The Mouth That Roared

It was back to Red Door this evening for my little bunny-girl, and a second round of dates.

She sulked in the back of her carrier when we arrived and didn't want to come out, but when I eventually scooted her butt out she seemed to settle down some.

First up was Irving again.  It seemed to go really well.  They spent about half an hour in the same pen, alternately ignoring and sniffing.  They had LOTS of competent supervision, which helped keep them both on their best behavior - she blocked him from sneaking up on her from behind and pulled him away when it looked like he was trying to crowd her a bit.  No grooming, but both were content to spend time facing one another and being petted.  So this looks very promising.

Then we tried her with Thor, who was shedding like a crazy thing. We wanted to try her with a slightly older bun - he's about a year old as opposed to the other boys that are all from this year's crop of easter dumps.  He's a little jumpy for her tastes, but there was some mutual stress-snuggling when a rabbit downstairs got its head caught in the bars of the pen and started screaming.  (They got her loose and rushed her to the rabbit-saavy emergency vet - hopefully it's just a cut face and broken tooth but she's in good hands). It could work, but since we seem to have some better options that's probably it for him.

Then we brought Harwood back. Since my bonding coach had to go rush the injured bun to the vet, I had to manage this date myself, and I was not terribly confident of my skills.  They spend a lot of time sitting face to face and being petted, though a few times she turned and looked at me like "Mom?  I don't know about this..."  He did get a little pushy and she nipped off a tuft of fur, which sent him off in a tiny fluffy huff.  He's definitely still in the running, but slightly in second place.

We gave her a little time with a bun that just came back today - he was one of Blossom's babies that was born at the shelter last year.  He was adopted with one of his brothers, but about a month ago they decided that they hated each other and their adoptive mom just can't handle it any more.  She feels awful about it, but it's probably best to break up that pair and maybe try them with some girlbuns.  He wasn't settled, as he just came in this evening, and they just never connected.  Maybe once he settles in we could take another look, but tonight was just too much strangeness for him to take.

All in all, things went better.  I still feel that she kind of likes the idea of having a companion, but isn't quite sure about the actual details.  We're taking next week off, because it's the quarterly Spa Days (where they do grooming, ear cleaning, nail trims, and/or glamor photos with all proceeds going to the shelter).  If things continue to go well with Irving, we might bring him home on a trial foster at that point, or maybe take one more date-night to make up our minds.

UPDATE - word is that the injured rabbit (Peony) has several fractures but is being well-cared for, has lots of pain meds, and should be well in 2-4 weeks.

After nearly a week of temps well above 90 and several days of over 100, I woke from my nap to find outdoor temps in the 80s. 

I'd been really dragging since the hell-gig T-W. I stayed well-hydrated and well-electrolyted, but it's still a strain and I've spent the past several days feeling like someone turned up the gravity on me.  But after napping most of the afternoon, I think I'm finally over that.

All the windows are open, the AC is off, and I've even scrubbed the tub and sinks, soaked the litterboxes, and washed the kitchen floor - all things I didn't want to make the AC deal with when it was so ghastly hot.  I even cooked!  OK, Macaroni and cheese shaped like little bunnies, but it still involved turning on the stove...Tomorrow is the rest of the errands I've been putting off because of the heat, like laundry and grocery shopping.

I'm currently ensconced on the deck in my swingychair with my laptop and a tall glass of iced tea.  Winslet is enjoying the evening breezes and trying to work her way around the various barriers that I put up to protect the young plants from anything worse than an occasional stolen leaf.  So far she likes oregano, is iffy about dill, prefers the younger and less-woody catnip, and wasn't too fond of lovage.  There were some very happy bumblebees buzzing about the blooming catnip and oregano earlier.  I can hear the Navy Pier fireworks in the distance. No sign of nastyneighbor.  All is calm.  *yawns*

The new job is going well - enjoyably challenging and nicely casual.  Lots of respect from the boss, and I'm learning a lot.Creating a lot of processes and procedures, so I can work out the easiest and most efficient way to do stuff.  The biggest challenge is working in a Mac environment.

Picked up a second p/t job on Fridays only, doing books and assorted office crap for an old faire friend (Bristol Fight Cast 92ish).  He has his own quite successful computer business, but his bookkeeper.etc just kind of stopped showing up.  He needs just enough help to keep things going, and my other job won't go full time until at least fall, so it works out great. Being paid in cash doesn't hurt.

A couple of band gigs coming up - Family Fest up at Great Lakes Naval Training Center on the 3rd and 4th, and a private party on the 14th.  Had some more nibbles, but the numbers didn't work out.  But at least we're getting calls.

Winslet does not approve of my going back to work - she seeks out pettings and attention when I am home, so I am trying to juggle the numbers to get her a husbun.  I'm taking her bunny speed-dating in a few weeks. She is much more social and sweet-natured than Pepper was, so I hope she'll find a companion that she'll tolerate

No real progress on the bankruptcy front - getting all the ducks in a row and making the last few payments so that we can file.  Applied for the access programs for the pharmaceutical companies that make my FloVent and Singulair. My doctor wrote me a prescription for double-dose on my anti-depressant (which is part of WalMart's 90-day-$10 program) so I spent an evening cutting pills in half and have that med set for 6 more months.  A friend had some "spare" singulair, so I've been able to go back on it after a month without it - I'm hoping that this will mean that I'll stop waking up with asthma attacks at 3AM.

My downstairs neighbor is a real ass, and recently he started complaining that my garden drips on "his deck" - mind you, he has complained to the property manager and monologued to the skies about it, but never actually talked to me.  I replied to one of his nasty texts that I would water every night between 9-10 PM, so he would always know when it was coming.  Apparently his response was to come up and poison most of my plants.  I left for work with everything all green and lush, and came home to a collection of dead plants.  Looks like he poured bleach and/or some cleaning chemical over everything.  I filed a police report, but there doesn't seem to be enough proof for the police.  I've spoken to all of the nieghbors in this tier, and everyone is pretty sure who did it.  I decided the appropriate response was to have a garden party, and many of my friends donated plants and dirt so that I could replant.  I'll post photos in a few days once everything recovers from transplant shock.

Haven't done much sewing of late, but I finally treated myself to a few Truly Victorian patterns during the recent sale, and I'm looking forward to playing with them.

Recent good reads have included the last of Mira Grant's Newsflesh books (Blackout) and Jenny Lawson's 'Let's Pretend This Never Happened'.  I had a chance to see her at the Printers Row Lit Fest, and she is funny and witty, even on major drugs for her crippling anxiety.  She did an online reading, for which I had to log in with my Twitter account.  I've mostly used that to play a browser-based game and to stalk some of my favorite authors/  So now I have actual followers and I'm not sure why.  I'm wendyzski on there as well.  I'm also on goodreads, though I haven't actually put anything in there yet.

There will likely be spoilers for all 3 books so be warned.

UPDATE - UNLOCKED 5/21

INTRO:  This entry is Friends-locked because Barnes & Noble seems oblivious to the concept of "release dates", so I received my pre-ordered copy 2 days ago despite the release date being 5/22.  As Seanan/Mira is rather OCD and had a total flipout when her last book 'Discount Armageddon' released early, I notified her webmaster but left it up to them when/whether to tell her.  As far as I can tell she is still blissfully unaware, and I think that it is better that she remain so for now.  She will find out eventually, but for now let's let her have at least a few less-stress days and good nights of sleep.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?  From reading her blog, I've learned that the book industry has become increasingly more like the movie industry.  First-week sales really matter, especially when it comes to hitting numbers like the NYT lists.  Since I really like her work, and want companies to give her more money to write more lovely books, I want to do my part and make my purchase count towards those numbers. Since this was The Year of Three E-Readers, I had lots of Barnes & Noble store credit left, so I pre-ordered both Discount Armageddon and BLACKOUT in January.  (Ashes of Honor, the next Toby book, is coming out in September but wasn't available for pre-order at the time).  Stores like pre-order figures, as they are a great measure of the "buzz" for an upcoming release.   My copy of DA wasn't too early, but BLACKOUT was.  Usually when books ship early like this, it ends up diluting those critical first week's sales numbers.  So from now on I plan to actually go to physical stores and buy books whenever possible - especially for Seanan's work.

So this is why this is F-locked - because I don't want this to be cross-posted or found by her little electronic spiders yet. 
Please respect this.

UPDATE:  Seanan's lates blog entry says "If you somehow get an early copy, please don't tell me. There's nothing I can do about it, and it'll just raise my blood pressure. But feel free to post a review. Reviews are awesome."  So we're still not telling her and I'll unlock this entry on 5/22

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THE SETTING:  For those unfamiliar with the Newsflesh books, they are a trilogy of works that take place after The Rising - that summer of 2014 when two genetically-modified viruses with the best of intentions combined in the wild and began bringing the dead back to life.  20% of the world's population died that summer, and while the world didn't end it was profoundly changed in a lot of ways.  Some obvious and some less so.  During the early days of the outbreak, while the government tried to cover up the story and the traditional media reported stories about student pranks in bad latex makeup, it was the blogoshpere that came into its own.  Starting with a CDC researcher who violated security by posting the complete details of 'The Walking Plague' on the only unmonitored place he knew of - the blog of his young daughter Wendy.  Bloggers shared the stories of "No shit - dead people are getting up and eating their relatives!".  They posted survival tips culled from a score of Romero movies, and the ways that people were trying to protect themselves.  Many of them died, but their last posts remain on The Wall, am online memorial to everyone who died trying to save the world. 

The best science fiction has always been about people - it uses the tropes of spaceships or zombies to tell us important truths about ourselves.  So while yes, there are zombies in these books.  They are not the real monsters.

In FEED, a team of bloggers wins the chance to follow the presidential campaign.  They encounter a lot more than they bargained for, and discover that there are truths that some people don't want to be told.  Not all of them survive.

In DEADLINE, the surviving members of the team - very much 'walking wounded' - are handed what seems like the keys to unlocking the vast conspiracy.  But not all is as it seems, and strings are being pulled on both sides.

Since it's impossible to discuss BLACKOUT without revealing some fairly important spoilers about the other two books, this is where the LJ cut comes in.  No spoilers for book 3 here  - just the other 2.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.

Rise up while you can.

Someone posted on one of my Steampunk communities today.  He is undergoing cancer treatment and has a tube in his throat which prevents him wearing a regular necktie.  He was looking for a source for soft cravats, several of which were posted. 

My response, though, was "I would totally collaborate on making something that actually incorporates and shows off the tube, because it's proof of how badass you are!"

I posted a reference to it on my wall, and quite a few people agreed with me, for one reason or another.  So I started thinking about why that was my immediate response.

 For me, it's kind of like those women who get beautiful tattoos that incorporate their mastectomy scars, or losing your hair from chemo and getting your scalp tattooed.  It's taking something negative and making it into a badge of honor.  I believe that you shouldn't always hide what you've been through - though I do understand that sometimes it's nice to put on a wig and just feel "normal" and not have "cancer survivor" painted on your head for all the world to see.  That would be a much-needed break.  But I also think that it's important both to yourself and to other people to be honest about what is happening and if possible to embrace that. 

If I lost a limb I would use a regular prosthetic of course, but I would also want to do faire with something like a hook or a peg-leg and TELL people about it.  Especially kids.  Because that way it becomes not something scary or weird or to be shunned - it's just something that people deal with, and that they have always dealt with it, and isn't it much nicer that we now have wheelchairs and custom-fit prosthesis and buildings that have ramps... Because those kids are then less likely to park in a handicap space, or ignore someone who needs a seat or the bus, or say cruel things about people who use the carts at WalMart.

I admit, I also like rattling people's cages, and it would be unexpected.  People get complacent, and sometimes they need to get a bit of a smack in their preconceptions. a "That's a cool appliance"  b "It's not an appliance.:   a "Oh"....  And you know what, A might feel uncomfy, but they're much less likely to make an assumption about someone based on the way they look.  That's a good thing for BOTH A and B.

Shit happens.  You can pretend it didn't happen, or you can deal with it and make morbid jokes.  Someone posted "Laughter will keep you off the roof - with or without the rifle" and she's not wrong.  When I spent half a season at KCRF on crutches, I realized fairly quickly that no amount of burlap was going to hide the fact that they were big honking aluminum crutches and I needed them to get around.  So I chose to decorate then with brightly colored ribbons and bells, and hung my chalkboard around my neck with snide comments written on it.  You know what?  NO ONE said a word about them.  They laughed, gave me thumbs-up, or rueful grins of agreement.  Because shit happens, and you deal. 

Years ago at Marcon, I saw an older woman who built her Hoveround into some kind of cool SF looking tank out of mostly cardboard and hot glue.  It looked amazing, partly because it had a clear dome that opened up and she was wearing a crash helmet - but partly because of her attitude about it.  She had the most manically gleeful expression on her face when she "floored it" down the hallway!

One of my favorite steampunk "costumes" is the Steampunk Wheelchair that Noelle made first for Windycon a few years ago and has updated several times.  It's awesome - most of the mods are from a $5 secondhand ceiling fan.  It's got lights, and a working smokestack, and it was her first real con costume (she's a model-painter).  You bet I figured out a way that she could show it off and compete in the Masquerade with version 1.0.  She's gotten well-enough known for it that you can probably find her on Google without much effort, and I'm cheering all the way. 

You can mope around and pretend things didn't happen, and there is certainly a time for that old Egyptian river.  But I also think that it's healthy to make your pain into art.  Make people laugh.  Make them stare.  Make them think.  Make them question.

Really.  Work with me here...

I was recently reading The Secret of Chanel No.5 (an interesting idea but kind of a lame book, with confusing time-scales and purple prose), and of course they talked at great length about the complexity and construction of "modern" perfumes.  I was reminded of how little I like "modern perfume". 

We all know that scent and memory are very closely entwined.  My mother wore Arpege when I was young, and then switched to Opium.  My father wore Old Spice and then switched to something else - I remember the bottle but forget the name.  I will always associate Jean Nate with my grandmother slowly dying of Alzheimers, as they doused her with ever-increasing amounts to hide the smell of urine.  Suddenly-reappearing-ex-fiancee wore Grey Flannel, and to this day now it makes me vaguely ill.

I don't wear any of them.  In fact, I don't really wear "perfume" at all.  I usually wear a variety of single scents (what were called soliflora) or comparatively simple blends of 2-3 different scents - all recognizably plants or flowers.  Jasmine, rose, and lilac most of the time.  I occasionally like patchouli, but I'm mindful that a lot of people don't.  I have some herbal blends that I wear when I'm in the mood - a lemon/lavender/fir blend is nice when I need a wake-up call, for example, and lavender/vanilla is a great pillow spray scent.  But I generally hate the scents of most commercial perfumes.  I'm not sure whether it's the primarily synthetic ingredients I object to, or just that "my nose gets confused".

I got thinking about this the other day, and realized that a LOT of the things in my life are the same way - I like things simple. 

I don't have much appreciation for "fine cuisine" - because I want my steak to taste like steak, not marinade or sauce.  Most sauce (unless it's cheese) usually gets in the way. So I don't cook much.  I like one or maybe 2 extra ingredients on my pizza.  I hate chicago-style hot dogs, and eat my burgers with lettuce, cheese, and ketchup only.

I also don't like most combined/contrasting flavors. Take chocolate-covered potato chips, for example.  (please - take them, I don't want them).  My mother adores them, and I find them confusing.  If I want something salty, I'll eat something salty.  If I want a sweet I want a sweet.  Not some weird combination of the two.  I have very reluctantly accepted "chicago-style popcorn' (mixed butter, caramel and cheese) but at least that I eat a nugget or two at a time, of the same flavor, so I am experiencing them sequentially, not all at once.  I'm not one of those weirdos who has to eat all my veg, then all my meat, etc, or has to have the foods not touching or anything like that.  I do occasionally eat 2 differently-flavored jellybeans at the same time, but that's on purpose - it annoys me when it happens by accident.

Then I looked in my closet.  I own less than 10 items made of printed fabric.  One was a gift, and one is a small floral on black that was bought for a specific occasion.  Two are plaid, and three have stripes.  The other is a black-lace-pattern-on-white T-shirt and it's been sitting in the bottom of my shirt drawer for over a year.  I do own one long-sleeved shirt that is a tiny windowpane plaid that looks solid from more than a foot away. That's it.  Even costume stuff  - the only patterns I've used in my Steampunk stuff are woven stripes, and even my Elizabethan gowns are solid velvet for the most part, with occasional simple geometric woven patterns in no more than 2 colors.

Then I looked in my living room.  Aside from the curtains (an Indian print in blues and greys) all of my furniture is solid-colored, and/or wood.  Aside from one set of tone-on-tone woven pattern duvet cover and shams, all of my bedding is solid colors.  I have 2 throw pillows that have stripes, but I got them for free.  Bedroom curtains have a bit of beading on the top, but are otherwise solid colored.  Shower curtain plain, and bathroom is decorated in 3 colors.  Yes the office curtains are a brown Indian floral print, but that was probably accidental.  Aside from the ones that I got for free, all of my dishes are white, black, or clear.  Silverware is plain metal with no detail.

I just found this interesting, as I'd never thought about this before.