osprey_archer | Entries tagged with real life: 2024-2025

I wrapped up the Newbery Honor books of 2025 with Andrea L. Rogers’ Chooch Helped, which also won the Caldecott Medal this year for Rebecca Lee Kunz’s rich sunset-colored illustrations. It’s a picture book about a long-suffering older sister who watches as her two-year-old brother “helps” various family members complete their tasks, usually by accidentally making more tasks by spilling the flour, pulling up the newly planted garden vegetables, tearing out the stitches in a freshly sewn pucker-toe moccasin, etc.

The sister, standing in for older siblings everywhere, is exasperated. Although of course in the book she moves past that exasperation, once her parents point out that she’s one of her little brother’s most important teachers, I suspect that this book may not be a hit with older siblings. Why does no one ever validate their feeling that their younger siblings are so annoying!!!!

As a youngest sibling, however, I was enchanted, especially because this is exactly the stage my niece is in, although (knock on wood!) unlike Chooch, she’s usually not actively destructive when she “helps.” It just takes twice as long to get anything done when she’s “helping” water the plants or mix the pancake batter. But to an adult, it’s totally worth it to see her attempting to haul around a gallon or water or measure a teaspoon of baking soda.

(A side story: last week, as I was washing up the pancake dishes, she was trying to get a slice of orange onto her spoon. At last she announced, “I’m frustrated.” There is nothing cuter than a two-year-old using a ten-cent word, so of course I stopped to help her get that orange onto her spoon.)

The illustrations are just lovely, too. I love the sunset-hewed pallet, the way that the patterns on the characters’ clothes splash a little past their outlines, the Cherokee motifs that Kunz wove into the illustrations. There’s a particularly gorgeous illustration of Chooch gigging for crawdads with the friend of the family, both of them dark silhouettes against the orange water, and a pale gold moon with a glowing aureole of fireflies.

Recently I finished Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and have not yet been able to write about it, because I need time to digest it. But Kimmerer recently released a shorter companion book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, which is a distillation of certain ideas from Braiding Sweetgrass, and also easier to digest simply by virtue of being much shorter.

The Serviceberry’s basic idea is this: our current extractive industrial economies are rattling down the road straight toward ecological catastrophe. What other economic models could we follow instead?

And as a model, Kimmerer offers the serviceberry itself. As she notes, Western economics is founded on the idea of scarcity. But while scarcity is a condition that occurs in nature, it’s not a constant. In the natural world, abundance is just as common as scarcity. A serviceberry tree after a rainy spring has more than enough berries for birds and squirrels and humans.

Serviceberries are thus one model of a gift economy. They invite humans to understand “natural resources” not as a source to be exploited but as a gift from the earth, which like all gifts creates a reciprocal relationship between the giver and the receiver. We take, but also give. (In the case of the serviceberries, by spreading the seeds.)

And, furthermore, Kimmerer suggests, modern society could use traditional gift economies as a model for one possible way forward out of our current economic race toward climate catastrophe. There are already small-scale attempts in Little Free Libraries and free farm stands and Freecycle and the Buy Nothing movement, everything from the traditional mutual aid in churches to the new forms of digital gift economy exemplified in, for instance, fandom.

This last is not something Kimmerer discusses, but fandom is my own most extensive experience with a gift economy, where people write fic or draw fanart and post it with no expectation of direct payment behind perhaps a few comments - but also the more diffuse payment of helping create an environment where other people also post their fan creations for everyone to enjoy.

Now, at this point in my life, I’ve mostly moved over to selling stories for regular old money, because we have not (yet) learned how to leverage the gift economy so that it can pay for, let’s say, a two-month road trip. But, on the other hand, so many of the friends that I stayed with on that road trip were people I met through fandom, or through book reviews or nature photos on Dreamwidth or Livejournal. The road trip would not have been possible without the money, but it also would not have been possible without the web of relationships created by the gift economy.

***

While I was reading The Serviceberry, I discovered a couple of serviceberry trees on a street near my house, in a location that made it clear they had been planted by the city. Visions of serviceberry muffins dancing in my head, I went out to pick some berries - keeping a weather eye on the road, as picking berries from a public tree felt vaguely illicit.

But berry-picking is an absorbing occupation, and I didn’t notice the man walking his dog until he was almost upon me. “What are you doing?” he asked, curious, with some slight accent I didn’t recognize.

“Picking serviceberries,” I explained. “Would you like to try one?”

He would and he did. “It’s good,” he said, a little surprised. “Better than blueberries.”

And we said good evening, and I went back to picking serviceberries as he and his dog walked on.

I’ve never owned my own TV before, but one of my friends had an extra which became mine when I moved into the Hummingbird Cottage. A Target gift card had just come into my possession as a housewarming gift, so I traipsed off to Target for a DVD player.

“I didn’t know we sold those anymore,” the bemused clerk informed me. (Target does, however, have a large record selection. Also WiFi enabled record players. What a time to be alive.)

Undeterred, I made my purchase, and drove home happily dreaming of all the new movies and shows I would watch.

I did in fact manage to watch a couple of new movies: Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle, a wordless movie about a man marooned on an island who ends up marrying a turtle who turns into a woman (as turtles are wont to do), and Werner Herzog’s Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which is a fascinating documentary about trappers in the taiga, although it does keep saying things like “These trappers are almost untouched by modern civilization” as the trappers zoom off in their snow mobiles. I mean. Maybe a little touched by modern civilization?

However, what I’ve mostly been doing is rewatching old favorites. I rewatched the Romola Garai Emma and the pre-Raphaelite miniseries Desperate Romantics (both of which I own), and contemplated borrowing the 2006 Jane Eyre and 2008 Sense and Sensibility miniseries from the library before deciding that no, it was better to wait till I could find them used somewhere, and therefore enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

(I have not yet found either of those miniseries, but on my last visit to Half Price Books I DID find a copy of the 1981 Brideshead Revisited miniseries for a mere $10!!! which was instantly stolen by a friend who hasn’t seen it yet. Which is fair enough I guess.)

I did get the first two seasons of The Vicar of Dibley from the library, and have now started in on their Poirot collection, and was disconcerted to discover that with Poirot in particular I have barely any memory of the show. Things like the bit where Miss Lemon says “Poirot looked middle-aged even as a baby,” yes. The solutions to the mysteries? No. Gone. Might as well have never watched the show. Which is convenient for a rewatch, admittedly.

As much as I’m enjoying my rewatches, however (season one of Downton Abbey next?), I would like to stir a few new-to-me things into the mix as well.

1. I’ve started the 1981 sitcom A Fine Romance, because (a) it stars Judi Dench, and (b) the episodes are half an hour long. (I’m a sucker for shows with half hour episodes.) It’s cute, but I’m not totally sold yet. Will give it a few more episodes and see how I feel.

2. On the topic of half hour shows (actually 22-minute shows), I’ve heard Abbott Elementary is fantastic. Yes? No? Maybe so?

3. Given my love of Poirot, I was looking thoughtfully at the Miss Marple adaptations. But alas they’re all two hours long, and I turn into a pumpkin at about 60 minutes.

4. Has anyone seen Flambards? Would you recommend it? I’m considering it because it’s on the shelf at the library and I have a vague memory of someone, somewhere, gushing about it, except maybe they were gushing about the book that it’s based on and not the show.

5. I attempted to watch a Vanity Fair miniseries, by which I mean that I got a copy out of the library and then never even put it in the DVD player because the thought of watching Becky Sharp be mean to people while smiling sweetly was too stressful. Strongly suspect I would feel the same way about the classic 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy miniseries, which is unfortunate as it would be the perfect capper for my George Smiley readings.

6. However, as a general rule, I do enjoy book to miniseries adaptations, especially if they’re period pieces and the episodes are less than an hour long. So please let me know if you have recs!

About a year ago, I realized that some of the older children’s books that I wanted were available in the archive of the university where I work. “If only I knew where the archives were and how to request books there,” I mused, without of course making the faintest effort to acquire this information.

But I have become incrementally better at turning ideas into reality, so it took only a year before I learned where the archives are (the top floor of my favorite library, which incidentally is the library closest to my office) and how to request an appointment to read a book there. Then I traipsed over to the archives for The Little Angel: A Story of Old Rio, illustrated by Katherine Milhous of The Egg Tree, which is the real reason I wanted to read it, although I was also nothing loath to renew the acquaintance with the author, our old friend Alice Dalgliesh of Newbery fame.

The archives are not quite as fancy as the Lilly Library Reading Room: no mural of Great Thinkers in History! But they make up for it with comfy rolling chairs, and the archivists do still bring you your book on a pillow, which is the most important thing.

The book itself is in that particularly mid-twentieth century style where we’re gently drifting through some time in the life of a family long ago and far away. (Sometimes it is just long ago or just faraway, but here it’s both.) We enjoy some street festivals, meet a cute kitten named Gatinho, cheer as the daughter of the house furiously refuses an arranged marriage with a man who just tossed Gatinho across the room (Gatinho is unhurt, except for his dignity), and accept that this is not the kind of book that is ever going to interrogate the fact that this upper-class Brazilian family in the 1820s has slaves. Milhous’s illustrations are charming but not as magical as the illustrations in The Egg Tree or Appolonia’s Valentine.

Nonetheless, pleased by my success, I went back to trawl the library catalog for more books to read in the archives… and discovered they have a copy of one of my remaining Newbery books, Valenti Angelo’s Nino! What a score! So I’ve got an appointment tomorrow at lunch to begin reading.

Important Hummingbird Cottage updates! First, I am sad to report that the geese after all decided not to nest on the pond, presumably flying off in search of a larger pool. However, the pond is still frequently visited by ducks and geese, and also a red hawk which swooped across the pond and snatched something small and dark from the rocks. You go, red-shouldered hawk! Keep the small rodent population in check!

The flowers have begun to blossom. Velvety purple irises, blue-violet columbines, yellow roses, lovely gold-pink roses like a sunrise, these last outside the window of the downstairs bedroom, which at last forced me to remove the mattress blocking the window -

I have not yet told the story of the mattress. So. At a mattress fundraiser for my old high school, I bought a queen size mattress on clearance, only to discover upon delivery that my bed frame was, in fact, a full. This ended with the mattress leaning against the window for a month, until the roses forced my hand, and I took apart the old bedframe and lowered the new mattress to the floor, where it will reside till I get an appropriately sized bedframe.

(Hilariously, a week after my mattress misadventure, my former roommate bought a new mattress for a bedframe that was surely a full. But NO. That bedframe was in fact a queen.

One would like this to end with the trading of the bed frames, but Julie understandably wished to keep the charming wooden sleigh bed and therefore cut it down to size.)

The weeds are getting away from me, in particular the lemon balm (a variety of mint that is spreading all along the shady north side of the house). However, yesterday evening I did get rosemary and chives from the farmer’s market, which I planted, having cleverly come out through the garage in order to keep Bramble inside… only to look up from planting the rosemary at the sound of a happy meow. Bramble trotted past, intent on exploring the neighbor’s patio, which I must admit I’ve also been curious about, so I followed him nothing loath.

The Hummingbird Cottage is half of a duplex - all the houses in this condominium development are, except the ones that are fourplexes - but I’ve never seen the neighbors in the other half of my duplex. Nor have I heard any noise from their half of the house, seen their car, or seen a trash can pulled to the curb by their driveway.

Through the patio door as I chased Bramble (happily hiding under an overgrown bush), I saw a dining room set with a jacket draped over a chair, so someone must live there at least occasionally? A mystery.

Bramble eventually scampered down to the pond, and then apparently decided he’d had enough, as he docilely allowed me to pick him up and deposit him inside. Possibly all that water was a little alarming. I finished planting the rosemary and chives and contemplated the best place for a cherry tomato plant, but as I have not yet acquired said plant, that is a problem for another day.

Also, I found the perfect little wicker cart for my houseplants! Admittedly there is currently only one houseplant, but now that I have a home for more they will surely come into my life. The cart is currently a somewhat battered yellow and needs a wash and a coat of white spray paint, but it was only twenty dollars at the secondhand shop, and anyway how often do you see a charming wheeled wicker cart for sale anywhere?

Exciting news from the Hummingbird Cottage: a Canada goose is nesting by the lake, right across from my patio! There are two geese, actually, and sometimes one is on the nest and the other patrolling, but sometimes both on the lake, dipping their heads underwater so their white back ends stick up in the air.

So far no sign of goslings, but I’m keeping an eye out. The pond might be christened Gosling Pond.

However, I also believe that there’s a kingfisher (!!) in the area, and if I can get a positive ID on the bird, the pond will likely be Kingfisher Pond instead. I am not very confident in my bird identification skills and even less so than usual in this case because I would LOVE to have a kingfisher, and therefore fear deluding myself. But I’ve seen it more than once and feel cautiously hopeful that I have not after all led myself astray.

Other birds in the area: lots of robins. Cardinals. Blue jays. A lot of little brown birds that I vaguely classify as “sparrows,” although I’m sure some of them are chickadees. A lovely little red bird, smaller than a cardinal and without the distinctive crest, very red at the front and fading to brown at the back. I saw that one in the tree outside my office window, which is on the second story so I am of a height with the birds in the trees.

The office is a fancy name for a table pushed up under the window, where I do my Sunday Writing Mornings. Mostly I’m working on short stories, and I’m building up a little stash: seven so far! This is also the room where I practice my dulcimer (most recently working on “Scotland the Brave”), and think about practicing my tin whistle, but I haven’t managed to take the plunge on that one yet.

It’s getting warm enough to plant, so I need to get started in the garden. There’s a rosemary plant that appears to have overwintered, as there’s green coming into the tips of its gray leaves, and some very happy mint on the shady side of the house. Not sure what kind. I brought a little inside and Bramble was very interested, starting whizzing around the house, and then either jumped or fell off the upstairs balcony into the living room. (He was fine. He has been courting this experience for weeks, as he considers the balcony rail a fun enrichment opportunity for cats.)

My composting efforts were met with great enthusiasm by the wildlife community, by which I mean that something dug them up repeatedly until it ate every last bit that it found appetizing. Strongly suspect the agency of a possum that I saw waddling across the patio one morning. This is probably a heartening sign of biodiversity, but as I don’t wish to open a buffet for possums, the composting is on hold as I consider next steps.

At the end of 2024, I mentioned that I had made an offer on a house, and then never followed up on this fact, so I thought I’d update you all on my progress.

So: I’ve bought a house! It has a hummingbird stained glass window, so I’ve named it the Hummingbird Cottage. Before I bought the Hummingbird Cottage, I already had two pieces of hummingbird art (a painting and a stained glass window hanging), and two friends have already given me hummingbird cards, and one is making me a Hummingbird Cottage cross-stitch with a ruby-throated hummingbird, and in short the entire decorating scheme may swiftly become “hummingbirds.”

Hummingbirds may also prove an organizing theme in the disposition of the flower parts of the garden, as I have acquired a book about native plants that has a special list of flowers attractive to hummingbirds. I very much like the scarlet cardinal flowers, but alas I don’t think the soil is wet enough, so I may have to fall back on other blooms.

Other garden plans: a little herb border, with chives and rosemary and basil and thyme. Cherry tomatoes. Raspberry canes or blueberry bushes or perhaps both. Compost, which I have mentally moved to the side of the house with no windows. Does anyone know any good resources for learning how to compost?

Before I get too deeply into gardening plans, however, I’m going to see what comes up in spring, as the previous owner was evidently an avid gardener. (I looked up her obituary, and discovered that she lived to be 101, and went on over 100 cruises in her lifetime.)

And right now it’s too cold for gardening anyway, so I’ve been at work on the inside. I’m not moving in till mid-March, so I’m trying to get as much done as possible before then. The past three days I spent painting with a rotating cast of friends, and now it is almost all painted (including a rich cranberry red tea nook) except the guest room may need a second coat of the soft misty blue-violet agapanthus.

Have moved in most of my books (which currently reside in the linen closets) and will shortly begin packing my lesser-used kitchen gear. I’ve also put out a general offer to take unwanted furniture off my friends’ hands, and have scored a daybed, a TV, a pair of end tables, and a china cabinet. Need to find some rugs to protect the carpeting from the cats. Also need to cut a cat door into the cupboard under the stairs so I can put the litterbox in there, as it is one of the only non-carpeted places in the house and I would very much prefer NOT to get litter all over the carpet...

Also very much need a nap, but alas, that will probably have to wait until sometime after the move.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2024 was to read fewer books, and to read them in the spirit of true leisure, rather than with a despairing eye on my to-read list which somehow only seemed to grow longer the more books that I finished.

I am happy to say that I achieved success! Not only did I read fewer books this year, but I have high hopes that the numbers will be lower still next year, in part because I haven’t signed up for any more Dracula Daily inspired “read the Sherlock Holmes/Raffles/Jeeves & Wooster short stories!” substacks. The email format worked great for me when I was working at the library, where I had plenty of time to read at the desk, but this year I was constantly falling behind.

Given that I exchanged a part-time job where I had hours to read at the desk for a full-time job where I rarely have time to read at all, you might expect a large difference between the number of books in 2023 and 2024, but in fact the change has been relatively modest, largely because when I moved into my own place I decided not to get internet.

I love it! Now that I’m not spending hours each day spinning my wheels on various websites (over the years, my poisons of choice have included Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr…), I have so much time! I’m enjoying my reading more, I’ve picked up new hobbies (dulcimer, D&D), and when I sit down to write, I actually write, instead of “writing” for three hours but half an hour in I decide to look up some detail, and then since I’m online anyway might as well check my email, and look at these new DW comments I need to answer, and why not just check Twitter, and why have I gotten so little done in this three hour writing session???

Dreamwidth is the only social media site on which I’m still active, which is good for my peace of mind but perhaps not my writing career. Deck the Halls with Secret Agents didn’t do badly, but I bet it would have done better if I were more active on Bluesky. And Bluesky has not yet started to induce the “that’s an hour of my life I’m never getting back” feeling that I get from Facebook and Twitter, presumably because it’s still showing me posts from people I’m actually following rather than random ads. So I may try to be a bit more active there in 2025.

I do miss being able to watch things at home, but I have sourced a dumb TV from a friend, so once I get a DVD player I’ll be good to go.

Now that I’m getting a new place with a guest bedroom and therefore, presumably, more guests, I am a little concerned how said guests will feel about this internet-less existence, but hopefully being able to watch something on a TV (albeit with choices limited by the available DVDs) will soothe their troubled souls.

At some point the exigencies of modern society may force me to get internet, and that point will probably be when my parents grow too frail for me to call them up and say, “Hey, I’ve been gifted a month-long subscription to National Theater at Home, can I come over to your house to watch Romeo and Juliet in the guest bedroom?” (Or “I have the sniffles, can I work remotely in the guest bedroom rather than going into the office?”) But for now I’m quite happy leaving the internet at work.

***

My goal for 2025: I’m going to have a garden! I plan to plant a small herb garden, basil and chives and thyme and rosemary. Also cherry tomatoes and blueberry bushes and raspberry canes, which will probably between them fill my relatively small garden space. Also I’d like to have a compost pile, but I’ll need to do some research first. Because of the aforementioned small size of the garden, it will perforce be near the patio, so I’d like it not to smell too badly, as otherwise it would not be pleasant to sit on the patio gazing out at the pond in the lowering dusk.

1. Started my new job on January 4.

2. Started playing the dulcimer.

3. Completed Sage, henceforth Diary of a Cranky Bookworm, which I have not yet published for various and sundry reasons even though it is literally all done except the cover. Next year! Next year I will set it free!

4. Traveled to Paris, where I met

littlerhymes in person! We had a delightful time and sometimes sigh about the fact that we are forced to work when clearly we were meant to spend our lives eating pastries in Paris.

5. As a direct result of the Paris trip, took up scrapbooking again after a fifteen-year hiatus.

6. I am one item short and did not want to put that at the end as it seemed anticlimactic. Please let me know if you think of something else I should put on this list!

7. Played at the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon with the Dulcimer Gathering. Since childhood I’ve dreamed of being a part of the Feast, so it was lovely to make that dream come true.

8. Completed my first DnD campaign! My character was the Baron Sebastian Sunslayer, driven from his castle after forcing one too many themed dinner parties on his vassals.

9. Published Deck the Halls with Secret Agents.

10. Bought a house?! Okay, made an offer on a house that has been accepted, have not actually closed yet, BUT STILL. It has a hummingbird stained glass window and I am calling it the Hummingbird Cottage.

On January 4th, I started a new job as an academic advisor. I really like it! And they told me when I started that the first year is like drinking from a fire hose, and they were not wrong! However, now that I have the first year under my belt, I feel I have a decent handle on the job and the rhythms of the job: fall is the busiest season, spring a little quieter, and summer very quiet indeed.

In taking this job, I moved back to my hometown. My parents and my brother’s family live in the area, plus my oldest friend (we met in second grade!), so I had the seeds of a social network here, but I’ve been working to grow it. I joined the Dulcimer Gathering, I accepted my friend’s invitation to join her Dungeons & Dragons group, I befriended the mother of one of my brother’s friends when we totally by chance sat next to each other at a concert (she is now my bakery buddy; we like to try new bakeries together), and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my parents and my baby niece. (It’s harder to pin down my brother and sister-in-law, as they’re very busy, but we see them for holidays and birthdays.)

And I’ve also been making a concerted effort to maintain my friendships in Indianapolis and Bloomington, which has meant a weekend trip every month, sometimes twice a month, and also a number of weekends where someone came up to visit me.

Plus I’ve added another new hobby (scrapbooking) while continuing my old hobbies (penpalling, baking, zoom Theater, reading copiously), and also nibbling at the edges of other possible hobbies (watercolor! nature journaling! okay apparently I don’t have the bandwidth to add yet ANOTHER thing right now).

All in all I’ve been quite busy. So busy that at the end of both the spring and fall registration seasons (when I’m meeting about six students a day to schedule classes, discuss their hopes and dreams, and also discover mid-meeting that they just lost their best friend to breast cancer four days ago) I got sick, the primary symptom both times being “I am so tired that I can’t get out of bed today.”

Next year I would like to slow down a little. A few thoughts:

1.It would be a good idea to cut back to every other month for my Indy/Bloomington trips. Perhaps fewer but longer trips? I’ll have more vacation time next year, and outside of registration season I have time for three-day weekends.

2. No travel during registration. No, not even if they’re doing a production of Medea in Indianapolis. (Well okay MAYBE if they’re doing a production of Medea.)

3. (Obviously the “no travel during registration” rule doesn’t apply during spring/fall break. If the students are off it’s fine if I’m off too.)

4. I have a weird dynamic with D&D where I really enjoy our sessions when I’m there, but beforehand I’m always hoping it will get canceled. Maybe it’s just One Thing Too Many? Maybe the prospect of following up a day talking to people with more talking to people just seems tiring? Our campaign this year ran from February to November and it was supposed to be weekly, although of course various scheduling issues meant that we missed some weeks.

5. I don’t want to give D&D up entirely, but it would work better if it was once a month instead of once a week, or if I could just be involved in a limited-term campaign in the summer when I have more bandwidth. Leaning toward the latter, but I don’t know how realistic that is.

I had a whirlwind weekend! The first weekend in October is always the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon, a reenactment of a French trading post that was active in the mid-1700s, and for the first time ever I was not merely a spectator but a participant: on Sunday, I spent all day playing my dulcimer with the Dulcimer Gathering.

First, however, came Saturday, which I did attend as a spectator (although in costume), because I had a friend visiting and because I needed to buy my dulcimer. Hitherto I’ve been using a cardboard loaner from the Dulcimer Gathering (you can get a surprisingly nice tone with a cardboard dulcimer actually), but there’s always a dulcimer seller at the Feast and my plan from the beginning has been to get my dulcimer there, so I could try out an array and find the one that called to me. And I did indeed find a beautiful sweet-toned cherry wood dulcimer.

I also got fry bread and meat pies and a red-and-green cockade for my hat, which may have plighted my troth to God knows what political movement (there were some tartans that I sedulously avoided), but it really put a nice finishing touch on my costume so if I’m now a Jacobite I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

Fortunately, after all this gaiety, Monday and Tuesday were fall break, and I took both days off to recover. On Monday I spent the day with Mom and Dad, who were watching my niece, who is one and a half and talking up a storm. Does anyone understand most of what she’s saying, no, but most of the time she seems to be talking to herself anyway, and she has a special voice that she uses when she’s actually trying to communicate with us: slightly louder and more demanding, as mostly she is communicating her wants. “Up!” “Don!” (Down.) “Kib!” (Crib. She likes to play in her crib.) “Mek!” (Milk.) I’ve heard her say a very clear “ap-pul,” although she didn’t on Monday.

She also seems to call her grandmother “Mama,” having perhaps adopted this as an all-purpose word for trusted female caregiver. Also much easier to say than “Grandma,” of course.

Then on Tuesday I had the day completely off, with no responsibilities, and spent the day happily puttering. I ambled downtown (it’s within walking distance from my place), replenished my stock of notecards at the local artists’ cooperative, crossed the bridge for a happy morning catching up on correspondence in Starbucks, and then recrossed the bridge and stumbled upon the early voting location, which had such a line that I went over to the library to grab a book before getting in line. (The book was Katherine Applegate’s Odder, the story of a sea otter, which is very cute.)

And I painted a watercolor portrait of Bramble! I was not quite brave enough to do it with his eyes open (eyes so often break a picture), but it is recognizably a cat, perhaps slow-blinking at the viewer from the top of his cat tree.

I posted a few weeks ago about an imminent watercolor class, which was then postponed, but happily it finally happened this Monday! So I spent three hours Monday evening learning about watercolors, and ended the evening with a watercolor of two fat birds which I have pinned to the bulletin board in my office. There was also a watercolor of an orange cat which was very cute right up until I added the eyes... somehow they are people eyes rather than cat eyes and give the whole thing a feel disturbingly like the Cats movie.

However, I will persevere! One of my watercolor goals is a portrait of a cat who I met in the Brooklyn Cat Cafe, as I would like to put her picture in my scrapbook (planning a spread called Cats at Work), but I currently have only a blurry video which will not screenshot well... Hopefully I can do Pink Salmon justice in watercolor. She deserves the tribute of a portrait rather than a mere photograph, anyway.

Scrapbooking progresses! Despite Baby Boy's interference (he knocked the table over RIGHT after I had finished laying out the pages...) I am finishing up the section for my thirtieth birthday party. It is ten pages long, which is longer than the spread for my entire 2017 road trip... Well, look, sometimes you just have more things to put in the scrapbook, you know? Not only are there more photos for the birthday party, but I'm putting in many of the birthday cards I received, as well.

Have begun work on my massive 2023 road trip. So far I have a better record than I feared, although to my dismay have have discovered that I have nothing from either (a) John K. King Books - not even a photo of the stack of books I bought! - or (b) the Boston Public Library, which was about 75% of my sightseeing in Boston. Oops. (This reminds me that I was planning to get a little cocktail umbrella and paint it black in honor of A Spy among Friends. Must add to list.)

Because it's so big, I've been sort of storyboarding the road trip pages. I stopped after Boston last weekend, but this weekend I'm hoping to get through the last few weeks of the trip - PEI, Belchertown, and Philadelphia for

skygiants and

genarti's wedding. (Which I also don't have pictures for! But I DO have pictures from the Rodin museum, including a miniature sculpture of a penguin, which is a parody of Rodin's commemorative sculpture of Balzac.)

Two weeks ago, I posted about my recent excursions in scrapbooking. Since that time, the scrapbook bug has only bitten deeper, to such an extent that I sorted through all my photos on Facebook, LJ, and Twitter for scrapbooking purposes.

In this process, I discovered:

1. The resolution on Facebook photographs is terrible, but they actually look pretty all right if you print them out at half size.

2. Actually it is nice to have some half size photos! Variety in photo size/shape adds visual interest to a page, especially if said page is built more or less entirely off photographs.

3. Jury is still out on the quality of the Twitter photos, but I am suspicious.

4. Especially because it turns out that if you scroll back through the feed on your Twitter profile, it eventually just stops! Long before it reaches your actual first tweet! I don’t know if you could reach an earlier tweet if you happened to have it bookmarked, or if they have simply been scoured from the internet.

5. Although there is clearly some record of that earlier data somewhere, as you can retrieve your earlier photos if you download your Twitter archive.

6. This was a great relief, because otherwise there was a period from July 2018 to September 2021 during which I posted exactly one photo. The Twitter downloading has cut the blank spot down to July 2018 to December 2019.

7. I am of course planning a 2018/2019 page, on black paper, entitled “A Digital Dark Age,” with my single lonely “I voted!” selfie from November 2018, plus a list of events (written in silver gel pen) which I could have scrapbooked had I ever printed the photos out. The black bear and the beaver and the hillside of blueberries in Canada! My very first Heartland Film Fest! My 2019 trip to Massachusetts…

I also have an “I voted!” sticker to go on this page. Is it the actual 2018 sticker, or an extra that I got at some other time? Who can say! Almost certainly from later, actually. However, there are times when one embraces truth of mood rather than exact literal truth while scrapbooking.

8. Speaking of digital dark ages, it’s been a bit sobering to go through these old photos and find so many broken links - some of my photos have mysteriously disappeared, Livejournals and Twitters deleted, etc. (The half-life on Twitter reviews is especially dire.) Thinking about dedicating a scrapbook page to each of my books so as to collect the reviews.

When

littlerhymes and I were reading the Boggart books, I mentioned that in my youth, the first book inspired me to write a poem called “Scottish Sword Dance.” (Had I ever seen a Scottish sword dance? No. Does The Boggart even include a description of a Scottish sword dance? Also no. You can do these things when you’re ten.)

In the process of searching for this masterpiece, I discovered (1) that I appear to have misplaced a box containing most of my childhood poetry and drawings, and (2) my old scrapbook, featuring the three-week trip that my parents and I took to Australia and New Zealand when I was a wee lass of 17.

“If only I had kept up the scrapbooking,” I sighed. “I would love to have a scrapbook of my Barcelona trip, or my study abroad in York. Alas, alas. Too late to begin anew with my more recent trips, of course. Didn’t collect sufficient ephemera to make proper scrapbooks anyway.”

I have now scrapbooked my trip to Paris with

littlerhymes. I enjoyed putting it together so much that I proceeded to scrapbook various events from 2022, including (1) Harvest Days with Christina, (2) Winterlights with my mom, and (3) ice hiking with Dad.

For the ice hiking pages, I had the brilliant idea to cut up the state park map for material. One can make a scrapbook with just photos and captions - Harvest Days and Winterlights are both like this (although I did cut out a snowflake for Winterlights), but I always think that a scrapbook is the better for having bits of ephemera from the experience itself, ticket stubs and bookmarks and business cards and so forth.

Upon a second search for “Scottish Sword Dance,” I discovered that I still possess my cache of scrapbooking material from Barcelona, plus my journal of the trip! And I still have my own photos, albeit on Facebook, which does not print out at very high quality, sadly. Perhaps if I print the photos at a smaller size…

In looking through all these photos for scrapbooking, I have discovered that I like to photograph:

1. food,
2. flowers,
3. cats,
4. doors/staircases/pathways of Mysterious Portent,
5. artwork,
6. bookcases,
7. and interesting architectural details.

What I don’t usually photograph:

1. Myself.
2. Other people I am with.

What do people most like to see in scrapbooks?

1. Photographs of people that they know.

Fortunately I have a few such photographs among the masses of food pictures! But going forward I must remember to photograph myself and my traveling companions more often.

Sadly, during my road trip last fall I purposefully (foolishly!) only bought as many postcards as I could send, and I don’t have a lot of brochures and ticket stubs and things left either. If only I hadn’t cleaned out the backseat of the car after I returned! Simply did not realize… But since that trip is still quite recent, I may be able to cobble together enough material for a scrapbook, after all.

Today is my birthday! As per usual on my birthday, I have enjoyed my free Starbucks hot chocolate plus a birthday book, in this case Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Editha’s Burglar, in an extremely shabby copy which I found on my grandparents’ shelf years ago when I was sorting through their old books.

The book's shabby exterior encases a delightful story! Hearing a sound in the night, young Editha goes downstairs and politely asks the burglar not to make too much noise as he steals the silver, as her mother would be frightened if she woke up to hear a burglar. This is really more of a short story than a book, bulked up with some charming illustrations, and just the right size for a quick birthday read.

I also intend to begin Rebecca Fraimow’s Lady Eve’s Last Con, but somehow a number of errands have snuck into my plans for a quiet and restful birthday, so we shall see. Perhaps after the brownies are in the oven.

Tomorrow evening I am off to Paris! I will be meeting

littlerhymes there, and we will be traipsing through the City of Light for a little over a week. We will walk the paths in Giverny! Admire the art in the Louvre! Eat one extremely fancy lunch! Probably also eat our weight in various French pastries!

I'm not taking my computer, so I won't be posting till I return, but I look forward to regaling you all with stories of our adventures when I get back.

Have just discovered that I have misplaced my adaptor plugs (?!), so if they don't turn up I suppose I will be going to Target tomorrow to buy a replacement. Annoying! But such is life. And while I was searching for them I found a beautiful notecard that I thought I had lost forever, so this wee little cloud had a silver lining.

***

Also, in the interest of clearing the decks of all before-the-trip book reviews: I finished Herbert Best's Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes, illustrated by Best's wife Erick Berry, author of Winged Girl of Knossos, one of my favorite finds in the Newbery Honor Project.

Garram the Hunter is not destined to join the list of favorites. It's a boy's own adventure story in that classic mode where there's a lot of adventure and very little character development, which is not my thing. However, kudos to Best for writing, in 1930, an adventure novel set in Africa featuring all African characters (from a couple of different ethnic groups that are clearly quite distinct), no white people at all, and almost no racial theorizing behind the offhand comment "Cruel the African native may be, but he loves a joke." (Does this not simply describe humanity?)

There's also something of a theme about The Importance of Maintaining Military Preparedness Even After Years of Peace, in which the modern reader, blessed with hindsight, sees the looming specter of World War II. But 1930 is perhaps too early for Best to be worried specifically about another war with Germany.

In my New Year’s Resolution post last year, I commented among other things that I had read too much the year before. The total then was 315 books. This year, the number is higher.

Now these numbers are high partly because the list includes about fifty Sherlock Holmes stories, partly because I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books for the Newbery project, and partly because when I worked at the library, I often had hours at the circ desk with nothing much to do but read. And the more I read, the more books there were to read, and the faster I tried to read them, the faster they piled up, until I began to feel like Lucy stuffing chocolates in her mouth as the assembly line sped up and up and up.

This is of course simply one small example of a phenomenon that can occur with movies, music, recipes: things that you do for pleasure somehow come to feel like chores to be gotten through. I don’t think I’m alone in coming to feel this way about my TBR. I am perhaps unusual in that I was in a position to attempt to solve the problem by reading stacks and stacks and stacks of books.

So I am here to say: you cannot solve this problem by reading more. The problem lies in seeing reading (watching movies, listening to music; life) as a to-do list, to be gotten through as efficiently as possible. Hurrying will never make you feel less hurried.

And I was thinking also about how some of my favorite days on my road trips were the times when nothing much happened. The day it poured in New York City, so I stayed in my friend’s apartment and wrote letters and listened to the rain with her sweet cat Bagels (who has since died). The fact that in Boston we made time to go back to the Boston Public Library Reading Room twice, just because it was a nice place to work, and never mind all the Boston sights going begging. (Someday I will visit the Isabella Stweart Gardner Museum, though.) An afternoon on Prince Edward Island when I sat on a bench by a lake and watched the Canada geese gather in great numbers before they rose off the water to head south.

So this year, I want to slow down. Anything worth doing simply takes the time it takes. Take a deep breath, and enjoy the journey.

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Page Summary

Picture Book Monday: Chooch Helped
Book Review: The Serviceberry
Adventures in DVDs
Into the Archives
Hummingbird Cottage Updates
Hummingbird Cottage News
The Hummingbird Cottage
Thoughts for the New Year
Ten Things I Did This Year
Thoughts on My 2024
Feast of the Hunter’s Moon
Watercolor + Scrapbooking
The Scrapbookening Continues
Scrapbooking
Happy Birthday to Me!
Off to Paris!
New Year's Resolutions

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Page generated Jun. 19th, 2025 11:44 pm

A Certain Slant of Light

otherwise known as Jin's journal

Entries tagged with real life: 2024-2025

Picture Book Monday: Chooch Helped

Book Review: The Serviceberry

Adventures in DVDs

Into the Archives

Hummingbird Cottage Updates

Hummingbird Cottage News

The Hummingbird Cottage

Thoughts for the New Year

Ten Things I Did This Year

Thoughts on My 2024

Feast of the Hunter’s Moon

Watercolor + Scrapbooking

The Scrapbookening Continues

Scrapbooking

Happy Birthday to Me!

Off to Paris!

New Year's Resolutions