Reading

Current Mood: disappointed

Entry tags:

Oh, no!

While putting up my tree yesterday, I found out one of my strings of antique flower lights no longer works! I didn't check all lines first because the first one lit up fine and I got overconfident. If I'd known in advance, I would have placed my one working line of flower lights on the tree differently. I have two that no longer light up.

I love my flower lights!

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Is anyone doing the December posting meme? Is anyone interested in asking me questions for it?

Travel hopes and dreams

I'm skipping the question about food recommendations, because I'm going through a phase of disliking almost everything I eat.

littlerhymes asked: "Travel plans?"

These are all contingent on me ever having money again 🤣 which given how rapidly my home is disintegrating and I don't even have money to deal with that, feels unsure.

I have so many.

Can you believe that I've never been to Tasmania?? It seems like everyone I know has already gone there, so this will have to be solo travel (I solo travel so often but sometimes I long for company at the airport, you know?). Might be nice for a weekend trip. Of course I have to hit up museums and the markets and have some nice food. The natural beauty would probably be lost on me, and I'm unlikely to see that unless I go with a tour group, what with not driving and all. I'm thinking winter; the historical weather says it's not noticably cooler than Melbourne, though given the closer proximity to Antarctica the winds probably feel icier, but it's not exactly the frozen tundra and I do like to wear coats.

I mean, obviously I have to visit Sydney again.

The writing conference that I was meant to go to during the pandemic was on the Gold Coast... well, that didn't happen and I'm not going to the writing conferences anyway. But I really want to go to the Gold Coast again. My dad took me and my brother there after my mum died, so to me it's always felt like a place of healing. I haven't been back since a trip with friends in my 20s, which was lovely. But also it has tons of fried food and tacky crap AND I LOVE FRIED FOOD AND TACKY CRAP!!! Theme parks! I'm not overly into beaches, but it can feel ~exotic~ to visit them on holiday.

I also haven't been back to Darwin since the 80s, for that matter, so I should probably visit there, too...

...Yeah, I still haven't made it to Paris. I've wanted to go since I was a small child obsessed with sad French art films and ballet. It just costs so much money, though. The kind of holiday I could have for a week in Tokyo for $5k AU (still expensive!) would cost $10k AU in Paris, which is just prohibitively expensive for me right now. Maybe if I win the lottery??

I am slowly saving up for it, though. And Europe is so far that I will probably only ever go once, so I need to make the most of it when I do.

Entry tags:

The Night Guest, by Hildur Knútsdóttir

An Icelandic horror novella translated by Mary Robinette Kowal! I had no idea she's fluent in Icelandic.

Iðunn experiences unexplained fatigue and injuries when she wakes up, but is gaslit by doctors and offered idiotic remedies by co-workers. (Very relatable!) Meanwhile, she's being semi-stalked by her ex-boyfriend/co-worker, her parents refuse to accept that she's a vegetarian and keep serving her chicken, and the only living beings she actually likes are the neighborhood cats that she's allergic to.

After what feels like an extremely long time, it finally occurs to her that she might be sleepwalking, and some time after that, it finally occurs to her to video herself as she sleeps. At that point some genuinely scary/creepy/unsettling things happen, and I was very gripped by the story and its central mystery.

Is Iðunn going out at night and committing all the acts she's normally too beaten down or scared to do while sleepwalking or dissociating? Is she having a psychotic break? Is she a vampire? Is she possessed? Does it have something to do with a traumatic past event that's revealed about a third of the way in?

Other than the last question, I have no idea! The ending was so confusing that I have no idea what it was meant to convey, and it did not provide any answers to basically anything. I'm also not sure what all the thematic/political elements about the oppression of women had to do with anything, because they didn't clearly relate to anything that actually happened.

Spoilers!

( Read more... )

This was a miss for me. But I was impressed by the very fluent and natural-sounding translation.

Content note: A very large number of cats are murdered. Can horror writers please knock it off with the dead cats? At this point it would count as a shocking twist if the cat doesn't die.

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Fic in a Box recs!

There's a bunch of amazing stuff in the FIAB! I've made a couple of recs posts for fics I've loved so far.

My gifts (Red Sonja, Kyle Murchison Booth stories)

Horror fic recs (Cthulhu Mythos, House of Leaves, Original Work)

Entry tags:

using up yarn

Sandnes skeins are definitely designed to pull from the outside and it's inconvenient!

I was just getting really annoyed thinking about how it is not hard at all to wind your own center-pull yarn cake, so why can't mass-produced yarn balls pull from the center? (They can - there are some brands that do - but most of them don't work very well.) I got annoyed enough to just try a websearch for my question and found this forum discussion:

This is a very basic question, but

"...do you prefer pulling yarn from the inside of a skein or the outside? And why? I usually pull from the inside, but the other day I decided to try the outside for a swatch. I have been used to “untwisting” yarn as I knit, but this time it was ridiculous. I ended up winding the skein into a ball from the inside before trying again. (I have a ball winder, but don’t usually use it for hand knitting projects.) [...]"

[Responder B]: "You're correct, it all has to do with the twist of your yarn. Most commercial yarns are meant to be pulled from the inside, but there are so many yarns out there, that is not a rule set in stone. You obviously added more twist when you tried using your yarn from the outside. A yarn butler would help that problem because it allow the skein to roll off the skein rather than it unrolling and slipping off the end which adds a twist. Some low twist yarns or singles yarn you have to be very careful with otherwise you will completely untwist it and it will pull apart while working. Yarn bowls can be helpful with controlling twist as well."

Oh, what. Oh, UGH, that's so annoying! That makes sense, I guess. It just annoys me.

Pulling from the center seems more convenient in every respect to me, so why would you design it deliberately the other way? Obviously this isn't self-evident and there must be a lot of people who think it makes more sense or is more convenient to pull from the outside. I hate when my strong preferences are outliers like this because everything is working against me.

what the hell is a 'yarn butler'? What an annoying term. I could google it but I didn't.

I know about yarn bowls and I always found the concept a little annoying too, because I carry my knitting around in a bag and the bowl is hard, larger than my bag usually, and also frequently breakable. I typically put the skein in my knitting bag and that usually prevents it from rolling all over the place, although obviously it doesn't have the little loop to catch the working yarn and so isn't as effective as the yarn bowl concept.

Entry tags:

brain: mental health

SAD whining

It happens every year at this season that when the sun never comes up properly all day it feels like I have never woken up properly either, but it's always just as frustrating and I'm never prepared. Sigh. Time just comes unglued, because it's overcast all the time and it's only daylight (wan gray daylight) between 9 and 4 at best. A week could be a day long or a month long. It's like I'm dreaming, but not as pleasant, because my hands or feet are usually cold during the day.

Sunlamps have never been very noticeably useful for me, which is extremely depressing, but also not bad enough for me to completely give up on them. The worst part is that regular outdoor exercise probably would help but it's completely unattainable. You might as well tell me that a hundred pushups is the cure.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: "Give Me It" by the Cure

Entry tags:

I'm gasping for love

I haven't gone on any trips to take night photos of Christmas/holiday window displays yet because the nights when I'm available and up to go, it's been bitterly cold, and I need to partially remove parts of my right glove to take photos. (Those gloves with the fingertips that claim to let you use your touchscreen have yet to work properly for me when using my iPhone for shooting photos.) That kind of cold makes my hands hurt, especially the bare fingers. Also, if it's too cold my smartphone slows down, including its camera program.

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The monthly premium for my Medicare prescription plan rose from $36 a month in 2025 to $100 a month for 2026, so I switched away from Humana to Cigna. Cigna claims to be monthly premium-free but doesn't cover every single prescription of mine; the one it doesn't cover I barely use. It'll probably be fine, but I still can't help worrying I might've made a mistake in switching. If so, it'll take a while to find out.

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My head has been killing me lately, which has gotten in the way of me doing a lot of things.

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I posted a first chapter of my current Encanto WIP to AO3. If you're interested:

A Long, Long Way to Go (2611 words) by Viridian5
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Encanto (2021)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Mirabel Madrigal, Bruno Madrigal, "Abuela" Alma Madrigal, Pepa Madrigal, Félix Madrigal, Residents of Encanto Village (Disney), Luisa Madrigal
Additional Tags: Post-Movie: Encanto (2021), Prophetic Visions, The villagers can't be normal about Bruno, False Accusations, Drama, Family Dynamics
Summary:

This vision ends up revealing more than just the future.

(Or, the Madrigal family's new foundation is built on sand....)

Entry tags:

cats,
tv

TV, bird tv, fire tv

I intend to watch the three released episodes of Heated Rivalry so I can know what everyone (my wife) is talking about, but I haven't got to it yet. I am obviously spoiled by Tumblr posts but I haven't watched the bits between the gifsets.

I rewatched Derry Girls over the last two weeks while attempting to knit this nephew sweater (made it to first sleeve cuff again, finally!). That show is so good, and it's so frustrating, because there's nothing more that's like it! All the main adult actors are also so good, but none of them have a long back catalogue of other comedy to watch! And of course the writer, Lisa McGee, needs time to write more things.

I have a long list of things I've been intending to watch and rewatch, but it feels like I don't have enough emotional bandwidth, or attention, or something, for starting new long things that are going to be dramatic.

So I've been watching a ton of non fiction instead:

➡️very old Folding Ideas and Hbomberguy videos

➡️Mentour Pilot's back catalog of aviation disaster explainers (previously I was familiar from watching over

waxjism's shoulder)

➡️Defunctland episodes that aren't too Disney-focused (a mention on Tumblr reminded me and I've only seen a few before)

➡️KyleHatesHiking videos about true crime, accidents, and missing persons cases related to hiking and outdoor sports (recommended by my sister last week)

➡️BobbyBroccoli science scandal documentaries (there's a new movie on Nebula, but otherwise I've watched them all before)

Meanwhile Wax is filling our bird feeders (seed and tallow ball) sometimes multiple times a day and the bird traffic is constant. Sipuli will sit by the window watching them like tv. Tristana is happy to sit in a chair facing the woodstove and watch the fire like it's a tv, sometimes for hours.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Rangers vs Vegas on tv

Entry tags:

adventures in cooking

trying to change momentum

This weekend seemed especially short. I woke up this morning with a headache and spent a couple of hours just lying down with my eyes covered, waiting for the Excedrin to kick in. Then I planned to make cranberry orange scones but my heavy cream was frozen, so that was delayed until it was liquid enough to pour. The funny part is that the recipe wants it to be almost frozen when you use it, but not quite as frozen as mine was.

Anyway, after waiting a bit, I made the scones and they turned out well (pic - that is also my new grey "spatter" pattern quarter sheet pan, lined with parchment).

I didn't make the glaze because I'd planned to sprinkle the scones with cranberry orange sugar, but then I forgot to do that. *hands* They still taste good!

I also made that garlic and bread soup again, but I got distracted and burned my croutons. *sadhair* Soup is still delicious, though. I wish I'd remembered to buy some arugula so I could have soup and salad, but alas, I didn't think of it when I was putting my grocery order together.

Speaking of grocery orders, when did Costco stop selling the 3 lb brick of Philadelphia cream cheese? I need it for the frosting for the red velvet cupcakes for Christmas, but I guess I will have to spend a little more and get what I need from Stop and Shop instead. *hands*

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Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Miss Moneypenny - Placebo

Entry tags:

on the first roll of the dice

I was so glad to log off last night and put a period on this work week. This morning, I had to be up for the cleaning service at 9 am, and they told me the company is closing, but the team who has been cleaning my place for the last 7 years is going out on their own and wants to keep me as a client, so I will get in touch with them in the new year to set up the new arrangement. I hope it all goes smoothly!

I also made another 2 lbs of candied pecans, so I have six jars filled and have to wash the other jars so they can also be filled.

Then I took a nap that felt way longer than it was, and so even though it's only like 8:20 I keep thinking it's 11:30 pm or something. Time is so weird.

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Entry tags:

books

Best books & manga I read this year

littlerhymes asked: "Standout books/comics/manga you read this year"

I was like, what did I even read this year? I feel like I've had more trouble this year than ever remembering what I actually experienced within the calendar year.

Goodreads to the rescue! I gave up on my reading spreadsheet early but I did dutifully log books on GR.

My favourites of the year:

Colette Decides to Die, volumes 1 to 3 by Alto Yukimura - the title makes it sound very grim, but this is a charming shoujo series about an overworked apothecary suffering burnout who decides to jump in the well when she's particularly exhausted, and instead of dying she meets Hades who is also overworked and suffering burnout and needs medical help. Through the relationship they develop, they learn the importance of delegating! And they have adventures! There's also a bit of a romantic element, but that hasn't progressed far in the volumes I've read.

It's a particularly soft & kawaii version of the Greek gods, but why not after all. I'm charmed by it. (I see a lot of discourse on the tumbles about how Greek gods are terrible and shitty in the ancient texts and therefore should only be terrible and shitty in modern fiction, but like, when I want terrible and shitty iterations of the Greek gods those ancient plays and poems already exist for me to enjoy...)

I did catch up on the last three volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends and it's still excellent and amazing and heartwarming & etc.

The more I think about A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon after the fact, the more I appreciate it. Such neat and tidy plotting, a nice spot of social commentary, and a fun story with cute illustrations, all in a slim 176 pages.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is the best book about a female serial killer I read all year. I like how messy and textured it is, how atmospheric, how rounded the characterisation feels, the insights it has into Japanese culture and the way it treats women, bodies and food. It doesn't come to any comfortable conclusions, and yet the ending still feels optimistic, and I appreciate how much space it allowed for ambiguity.

Entry tags:

using up yarn

Knitting a (Medium) Man Sweater

Medium Man is a large size. It has more fabric in it than Small Woman (the size of me). It doesn't have more fabric than a sweater for

waxjism, but she is too warm-blooded to wear sweaters really, so the last time I knitted one for her was over 10 years ago.

It's a lot of knitting. It's going. There are setbacks.

There are gauge issues. And challenges of imagination.

( Knitting Talk )

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Rangers vs Senators on tv

Entry tags:

work

so he takes it to the net

I keep meaning to post and then being too tired to string two thoughts together. Work remains stupidly busy, but I just need to get through Tuesday and it'll all be downhill from there. *crosses fingers* Even if so far only 6 board members have agreed to come in person to the suddenly in-person board meeting. I'm hoping a bad showing will discourage the folks who keep insisting we do stuff in person, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Outgoing CEO keeps trying to orchestrate the first half of 2026 and my boss and I are both like, wtf? but incoming CEO seems to be okay with going, nah, we're not doing that. I haven't been in those meetings, but the stuff coming out of it makes me feel like she's trying to prop up other internal candidate who wasn't chosen to be CEO, which would be 100% on brand for both of them.

In better news, my raise was in my check today, and allegedly the catch-up payment (it's retro to July 1) will be coming in the next pay period, just in time to start paying off Baby Miss L's Christmas gifts. I got a most delightful video of her singing "Let It Go" last night. <333 She's so cute!

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Entry tags:

!thursday recs,
bts

Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool podfics/fancrafts/fanvids/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here

Current Location: Bangor, Gwynedd
Crossposts: https://lexin.insanejournal.com/331879.html

Entry tags:

cats

Geraint

Today Carys (my cleaner) and I discovered that Geraint has become exceptionally protective of me despite being with me for less than a week. And he bites. He really can bite hard.

We did seem to resolve the issue after Carys fed him a few handfuls of his kibble. He appeared to accept her then, though he stuck close to find out what she was doing. He didn’t, however, react badly to the vacuum cleaner or the spot cleaner I have.

In other news, I have bought a bin for my living room that he shouldn’t be able to get into. I grew very weary of putting the rubbish back in the living room bin after he’d dug it all out again.

I told her that if he bites poor Opal and there is blood, I’m going to have to tell the ASDFR people that we’re not a good fit. So far, I have been holding off introducing them.

Entry tags:

family,
health

Dry eyes in the house

Yesterday Wax had to quit work early and drive into Turku to see a doctor because it felt like something was poking her in her left eye but there was nothing there! And then she had to get up early and go to Turku today to see a specialist. She got some eyedrops prescribed, but there's nothing majorly wrong with her eye. It's just that her eyes are too dry. Apparently when your eyes are too dry one of the things that can happen is that they stick to your eyelids when you're asleep and if they're too stuck, when you open your eyes a few cells from the cornea can get torn off it and stay stuck to the eyelid, which creates a little micro hole in it and feels like you're being constantly stabbed in the eyeball. Isn't that great?

When we were talking about this last night I said, "You know, for a bunch of years, like maybe five to ten years ago, I felt like my eyes were too dry all the time and I was putting saline drops in them frequently, but a few years ago instead it started being like they overcompensate and make a lot of tears and now my eyes are more likely to be running when I've been asleep or lying down..." and with her new knowledge she was able to devastatingly inform me that this is just a sign of my eyes being dry, and even though it makes them hurt less, the tears are the wrong kind of moisture or something and not actually helping the eye themselves. So apparently in addition to the drops Wax needs for the inflammation and pain, we both have to start moisturizing our eyes now.

The other quixotic thing that happened this week was that my sister forgot about Brexit. Again.

To be specific: last year my sister ordered me a holiday present from a UK etsy shop that cost more than the minimum you can import without paying import taxes now (which I think is like under 20€ - it might even be 10?). As a result I got a text informing me that a package I didn't know about previously was at Customs, and in order to free it I had to fill out an online form indicating exactly what it was (which is a hassle in itself because they're in a taxonomic tree list) and provide a receipt or proof of purchase, in this case, the email receipt from the webshop that my sister had to forward, which obviously sort of spoiled the surprise. With a small present the amount you have to pay to release it from jail is only a few euros typically, but it is a hassle and it spoils the surprise.

And then this week she FORGOT THAT THAT HAD HAPPENED and ordered me a present from another UK shop.

(My parents & sister and I have pretty much given up on mailing back and forth anything larger than a padded envelope due to the delays and the fact that postage for the regular-sized boxes we typically used to send has gone up to generally over 100€.)

Entry tags:

Deep and Dark and Dangerous, by Mary Downing Hahn

Thirteen-year-old Ali gets a chance to spend the summer with her aunt Dulcie and five-year-old cousin Emma at the family's long-abandoned lakefront property - over the strong objections of Ali's mother, who hates the lake. Ali is delighted to babysit Emma and get out from under her mom's over-protective thumb. But why do both her mother and Dulcie act so weird about the lake and their past there? Who's the mysterious girl who was ripped out of old family photos? And what's up with Sissy, the strange girl who hangs out at the lake and encourages Emma to behave badly and blame it on Ali?

Sissy's real identity won't come as a surprise to any readers over the age of 10, but there are some genuinely chilling moments and Hahn's trademark realistic family dynamics and exploration of guilty secrets and how parents' childhood trauma gets passed down to their children. I actually got stressed out reading about Ali trying to protect Emma while Dulcie blames Ali for all the weird stuff going on and accuses Ali of refusing to take responsibility for anything. (In fact, Dulcie and Ali's mom are the ones who are failing to take responsibility and projecting it on the kids.)

A good solid middle-grade ghost story with unusually complex family dynamics.

Current Mood: sore

Entry tags:

Patience

Three times in the last month I had to give a kind-of brief presentation on my health issues to trainees at a doctor's appointment, twice at pain management and once at dermatology. It was especially weird at pain management since I'm talking about Chiari I malformation, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and my brain surgery and aftereffects in detail while my doctor sits there silently. Somehow, it always goes from the doctor asking if the trainee can sit in to me giving a mini dissertation.

I automatically slipped into my work voice every time.

Aside from forgetting the words "vertebra" or "vertebrae" in the first time I had to do it--though I think "you know, the small pieces that come off the spine" got the point across--I sounded very professional and knowledgeable! Me, the professional patient.

Other moments from my pain management presentations to trainees:
One trainee saying Chiari only manifests obviously in childhood if it ever does, which was so wrong, especially since I manifested in my 30s, which is actually the cliché for Chiarians who don't show it in childhood, so I politely set her straight.
Explaining my horrific adventures in trying traction and why it led to me absolutely refusing to try a Halo or get my neck fused.
Remembering not just the name of the hospital that did my surgery 19 years ago--and that it's different now--but also my neurosurgeon. (I mean, considering that I couldn't recall the words "vertebra" or "vertebrae" for the life of me in one visit.)

I had no idea walking into these appointments that I needed to study first.

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Yesterday, my neurologist prescribed a migraine-related painkiller. When I talked to my pharmacy today, they said my insurance doesn't cover it, and paying out of pocket for 40 tablets would be... $6,000. My reaction was literally "PFFFFFFT!"

Entry tags:

The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thomas Walker

A sensitive, well-written novel about a young girl coming of age at the end of the world. 11-year-old Julia lives in California suburbs with her doctor dad and fragile mom when the Earth's rotation begins to slow, and gradually gets slower and slower and slower.

Days and nights stretch out. Birds fall from the sky. Some people become severely ill, apparently from disruption of circadian rhythms. Crops fail. But life goes on, and Julia experiences all the ordinary milestones - a first love, her parents' marriage breaking up, becoming more independent - against a backdrop of larger loss and change. It

This is an apocalypse novel almost entirely without violence, apart from some light persecution of a scapegoated neighbor. There's some death, but it's all from natural or accidental causes. It's science fiction but marketed as literary fiction, and feels a lot more like the latter. The book has that melancholy, nostalgic, sepia vibe of looking back on times when you knew something was wrong but were young enough to be focused mostly on yourself, and knowing you'll never be that innocent ot experience the same time or world again.

fandomtrees reminder

fandomtrees sign-ups are closing on the 5th! There's still time to come and join!

(This is purely selfish, you undestand. As far as I can see, so far there are a just two or three requests for things I could write for - I'm really hoping for a bit more in my fandoms. *g*)