.

I was on my way to the library, after picking up my darling little monster from daycare, after I had put in a full day of work. We were in the car stopped at a red light, and I noticed a younger woman, probably my youngest sister's age, walking toward the crosswalk. There were a couple of men, one about her age, and one much closer to twice her age walking behind her, and my radar went off. I hadn't been noticing the world outside of my itinerary much, but I saw her, saw the men, and in an instant I was intently watching. I was watching her, to make sure that she wasn't acting like she felt she was in any danger, and I was watching the men, watching their postures, how they looked at their surroundings.

Why?

Usually, whenever I see a woman who is in my age group, I am instantly comparing myself to her. Is she taller, shorter, thinner, fatter, prettier, uglier than me? Do I defer because I think I am less than her by comparison? Do I puff up, act bigger and badder? Is this woman an ally or an enemy, because she is taller/shorter/thinner/fatter/prettier/uglier than me? All of these questions are asked and answered in an instant. I can't help it; that's what happens. I try to help it, I try to pretend to not care, and hope that will lead to a 'fake it 'til you make it' sort of outcome, but that is rarely successful. But, when I see a woman in a potentially dangerous situation, that turns off. My radar goes off. I watch her, watch her body language, watch the men, look at their expressions. Are their eyes angry? Are their fists balled up? My hand usually reaches for my phone, in case I need to make a call to 911.

The first time I really remember doing this, dropping all concerns about the superficial and instead being concerned about the person herself was the summer between junior and senior year of high school. I was seventeen and on a trip to France with my French class. Two of my very good friends went on that trip, so I'll have to ask if they remember this incident. We were on a city bus, late, in on larger city. It might have been Paris, but I don't remember. There were only a couple of other people on the bus, a young woman who was a few years older than me and my friends, and a young man. I remember he had on a giant puffy jacket and a baseball cap. He was talking to the woman, and my French wasn't good enough to keep up with what they were saying, but to me, it was clear that they weren't besties, and that she wasn't very amused with what he had to say. I think I mentioned something to my travel companions, but if I did, they weren't too concerned. At the next stop, she was off the bus in a heartbeat, and he got off after. I remember watching through the tinted bus windows that made the streetlamps an even darker amber. I had lost sight of her, but I had watched the young man turn a corner, and the bus was on its way, and we went back to the hostel.

Every now and then I find myself thinking about that night. I'll never know what happened, or what their actual relationship was. I don't know if I was imagining some sort of potential threat, just for the universal human thrill of being able to say 'I know that something was up, I knew before everyone else.'

Today, the woman crossed the street, head high, and with a little smile and wave to me. The men went on their different ways. Truth be told, I was thinking about what to write tonight when I pulled up to that intersection. And there it was.

Having thought about this all afternoon and evening, these are my thoughts: It's saddening that I instantly compare myself to someone that I've never met, and some sort of self worth is measured by that comparison. That part is getting better and better as I get older, and frankly, care less. It is also a slight comfort to think that there might be others, women and men, like me, who watch out for each other when we think that there is a potentially dangerous situation. I do take off the rose-colored glasses and hope that I'll never have to rely on a stranger being concerned for my or a loved one's well-being, but I would like to think that there are others out there, their hands on their phones, watching their surroundings.

Hm. That's a darker note.

Cupcakes, ponies, sunshine, rainbows and smiles.
That helps a bit.

a bientôt, mes petits choux

changing things up a bit

I've let my blogs go fallow for too long, so here I come with the roto-tiller.

I've wanted a lot of different things in my life and I haven't been able to successfully achieve them for some reason or another, but mostly because I haven't done anything about it. Here I am doing something. What I want this time (or really, have wanted for a long time, but haven't done much toward) is to be a writer. How do you get to be a writer? You write.

That's the thing about writing. You don't need a whole lot to become a writer, but there is one thing that you must do, and that is actually write. Put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and write. Not think about it, or talk about it, but actually do.

The doing is the hardest part for me.

I am a terrible (or wonderful) procrastinator. I could list my excuses and give them more validation, but I won't do that. I am going to make this pledge here, on my public but not viewed space, to endeavor to write. To endeavor to write every day. To do something productive, instead of getting lost in cat pictures and 'liking' facebook posts.

Here's my talk. We'll see what the walk entails tomorrow.

Until then, bon nuit, mes petits choux.