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  • No longer cold but I'm still disturbingly achy. Darn. I don't want to be sick tomorrow. I want to see Where the Wild Things Are.

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Saturday, 07 November 2009

  • Nanowrimo: The Quiet One

    Currently, I am cold. Wrapped up in a snuggy, a fuzzy blanket, and double layer socks. I am shuffling around as if I'm wearing a kimono, which I practically am, since I have the blanket and snuggy tied on with a length of plaid fabric which is sometimes a belt and sometimes a scarf, depending upon my mood. I just ate a cheese sammich, which successfully warmed up my fingers. But I don't know what to do about my nose. Someone should invent a nose warmer or I should go out and buy a ski mask or something.

    My boss has more or less caved to my demands. I told her, I'm not trying to be mean, but for the sake of my health, both mental and physical, I simply cannot work the floor any more. This past week she had me work two overnights in a row, which works out to me working 24 hours in a 48 hour period (actually in a 36 hour period, I worked it out).  I don't mind doing overnights since it's nearly impossible for me to fall asleep anywhere but the safety and security of my own bed. But two in a row was a bit much. My legs felt like I'd been doing deep knee bends for those two days, which technically I had been since it's a lot of kneeling, lifting, bending, blah, blah, blah. This week, she wants me to do one overnight only, but it's a 16 hour shift!! Holy cats! In theory, I don't mind it and I won't quibble because it's in line with what I asked for and I am a conscientious worker, but.... Yeah, well... I'm sure you all know me by now.

    In other news, I signed up for Nanowrimo this year. Due to the double death by overworking at the beginning of the week, I got off to a rough start. I basically didn't have the energy to sit in front of my computer and do more than drag my eyes back open every few seconds. I'm still a bit behind, but about average with my writing buddies, so I don't feel too bad.

    Here's the first 13 pages (nice "lucky" amount to post), for those interested in reading an excerpt:

    The Quiet One
    (please excuse any grammatical or other errors as this is just the first draft, but I don't mind if you point them out either. Just a warning though, this being horror, there's some bad language and an unpleasant scene. Let me know if it does, or doesn't, work for you.)

    She had a knack for finding the perfect hiding spot, usually close to the front door. It was better that way. Most people tended to come in the door, look around for the greatest concentration of people, and then join them almost immediately. Which meant she remained blissfully alone with whatever book she had brought. It also meant that her sister had a harder time ditching her at the end of the night when she was ready to leave.

    Truly she hated these parties, hated being made to feel like a burden when she was content enough to keep to herself and bother no one. Becka never let her forget that she hated towing her big sister around on their mother’s orders, and for her part, Fiona would just as soon have stayed home and not inconvenienced anyone by her presence.

    So she tried to stay out of Becka’s way and avoid embarrassing her sister too much if she could help it. She mostly blended into the window alcove like a pale gargoyle, wearing clothes that did nothing to relieve or enhance her pale coloring. Fiona didn‘t come to these parties looking to make friends. She liked being plain to the point of invisibility. So far as she’d seen, no good ever came of being noticed.

    At home, she wore dark clothes, usually black, and tried to ignore her family’s insinuation that she was, god forbid, Goth. As if it were some horrible epitaph to be worn with shame. No, she wasn’t Goth, but she didn’t see anything wrong with being one. Some of their music was pretty good. She didn’t see anything wrong with just being who you were, whether it was Goth, Gangsta, Hippy, or Right-wing Conservative. She didn’t judge; she wished other people would do her the same courtesy.

    She just liked black, though when her mother forced her out to these tedious parties her sister liked, she wore pale colors designed to help her blend into her surroundings. After all, the most prevalent “decorative” color in most homes was some derivative of white, despite the best efforts of HGTV. Her mother complained incessantly about her dark clothes and was therefore grudgingly obliged to accept her “party gear,” despite the fact that it turned her into a bigger wallflower than her customary black jeans and t-shirt would have

    Fiona’s current hiding place made her wish she’d worn her darker colors. Sumptuous dark velvet drapes framed the alcove in creased burgundy decadence with sheer white curtains behind them. She’d sneakily released both layers from their loops so that they hung straight down, mostly hiding her from view. It was too dark outside for anyone to notice her sitting in the window, and once inside, they were immediately distracted by the music and fraternizing in the living room. If anyone was nosey enough to look in her direction however, they’d have seen her legs sticking out into the room where they were highly conspicuous in white denim against the dark drapery. It couldn’t be helped. She had to have enough light to read by and watch for her sister’s drunken egress.

    “Hello?” came a male voice from beyond her curtained hidey hole. She could just see his legs through the gauzy sheers and rolled her eyes. Glancing down at her own legs, hidden under their thick layer of bleached canvas, she assumed that he must be speaking to someone she couldn‘t see through the thick drapes. There was no way anyone could look at her legs and think, ah, girl legs… I must speak with the owner of these forthwith.
    She blinked as the curtains were pulled aside a few inches so the man could look in to see who he was addressing. “Hello,” she responded calmly, dispassionately. Just because she wasn’t interested, didn’t mean she would go out of her way to be rude. Maybe he had a legitimate reason for interrupting her solitude?

    “Thought it’d be you in there.” Er, what? “I’ve seen you around, and you’re always hiding.”  Peering at the thick book in her hands curiously, he ask, “What are you reading?”

    Ugh, she’d been noticed. Whenever people told her that they’d noticed her, it always gave her a vaguely stalkerish feeling, since she worked so hard to be overlooked. Fiona didn’t recognize the guy, but she never really paid much attention to the people at these parties. She closed the book around her hand, rather than putting the bookmark in, so that he wouldn’t think she was preparing to have a conversation. That is simply not the case, sir, she politely informed him in her head. “It is a collection of Scottish fairylore and superstition from a gentleman named John Gregorson Campbell.” When forced to attend these parties, she always snatched up the biggest and most academically tedious (to the common man) title that she had on hand.

    “Oh, Campbell. He’s written a lot of books on mythology, hasn‘t he?” he asked, trying to seem knowledgeable. He had a nice voice with some vague accent she couldn’t place.

    “No, you’re thinking of Joseph Campbell. John Campbell died at the end of the nineteenth century,” she replied patiently, hoping he’d get bored with the topic and wander off to easier pickings.

    “Kind of odd to come to a party just to read,” he suggested, attempting no doubt to change the topic.

    “I’m here under duress.”

    “Oh?”

    “If my sister gets out of hand, I’m to beat her into submission with this book before dragging her home.” He laughed, which surprised her. Most people told her that her deadpan delivery made it difficult to know when she was joking. In this case, she was half serious. If Becka was drunk, Fiona would need to knock her down and steal the car keys if she wanted to make it home alive.

    “Which one is she?” he asked, turning to look into the next room where most of the people were gathered in groups or sitting on the couch with the prerequisite red plastic cups of beer in their hands. A sudden roar indicated someone had won at whatever videogame they were currently playing. If both she and Becka had not been out of college, she’d have thought they’d somehow crashed a kegger. Of course, there was a distinct possibility that they had. Becka was not the kind to turn down free booze. Fiona looked forward to convincing their mother that an intervention was necessary in a few years.

    She glanced at the back of his head, then into the next room, but didn’t immediately see Becka. She was almost sure her sister hadn’t sneaked past her. It was much too early for Becka to leave any party. Probably just out of view. Still, if he decided her drunk sister was more attainable, he’d probably allow her to get back to her reading.

    “She’s got hair like mine,” Fiona explained, absently tugging on a loose white-blond strand though he wasn‘t looking, “but poofier. And she’s a snazzier dresser. If you see her, you’ll know it.”

    “Oh, that one.” He didn’t sound too impressed by what he’d seen, which was bad news for Fiona. “Didn’t realize you two were related.” Turning back, he cocked his head to the side like a quizzical dog, his dark eyes considering. Fiona didn’t like that. Go look for my sister, she thought at him, willing him to lose interest. “You want something to drink?” he asked instead.

    “No… thank you. I’m good,” she responded with a forced smile, absently caressing the cover of her book with her free hand before awkwardly tucking the hand behind her, realizing it had been a potentially rude gesture. She hated people who were needlessly impolite. Fiona didn’t want to be thought of as one of those people.

    “I’m Jack, by the way.”

    “I’m Fiona,” she replied primly, hoping he would sense her awkwardness and wander off.

    “So, you like folklore? Fairies, werewolves, vampires?” he asked after a moment, trying to drag a conversation out of her whether she liked it or not.

    No Twilight, no twilight, no twilight….

    “What do you think of those Twilight movies?”

    Arggggggh!

    “Or did you prefer the books. Most books are better than the movies.”

    “Did you read them?” she asked.

    “Well, no…” he trailed off in embarrassment. He probably hadn’t seen the movies either. She only wished she hadn’t been dragged to the theater in her sister’s wake.

    “Trust me, the movies are certainly no worse than the books.” Fiona replied in disgust.

    “Oh,” he said with a grin. “It’s like that, is it?”

    “Beyond her invention of the dreaded sparkly vamp, the books were not particularly well written. At the very least, Meyer could have used a thesaurus once in a while. But that’s besides the point, I don’t read a lot of fiction unless the author has something interesting to say. I prefer facts to fantasy.” She thumped her book with a knuckle of her free hand before tucking it behind her once more.

    “Hmmm, folklore is fact now?” he inquired teasingly.

    “Well… in so far as they were the attempts of primitive man to make sense of their world. From a sociological point of view, folklore and mythology are an important launch board for philosophy and theology as well as being a window into the past for anthropological students. Since we’re not able to talk to people from these preliterate eras, all we have left to study them by are their remains and their stories.”

    “But you don’t believe in vampires,” he pressed.

    “What kind?” she responded, slowly warming to the subject despite herself. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the conversation was rather one sided. She might not want to talk, but if he wasn’t going to go away, it was time to see if he could contribute more than leading questions.

    The query seemed to surprise him, and he regarded her silently for a moment, his large dark eyes gone thoughtful and unreadable. “Well,” he replied after a moment, “what about Nosferatu?”

    “The movie you mean?” She picked up her bookmark, inserting it into her book and setting it aside. Her hand had been getting sweaty any way. “The word Nosferatu was an adjective describing the pestilential quality of the vampiric plague in medieval Eastern Europe and did not actually relate to any specific Slavic vampire. It just means ‘unclean.’ Or are you one of those Vampire LARPers?” she inquired, raising an eyebrow.

    “Ha! No!” He seemed to think her question was the funniest thing he’d heard in ages, as it took him several minutes to get himself under control. “Not many people know that, though. I mean,” he hastily added as if covering his tracks, “there are the vampire games and novels, which basically use the Stoker template, and then Hollywood which insists vampires are highly flammable. At least the Twilight vampires could walk around in the daylight, even if they were shiny.”

    “That’s true…” she agreed slowly, suddenly unsure. How should he know that most vampires in folklore were not photosensitive? Most people didn’t even care that Hollywood and writers always got that part wrong. Heck, she didn’t even care. It was just something she’d read once. Unlike her sister who was gaga over vampire literature, especially the oversexed kind, Fiona was about as interested in vampires as she was in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or UFOs. She figured if they were real, they were about as interested in her personally as she was in them, which was to say, not at all. Live and let live.

    “Hey, you sure you’re not thirsty?” he asked suddenly. “I’m going to go get something to drink. Be right back.” Without waiting for her response, he disappeared into the other room. Hopefully this was his less than graceful way of dodging a conversation gone awry. If she was lucky, he was in the next room already looking for some other girl to chat up and trying to forget the strange discussion from which he’d just won free. But no, a minute later he was back with two cups in his hands. He politely offered one to her, which she accepted, taking the tiniest sip before setting it on the seat beside her. She was surprised that it was water though. That was kind of nice.

    It wasn’t that she disliked talking to people or that the discussion didn’t have potential, but inevitably, this Jack guy would decide that she was either into him or irrevocably weird. Not that it wouldn’t hurt her feelings, but she hoped for the latter. By this late stage, her whopping twenty-six years of life, she was used to people deciding she was too strange to warrant human interaction. It couldn’t even be said that she had anyone to call a friend. Aside from the people she worked with, who were barely acquaintances, her closest ‘friends’ consisted of people who read her sporadic blog on a regular basis and commented. She didn’t even know half their real names, and she hoped none of them knew hers. Fiona took great pains to keep herself to herself.

    The former was more likely simply because this was a party and people came to parties to hook up. He would be sorely disappointed if he wanted anything more than conversation. There was a reason her parents despaired of her ever leaving the family nest.

    “So what’s the deal with your sister anyway?”

    Fiona felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “I have no idea what you mean by that.” Had Becka turned him down? Was he just making time with her so he could get the scoop on her sister? It was moments like this that she really loathed people.

    “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I just meant it seems like you two aren’t really… close. You come to parties where she immediately ditches you, while you find some place to hide out until she’s ready to go.”

    “Just… how long have you been watching us?” Nausea skewered her stomach and turned her hands to ice. Stalker alert!

    “What? I- oh, no! I’m not…” She had to give him credit. He looked completely mortified. Could still be an act though, stalker man, she thought through narrowed eyes. “I swear I haven’t been watching anyone. It‘s kind of hard not to notice though. Every party I’ve seen you at, you’re hiding out with a book.”

    “I don’t think I’m comfortable talking to you any more,” she announced slowly, picking her book back up and clutching it in her lap like a talisman. Whether he was a stalker or not, it seemed like a good enough excuse to end the conversation. After all, it wasn’t like anything was going to come of continuing and then he’d be all kinds of disappointed. All that time wasted on someone who was only outwardly girly.

    “Aw come on,” he said, seating himself on the floor in front of her. Now instead of him looming over her, she was looking down on him. Less intimidating, surely, but how aware of his own body language was he? It was her experience that people seldom knew the secret language they were speaking, simply by the arrangement of their bodies. If he had not done it to put her at ease, he’d sat simply because his legs or feet hurt. “Look, I swear I’m not stalking you. I’ve just seen you at various parties and wondered why you come out just to avoid talking to people.” He laughed at the absurdity as he announced, “I swear, I’m not stalking you!”

    “’Fraid you’re out of luck,” Becka suddenly slurred. Spotting her sister actually interacting with the opposite sex, she leaned into the room from the arm of a man who was obviously on steroids of some kind. Either that, or he’d decapitated Arnold Schwarzenegger and had his head stapled onto the body. “My sister’s got ice in her vagina,” she announced with a sly smile before giggling into her new boy toy’s arm and going back to the business of getting mind numbingly drunk.

    “Becka!” Fiona shrieked in horror, shooting her sister a hurt look. She drew her legs up and let the curtains close, hiding her from view. Her sister always knew just what to say to completely embarrass her, especially in public. It made little difference that Becka probably wouldn’t even remember the specifics tomorrow. From inside her dark little asylum, she heard Becka cackle and snort. She hoped she choked on her own filthy tongue.

    Well, if Jack wasn’t going to leave by her request, maybe Becka’s disgusting little joke would scare him off. According their father, men only wanted one thing anyway, and he should know. Between all his affairs, girlfriends, and ex-wives, he’d had relations with the adult female population of a small town. It was no wonder she was man-shy as her grandmother used to put it.

    She squeaked and flinched a little as Jack lifted the drapes and tucked them into their rings. He sat back down and stared at her as if to say, I’m not going anywhere. When she seemed disinclined to do more than stare back incredulously, he raised is hand and placed the other over his heart. “I solemnly swear that I have absolutely no interest in your vagina,” he announced.

    What do you even say to something like that?! Fiona gaped at him as if he’d suddenly turned green and furry.

    “Seriously, nothing against you and your anatomy. But, interesting conversations are hard to come by when the people around you are lowering their collective IQs in leaps and bounds,” he explained with an ironic grin.

    “But then, why do you come to parties? I come because my family makes me,” she groaned.

    “Are you supposed to be your sister’s chaperone or something?”

    “No… they just…it’s complicated,” she finished lamely, not really wanting to give all the details of her life to a complete stranger. “If anything, she’s supposed to be mine.”

    “Ouch.” He made a face, then shrugged. “I don’t know why I come out. I mean the only place to have a real discussion any more is on the internet. Otherwise, you have to deal with all the self-absorbed narcissists,” he waved a hand towards the other room, “in order to find a decent conversation.”

    “That is so true,” she chuckled, slowly uncurling from her fetal position. “And even then you have to know where to look, otherwise it’s all pop culture references and who’s watching what on TV.”

    “It’s just not enough to talk with people online though, you know? A satisfying conversation online doesn’t equate to a lasting friendship. It’s very easy to sit in front of your computer waiting for someone who left a great comment on a message board to come back and feel let down when they don’t. At least if you meet someone in the flesh, there’s more of a lasting impression.”

    “Mmm,” Fiona made a noncommittal noise. She might or might not be guilty of lying in wait for scintillating internet conversationalists, but meeting people in the flesh made her immediately suspicious about their intentions if they showed any interest in her. “It’s just… safer to talk to people online. If their attention becomes… unwanted, you can stop going to those boards, block any personal messages they send. So long as you haven’t given out any personal information, they can’t find you in real life. People you meet offline already know what you look like and approximately where you might live. I‘d just as soon stay home and read, where I can interact with my books and imagine the conversations.”

    “Paranoid much?”

    She frowned self consciously, looking away. “I’m just… shy.”

    “If you say so… but I think you’ve seen one too many network specials about cyber stalkers. Sounds like you avoid connecting with people. That‘s not shyness. What you describe, that‘s almost pathological.”

    “What are you, my therapist?” she demanded in outrage.

    He blinked, looking slightly embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

    “Whatever,” she grumbled, leaning against the window frame and drawing her legs back up. “My family agrees with you. So, you know, you must be right, and I just suck at being a human being.”

    “Actually, if it’s any consolation, I think you’re a totally great human being. You’re very real, and you don’t put on airs just to make people like you.”

    “I don’t want people to like me,” she protested.

    “I don’t think that’s true. You don’t seem completely misanthropic. You‘ve even laughed a few times,” he declared with a smirk. “Of course, I don’t know what else you do in your spare time aside from read. You don’t live in an opera house, do you?”

    “I don’t think it’s fair to compare me to the Phantom of the Opera. Eric wasn’t misanthropic; he was alienated. People abused him for his physical deformities, but he was still lonely and looking for companionship. I think Christine Daye was a terrible gold digger who played on his need to achieve her own goals. He totally deserved better. Of course, if you’re references just about any of the films, they definitely didn‘t give Gaston Leroux‘s novel a fair interpretation.”

    Jack snorted, and when she gave him a somewhat reproachful look, he shrugged apologetically. “This is why it was worth talking to you. I’ve never heard anyone express sympathy for the Phantom, let alone refer to him by name.”

    “I don’t think a lot of people have read the novel,” she announced uncertain of whether he was mocking her or complimenting. “So there’s no reason they’d know anything about the original character. Just like Frankenstein’s monster isn’t some shambling corpse that converses in grunts and fears fire. I’ve only seen one movie that was halfway true to Shelly’s creation.”

    “And you don’t read ‘fiction.’” he quoted, laughing at her.

    “Well, they were written before fiction stopped saying anything worth reading,” she replied pretentiously, which only made him laugh harder.

    “So what do you read?” she challenged.

    “Oh, I like the classics,” he replied, elaborating when she raised an eyebrow. “Shelly and Leroux, definitely. But also R E Howard, Blackwood, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H P Lovecraft.” She made an incredulous face, and he stuck his tongue. “Oh, now I know you’re a book snob.”

    “Burroughs isn’t bad,” she offered, “Though after the third Tarzan book, it gets a bit repetitious. The same for the Mars books. He was quite prolific, but he didn’t seem to vary too much in how he wrote. It ended up being all adventure, same plots, just different characters and settings.”

    “Aw, my heart is broken. How could you say such awful things?” he demanded. “At least you can’t say H P Lovecraft was unoriginal.”

    “I- really haven’t read him.”

    Jack let his mouth drop open as he stared at her in mock horror. “Horrific alien entities masquerading as gods and interbreeding with primitive man? Ancient malign things oozing down from the stars when the earth was still a seething cinder newly spat out by the sun? I need to convert you to the ways of Cthulhu,” he announced purposefully.

    “What happens if I become a Cthulhu-ite?”

    “Cultist,” he corrected. Leaning forward, he crooked a finger for her to follow suit. Swinging her legs down from the ledge again, she leaned forward till he was close enough to whisper in her ear. “You’re eaten first, so you know, no waiting and worrying about the inevitable.”

    “Oh my gawd!” screeched Becka, stumbling into the room on the arm of a new guy with the glazed eyes of someone thoroughly pickled. “Maybe there’sh hope for you yet, Feeb!”

    Fiona turned red, but bit her tongue as several of the people in the other room turned to see what was going on. The worse part was, their mother would never believe anything Fiona told her about how Becka acted at these parties. She would just assume that Fiona was trying to get out of going.

    Jack turned to look at Becka with a look of loathing on his face, a look she was oblivious to. “You look like a nice guy,” Becka declared, hanging on her knew guy’s arm so she could lean in speak more intimately without falling over but keeping her voice pitched so loud that everyone in the place could hear her. “You wanna take out my sishter, she’s high maintenensh ‘n’ don’t even try to get in her pantsh. Feeb’s ashex- ashes- eshecksule… represshed.”

    Fiona covered her face with her hands. This was bad, so very bad. If there was a reason she was ‘repressed,’ it was Becka’s fault. It was like she went out of her way to be an exhibitionist. While Jack and Becka were preoccupied, she stood and edged towards the door.

    “Wassa matter Feeb?” Becka demanded, catching sight of Fiona out of the corner of her eye. “You were practically kishing. S’about time. Mom worriesh she’s gonna be shtuck with you for the d’resht of her life. You don’t wanna know what dad saysh.”

    Actually, Fionna had a pretty good idea what their father said. He was probably the other reason she avoided people. With two extroverted, exhibitionist nymphos in the family, was it any wonder she sprinted like a marathon runner in the opposite direction. Clutching her book to her chest, she turned the knob of the front door and stepped out into the cool night. The last thing she saw was Jack’s face, all pity and disgust. Whether one or both were directed at her, and how could he not be disgusted after Becka’s performance, she wanted no part in sympathy kindness. It was just a good thing that they hadn’t exchanged any more information than their names. He’d have no way of looking her up online or finding out where she lived, no way of being kind out of pity.

    The car was parked about a block from the house, not that the house was situated on anything resembling a block. They were out in the sticks with a field across the road and forest on the other and behind the building. The nearest neighbor could just be seen as a twinkling light further down. Despite the chilly autumn air, Fiona had left her side of the car open just in case she’d had a need to escape from the party. She superstitiously scanned the seats to make sure there were no serial killers lying in wait, then slipped inside, scrunching down and pressing the lock button. When Becka came out, Fiona would get the keys one way or another, and then drive them home. There was no way Becka was fit to drive anywhere.

    Burying her face in her hands, she started cry, at the same time berating herself for doing so. Twenty-six years old and she was bawling her eyes out, waiting for her lush of a sister to get done embarrassing her in front of the first guy to act as if he was more interested in her brain than her body. Whether or not it was true, well it probably wasn’t, but whether or not it was true, she’d actually enjoyed their conversation at least as much as any discussion she’d ever joined online. Burrowing into the seat, she curled up, feeling sorry for herself and sick of being everyone’s burden.

    They all wanted to change her, but never took the time to even get to know her. They just assumed that their way of living was better than hers. Maybe she didn’t want to have sex with random people simply for the sake of having sex or finding a husband. She could probably walk into any bar across the country and say, hey guys, virgin, right here, and find out what sex was like. But she didn’t. She wasn’t interested in sex at all. Wasn’t even turned on by ‘hawt’ guys… or girls. Her sister had gone almost a year insisting Fiona was gay, but she wasn’t. She simply had no sex drive at all, and she wished, fervently, that her family would just accept that and move on. There was nothing wrong with being asexual.

    Fiona woke with a start as someone pounded on the roof of the car. Her cheek was cold from being pressed against the glass, and her hair was wet with condensation. She sat up and looked around in a daze. How long had she been asleep?

    “Becka!” a man’s voice yelled as he pounded on the roof of the car again. Their mother was going to be pissed about the dents. It was her car, which she insisted they take because of the dual airbags. “Get out here you whore!” he growled, rocking the car a bit as he pushed on it.

    Rubbing the fog from the windows, Fiona could see it was the same muscle bound Schwarzenegger wannabe that Becka had been hanging off of earlier. She glanced at the house, but it seemed so very far away now. No one was going to come out to investigate all the shouting, not with the music pounding hard enough to make the rearview mirror vibrate slightly in time to the base.

    “Becka!” he shouted again, this time snatching up a huge tree limb from under the trees and storming back to the car.

    “Hey, hey!” she shouted, rolling down the window slightly. “I’m Fi-o-na!” She enunciated each syllable of her name. “Becka’s not here.”

    “Damn it Becka! Come out right now or I’m going to bust your car to hell and pull you out.”

    She slid across the seat to the other side of the car, not wanting to get out anywhere near him. Poking her head up over the roof of the car, she prepared to reiterate that she was Fiona, not Becka, but he threw the branch at her. He was faster than he looked and grabbed her before she could recover from ducking.

    Screaming as he dragged her towards the woods by her hair, she kicked and fought to regain her feet but managed only to keep them long enough to lose them again as she was pulled along. Far too soon, they were in the woods where he threw her into the nearest tree, face first. Rebounding, she landed on her butt in the pine needles and leaf loam. Dazedly she supposed that she looked enough like Becka in his drunken rage for him to not know the difference. Smacking her upside the head with one of his meaty fists, she collided with the earth and stayed there.

    Fiona came to with her pants around her knees and her shirt and arms over her head. She panicked for a moment before realizing she was alone, and more importantly, her underwear was still firmly in place. There were sounds coming from nearby, but as she forced her shirt down and pulled her pants up, she heard what sounded like the snap of a branch and then nothing. Struggling to her feet, she staggered as pain and dizziness overwhelmed her. Someone caught her by the arm and she shrieked in shock and terror.

    “Fiona! Fee! It’s me, Jack.” He supported her as he led her from the dark trees and into the moonlight, and she sniffled as she recognized him.

    “My sister…” she murmured, looking around.

    “She left about a half hour ago with that drummer,” he replied, supporting her as she slipped in the dewed grass.

    “But she has the keys,” Fiona muttered.

    “You are not driving. Besides, you probably have a concussion,” he announced, leading her to a small, beat up car. She couldn’t tell what kind, but it was definitely old, like VW Microbus old. She giggled, thinking of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, and Jack gave her a worried look.

    A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Were you watching the whole time?” she squealed suddenly, trying to work her way free of his grasp.

    “Wha-? Don’t be ridiculous. I was coming out to leave and heard you scream.” He propped her against the side of the car as he opened the door, then helped her sit. Fiona leaned back and stared at the upholstery which was coming away from the roof of the car in a big, saggy bubble of fabric and giggled again as he checked to make sure she was all tucked in before closing the door like a gentleman. “Besides,” he announced definitively, sitting down in front of the wheel and pulling his own door shut, “If I had been watching, I absolutely would have been there sooner. Bastard never would have got you into the trees.”

    Fiona stared out the window as he drove down the dirt road. The stars were periodically eclipsed by the treeline. The rocking of the car and the twinkling of the stars had a hypnotic affect. Jack would occasionally say something or jog her arm a bit to make sure she was still awake, and she really did try to stay conscious. She knew that sleep was a big no-no when you had a concussion.

    The next thing she was aware of, Jack had stopped the car and was helping her out onto the sidewalk. She expected a hospital, but it wasn’t bright enough. Staggering across the concrete, she leaned against Jack as he struggled to fit his keys into the door. He dragged her into the room and helped her sit on a lumpy sofa. She whimpered as he turned on the light and threw an arm over her eyes. Her head hurt so much.

    “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered as she heard him riffling through a drawer. She mewled as he gently pulled her arm down. “I need to check your eyes, Fee.”

    Though the light made her want to throw up, she blinked at him, wincing as he shown a small flashlight into her eyes. “…. hospital?” she muttered, and even she wasn’t sure what mush came out of her mouth before the final word.

    “My place was closer,” he assured her. He put the flashlight down with a nod. “You might have a concussion, but both your pupils react to light, so I think you’ll be okay.”

    He got up and came back with a bottle of Tylenol and a cup of water. “Fee?”

    “Don’t call me that,” she muttered.

    “Fee? Isn’t that what your sister called you at the party?”

    “No, she called me Feeb. It’s her little pet word for me,” she replied sourly.

    “Oh, how about Fay? You are a bit pixie-like.”

    “Um, okay, I guess,” she mumbled, struggling to open the bottle until he took it from her and then poked through the foil seal.

    “Fay?” It took her a moment to realize Jack was trying to get her attention. Had she nodded off? And why couldn’t he just call her Fiona. Fiona wasn’t a bad name. It had taken her years to like her name He took her by the chin and tilted her head this way and that, looking at the huge purple bruise that was developing over her right eye. She realized blood was all over her shirt too. Stupid jocks and their stupid ‘roid rage, she thought resentfully. It had been a perfectly nice shirt. Now it had a great big red stain on the shoulder where it had been over her head and droplets all over her sleeve and belly.

    “Do you want to get cleaned up?” he queried, bring her back from her distraction. He helped her up and led her to a bathroom. “There are towels in the cabinet there. I’ll get you some clean clothes. Just… toss your clothes out into the hall, and I‘ll see if I can get the stains out.” He paused, then added, “I’m going to check on you every few minutes. I don’t want you to pass out and drown or anything.”

    Fiona stepped into the bathroom and immediately flinched away from her reflection in the mirror. No wonder her head hurt so much. The bruise on her forehead was the size of her fist with a deep, jagged cut at its center. A brush burn trailed from the base of the wound all the way to her right eyebrow, and it scared her to think how close she’d probably come to losing one of her eyes. Of course, she’d probably come even closer to being raped and killed, so she supposed she was just all around lucky, lucky tonight.

    True to his word, Jack was back a few minutes later. He knocked on the door and told her there was a clean shirt in the hall. Every few minutes after, he knocked and she would call out, “I’m okay.” It got to the point that she was repeating, I’m okay, I’m okay, to herself between his checkups like an internal litany, willing it to be so.

    She didn’t feel okay though. Fiona sat in the tub and let the shower run over her. She didn’t feel like standing. It wasn’t that she was feeling weak or that her head was getting worse, but she felt confused and conflicted. Something was off about Jack and she couldn’t figure it out. That alone was frustrating, but coupled with everything else that had happened made her feel like she was dreaming. She was in his house taking a shower when she should be in a hospital. At the very least, they should have called the cops from the party. The cops didn’t like it when you left the scene of a crime. She opened the shower door and dragged her pants to her, but her phone must have fallen out in the woods. Wracking her brain, she couldn’t recall a moment when he might have slipped it out of pocket, but then, she kept losing small bits and pieces of time.

    Ugh, her mother was going to have kittens when she saw her head, and the car. She really needed to call the cops and give a description of the meat-head before the guy woke up and wandered off. She blinked, remembering the weird snap she’d heard just after regaining consciousness. Maybe Jack had hit the guy with a tree branch? Served him right if he had.

    She realized Jack hadn’t checked on her in a while and puzzled over it numbly before carefully climbing out of the shower to kneel on the floor. Fiona scrubbed at her body with a towel, but dabbed carefully at her head. She didn’t want to mess up his nice, clean towels. He’d left a huge, bulky sweatshirt for her and pajama bottoms. That was a bit of a relief. If the humungous purple blot on her forehead didn’t make her unattractive enough to dispel her serial killer fears, then surely the “comfort” clothes would do the trick.

    Fiona was half way down the hall before she realized she’d left the water running and the towels all over the floor. Though it made her feel like a slob, she figured Jack would understand that she was not in her right mind. Besides, she should have a look around while she was unescorted, just to make sure everything was on the up and up. Or look for a phone so she could call the cops if needs be.

    The Tylenol was definitely kicking in, or maybe her wounds weren’t as bad as they looked. Her head still felt fuzzy, but the pain was receding and she congratulated herself on thinking more clearly. Look around, good. Look for a phone, gooder, er, double good. The house was modest in size, half a double maybe? The furnishings had definitely seen better days though. Much of it looked decades old with only a few “new“ items here and there. She wished she’d been more observant as he brought her in. Having no clear idea of where she was, how could she call the cops and tell them where to find her if she had to?

    Finding her way back to the living room, she saw a computer set up in a corner and recalled their conversation about the internet and stalkers. How ironic was that after she was nearly killed by her sister‘s stalker wannabe? Another doorway led to a dark kitchen, and a door beyond that she assumed was to the basement or laundry room was lit. She shuffled towards the light but stopped in the kitchen to gape at Jack as he leaned against a washer, his face buried in her bloody shirt. He appeared to be sucking on it, his eyes shut in some kind of ecstatic moment.

    She must have made some inarticulate noise because he looked up like a startled animal, his mouth and cheeks smeared with her blood. Unfortunately, she was in no condition to run. As soon as she turned to bolt for the door which was only a few feet away, her feet got tangled up and she fell on the floor like a drowning fish. I am every bad horror movie stereotype! She cried out in mental annoyance as she struggled to get to her feet and away from the ghoul apparently getting the stains out of her shirt through suction.

    “Hey! Calm down. Really. I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing,” he muttered as he scooped her up, no longer making any pretense at having any trouble carrying her about. He did it quite effortlessly. Just her luck to be done in by a fussy serial killer. How embarrassing, indeed. As he deposited her on the lumpy couch, she scurried to the far side and sat trembling against the armrest. She felt as if she was going to be sick, but whether that was from her head injury or the fact that her good Samaritan had turned out to be some kind of sick freak, she couldn’t say. His face was still covered in her blood, and she could only stare at him in horror.

    “Just… relax. I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” He waved his hands at her in a gesture that was probably meant to be comforting, if not for the vague hint of pink on his cuticles and deep red under some of his nails. When she didn’t respond, he glanced at his hands and realizing how he must appear, turned away, furiously rubbing at his face with the back of his sleeve.

    “You killed that guy, didn’t you?” Fiona blurted suddenly. Of course he had. Of course. That’s why he hadn’t taken her to the hospital or called the cops.

    Jack gave a slightly embarrassed cough as he turned back. “Well, yeah.” He seemed more self-conscious about the whole situation than anything else, and that struck her as so very wrong. Weren’t killers supposed to be angry or defiant or… crazy? There was still blood caked in the corners of his mouth and near his nose, but she supposed he’d gotten most of it. She was very careful to avoid looking at his sleeve.

    “Look, I’m sure this looks very bad to you, but I only brought you here so we could square our stories for the cops in case they came asking questions about that guy. I, um, didn’t exactly plan on mauling your shirt like that. I wasn’t planning on keeping you here or hurting you in any way. I’m not that kind of guy! I don’t go around attacking polite young girls. It’s been decades since I… well…” He stopped abruptly.

    “W-wait, decades?”

    “Look, I’m just saying you’re safe. No matter what. It’s… going to be dawn soon though, so I can’t take you home. I’m going to ask you, as a favor for the fact that I saved your life, that you stay here today while I’m… resting, and I’ll take you home as soon as I’m up. Okay?”

    “So you’re a vampire…”

    “Yes.”

    “Really a vampire.”

    “Yes.”

    “Wait. Didn’t we have this conversation a couple hours ago about vampires and sunlight?”

    Jack rolled his eyes. “Different vampires, different rules. Once moroi become strigoi, our internal clocks are set forever. So I wake up about 12 hours after I died, every day. Sometimes I’m up a little bit before that, and I can stay up a couple hours later than I probably should, but the sun is a real pain in the ass, even with sunglasses, so I’m not driving anywhere until this afternoon. I’m not going to burst into flame if I’m exposed to sunlight though, alright?”

    When she didn’t reply, he stood up and stretched. “So… okay. I’m going to trust you, and I hope you trust me now, but I’m going to lock my door, no offense. Just make yourself comfortable. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards. Just don’t touch the containers at the back of the fridge. They’re marked with a B, so… you know.”

    Fiona watched him start down the hall and got up herself. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she announced apologetically, “I- um, forgot to turn off the water, and I left the towels all over the floor.”

    “Got it. Um,” he paused, apparently remembering her concussion, “are you okay to stay up on your own. I don’t have cable, but there are some… DVDs.” He seemed embarrassed by his movie collection, and she could only imagine what she’d find once she looked through it. “I’ll bring you some pillows and a blanket. Sorry about the couch. I should probably replace that one of these days.”

    She wandered back down the hall and sat on the sofa before sliding off to kneel in front of the TV and Jack’s movie collection… his monster movie collection. It was really all too much to take in, from beginning to end. Fiona began to giggle and snort until tears collected in the corners of her eyes. It made her head throb again, but she couldn’t stop laughing.

    “Oh come on! It’s not that bad!” he cried, depositing the bedding on the couch and coming over to inspect her choices.

    “No, no! Oh my god. This is the weirdest day I’ve ever had,” Fiona declared between choked off laughter. “Aswang?” She held up a vampire DVD about a type of island vampire.

    “Eh, I don’t recommend that one. I mean it’s pretty well done, but almost too true to life, so kind of gross, I always thought,” he replied conversationally.

    “Wait, aswangs are real?”

    “Yeah,” he said, almost apologetically. “You know how people say ‘it takes all kinds?’ Well, it really does. I never met an aswang personally, but we all have our unfortunate dietary needs, right?”

    “Iggg,” she responded, slipping the DVD back into place. “You’re a vampire, and you collect monster movies. You have weird interests.”

Saturday, 24 October 2009

  • My boss is screwing with me...

    ...I just can't prove it.

    You'll recall, I gave her notice at the beginning of the week, offering to stay and work early mornings before the store opened, but no more than that. So she did the schedule for next week, the week she is on vacation, and basically turned it upside down. I am working all kinds of F'd up hours while she is away. So I can't prove that she's messing with me because of my giving notice, but I can't completely dismiss it either. She may just be taking advantage of my current availability to fill in the blanks while she is gone. Or she may be using my current availability to "stick it to me" for giving notice.

    I gave her my new availability for November yesterday. She comes back from vacation the end of next week, just in time to do the new schedule for the following week. She had best adhere to the availability I gave her if she wants me to stay, or I'll leave and that will be the end of it. Of course, I don't think she really did any inquiry into whether my offer would be kosher with the powers that be. It's quite possible that when she comes back, she'll ask our evil overlords whether I can work the inventory without running the gauntlet of make and key sales. (don't ask) She may come back and say I need to work the floor at least a few hours a week. To which I will say (hell) no. I'm tired of bending over backwards for this company and being asked to bend just a little bit further. If they want my services, they'll cave to my demands. I'll not be treated like I am indispensable one minute and useless the next. From now on, I will do only what I am comfortable doing, what I do damn well BTW, and if that's not enough, they can kiss my a$$ as I walk out the door.

    In other news, it's raining, and I have a horrific headache. I've taken all sorts of painkillers, drunk enough coke to make me nauseous, applied peppermint oil three times, wore a coldpack until it thawed, and am now chewing gum. The gum helped more than anything else. If I didn't have to go to work tonight, I'd take some of my stepdad's prescription pain meds from his recent surgery and just pass out for the rest of the day. Seven to eleven-thirty? What a waste of my time.

    I'm worried that the postponed yardsale will become the canceled yardsale if it's still raining tomorrow. I'm hoping to make at least $50 so I can give it to my mother to help remodel the bathroom (before the toilet falls through the floor). They say centipedes and mice are good indicators of problems, but I think the mushy floor in and around the sink and toilet are a pretty good sign that our bathroom is attempting to become an outhouse.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

  • there's always work for the wicked

    Yesterday I gave "partial" notice at work. Today I signed up for Nanowrimo.

    Yesterday, my first day back from vacation, I told my boss I could no longer do my job as supervisor... that I could not handle the sales aspect of the job any longer. I told her the stress was simply too much, especially with the seasonal train wreck that is the holiday season on its way to put a whole new layer of stress on the mess that is my job. And having been in a car accident last year due to the insanity of the holiday mall traffic, I do not want to go anywhere near the mall as we head into December. The traffic around the malls is already sticky and it's only mid-October.

    Then, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I offered to continue to do my job, part time. Essentially, I offered to come in only in the early morning before the store opened, working up until the store opened and no more than that and allowing me to leave work in a direction which is not traffic heavy at that time of the AM. This was my ultimatum, that I do this or in two weeks' time leave entirely. My boss seemed eager to accept the deal. This would save her payroll and effort (she'd have to do my job otherwise), and it's no secret that I am at the end of my rope in so far as dealing with the public and the corporate BS is concerned. However, she has to get the okay from her bosses and therein lies the possibility that at the end of two weeks I will no longer be working at Borders.

    To which I say... Oh Well.

    To be honest, while it would make my life easier and allow me to go longer without finding a "real job" to replace this one if/when I lose it, I would be just as happy to leave Borders and never darken its doors again. To the extent that I am disillusioned with all large corporate stores, I question whether I would even sell anything I wrote in a Borders or Barnes and Noble. But that would just be cutting my own throat. I'd probably sell my books there; I just would never do a signing in one.

    This move is for the most part to deal with the inexorable stress that's been plaguing me since Borders decided to restructure its sales plan and lay a whole heap of extra duties on the plates of its employees, while at the same time robbing us of various benefits including the possibility of raises this year and any matching on our 401Ks. This is not just my perception of things... like many stores we have CSI coupons which are randomly distributed to our customers. One of our customers specifically requested in the comment portion of her questionnaire that Borders employees "not be forced to do anything beneath their dignity."

    So many things about the job is currently beneath our dignity. Do I care if "they" find this blog and use it as reason not to continue to employ me in the capacity I have offered? No... not really. As I said, leaving the job would be a relief. I only offered to work mornings as a courtesy. My opinion of the company has not changed. Besides, I'm not a morning person. I am a night owl. I'd rather not get up at 5AM five days a week if I can help it. The money would be helpful; the stress, not so much.

    I swear I was not even thinking of November being Nanowrimo month when I made this decision, but since it is, I signed up. One of the reasons I'm giving up my position at work (besides the stress) is so that I can write more. So Nanowrimo is a logical step, right? I need to practice typing Nanowrimo. It does not fall trippingly from the fingers. Anyone else doing Nanowrimo this year? We can be writing buddies if you like.



Sunday, 18 October 2009

  • Scrumptious Delights for the Yard Sale

    Though the yard sale is postponed till next Sunday because of the rain, I made various scrumptious deserts to sell (which are now taking up space in the freezer). The first of these are some pumpkin pies. I made one plain and two cranberry-hazelnut pumpkin pies. I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie, which is why I came up with this alternative. Actually a found a similar recipe a few years ago and tweaked it. My cranberry-hazelnut layer's a lot bigger than the original recipe. heh



    I don't use puree from a can, so first I had to find a big pumpkin. I got this long neck pumpkin at a farm. To be honest, it looked like a squash of some type, but the farm swore it was a pumpkin. It's a better pumpkin to buy if you intend to make pie because the neck contains no stringy guts to cut out. The round bit at the bottom does have some guts and seeds, but not nearly so much as a regular pumpkin, so if you like the seeds as well, a regular pumpkin might be better. I did get a few seeds, but only as much as would fill a small bowl.

    Pumpkin puree is a gooey, messy business. Cleaning a pumpkin in itself is pretty messy, making puree just prolongs that. First wash the pumpkin, then take a big psycho knife and cut it into wedges. The thicker the wedge, the longer it will take to cook. So if you're making puree with the long neck pumpkin, the neck parts are going to take a little bit longer to cook through than any wedges from the "bulb." Arrange the wedges on several baking trays. You can line them with wax paper first. Bake at 325 F for the first hour, then for approximately 2 more hours at 300 F. I say approximately because depending upon the thickness of the pieces, it may be closer to one hour. So check after that first hour at 300 F to see if the thinner pieces are done. I also flip the pieces when I turn the temperature down, though that's not really necessary.

    When the pieces are cooked through, set them aside to cool for a bit, otherwise you will burn your fingers trying to detach skin from flesh. Of course, if it's really cold, you don't have to wait too long to warm your fingers on warm pumpkin wedges. You may want to use a knife to get rid of any harder bits that have been overcooked by their time in the oven, but I find just squeezing the flesh under the skin is sufficient to pull it away from the pumpkin flesh, which is another good reason to let the pumpkin cool before starting. Once you have the cleaned pumpkin flesh set aside, put it in a food processor or blender. Depending upon how much pumpkin you've gotten at this point, you may want to do this in batches. One cup of puree will be sufficient for one pie according to my recipe, but you may have your own way of doing things. When I finished cooking and cleaning my long neck pumpkin, I had approximately five cups of pureed pumpkin flesh. I made four pies, and I may still make a pumpkin roll.

    Cranberry-Hazelnut Pumpkin Pie

    Crust:
    2 c flour
    1 tsp salt
    1/4 tsp allspice
    3/4 c shortening
    4-5 tbsp cold water

    This recipe originally instructed the cook to separate the dough into two balls and refrigerate. I like a thin crust, and I have a zipper-bag designed to help you roll out the dough without having it stick and rip, so I can roll out my dough super thin. It's up to you how thin you make the crust, but I can get four crusts out of this recipe, rather than the two it suggests.

    Sift the flour, salt and allspice into a bowl. Blend shortening into mixture with a fork until it resembles course oatmeal. Gradually add the water until the dough can be formed into a ball. You may not have to use all 5 tbsp of water. Divide the dough ball into half, thirds, or quarters, depending upon your preference to thickness and skill at rolling. Wrap balls in wax paper and put in fridge at least fifteen minutes.

    Preheat oven to 425 F.

    Cranberry spread:
    1 bag of fresh cranberries
    1 bag of crushed hazelnuts
    1/2 c brown sugar
    2 tsp vanilla

    Put cranberries and hazelnuts into food processor or blender in batches and process until cranberries are very small. Remove to bowl and mix in brown sugar and vanilla. Set aside. This is sufficient to make two or three pies depending upon you love of cranberries as opposed to your love of pumpkin pie.

    Pumpkin filling:
    2 lrg eggs
    1 c pumpkin puree
    1/4 c sugar
    1/4 tsp salt
    1/2 tsp cinnamon
    1/4 tsp ginger
    1/4 tsp nutmeg
    1/4 tsp cloves
    1/2 c evaporated milk

    This recipe is sufficient to make one pie, so double, treble, or quadruple as necessary. In large bowl, beat eggs lightly. Stir in puree, sugar, salt, and other seasonings. Feel free to change the measurements of the various seasonings to taste. I have a preference for ginger and cinnamon, so I doubled the amount of cinnamon as compared to the other seasonings, and I put in a heaping 1/4 tsp of ginger as opposed to a level 1/4 of the other spices. Mix well, then slowly add the evaporated milk, stirring until combined. Despite your best efforts at making puree, at this point you may find a few fibrous clumps. Just pull them out and throw them away. Set filling aside.

    Roll out pie dough and line pie plate. Spread your cranberry mixture over the bottom of the pie and pour the filling over all.

    Bake for 15 minutes at 425 F. Reduce to 350 F and bake an additional 40-50 minutes. I generally check with a toothpick after 30 minutes though. I live at a higher altitude and depending upon the weather, the pie may bake faster or slower. Cool on a wire rack. Just so you know, the pie will be indistinguishable from a regular pumpkin pie, so if you are making both regular and cranberry-hazelnut, you may want to indicate that somehow... you could save some dough and cut it into various shapes to put on top before baking.


    Peppermint Fudge

    1 12 oz bag of semisweet chocolate chips
    1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
    2 tsp vanilla
    6 oz white chocolate chips
    1 tbsp peppermint flavor
    green food coloring

    Line a 8-9 inch pan with wax paper. Melt the semisweet chocolate over low heat with a little over half the sweetened condensed milk. I use a poor man's double boiler, that is, a smaller pot inside a larger one with about an inch of water in the bottom to ensure the chocolate doesn't burn. Add the vanilla.

    Take a little less than half the fudge and spread a layer on the bottom of your wax lined pan. It's actually easier to do this with your hands, so make sure they are CLEAN. Then just smoosh the chocolate flat, fold the wax paper over to cover it and refrigerate for about 10 minutes. Believe me, you want more fudge left for the final step than less. It's just easier that way. Cover the remaining chocolate on the stove with a lid and leave on the lowest setting. This won't stop it from drying out around the edges or burning, so remember to stir it occasionally.

    Make another poor man's double boiler and melt the white chocolate with the remaining milk. Stir in the peppermint and food coloring. I put in about five drops of coloring, but you don't need to add any if you prefer. Remove the fudge from the fridge and spread the new layer over the cooled one. Fold the wax paper over the new layer and put back in the fridge for at least another 10 minutes. I say at least, but it's been my experience that it takes longer than that for the new layer to cool sufficiently to add the final layer, which is why it's important to keep that last layer of fudge warm in the pot. Just remember to stir it every few minutes to keep it evenly warm and prevent the vanilla from cooking back out.

    When the two layers are sufficiently cooled, spread the finally layer over the first two as best you can. It will not be easy to do it evenly and you may have to accept a bit of the flavored layer peeking out in places. Fold the wax paper back over the fudge and refrigerate for at least two hours. Turn the fudge onto a cutting board and peel off the wax paper before cutting.

    To make raspberry fudge, just use raspberry flavor and red food coloring instead of the peppermint and green coloring. Again, you don't have to use food coloring at all if you don't want to, though it does make it easier to tell one from the other if you make both. If you use the really good stuff though, your nose should be able to tell you which is which.

Monday, 12 October 2009

  • A Thought on a Past Life

    I've written about my past lives before. One in particular has always made me angry for the unfairness of my death. Not that death came to me fairly in (m)any of the lives I recall, but this one in particular has always rankled me. It has in fact made me quite biased towards the Christian Clergy.

    In most of my lives I have been murdered for one reason or another. Killed for convenience or to make a statement. The thing that has always bothered me about my past life in the 1100s however is that I feel to blame, at least partially, for the way I ended. I have drowned, starved, been pushed in a snake pit, strangled twice (and eaten by a crocodile the second time), stoned and set on fire, hanged by the neck until dead, died of stomach cancer, and jumped from a speeding car to escape my kidnappers, but approximately 900 or so years ago, I was stabbed in the back while I was drunkenly stumbling back to my room in the dark.

    Say what you will about my various deaths, there were none so ignoble as that death 900 years ago. I can't narrow the area down better than saying it was somewhere in the north of England, somewhere near or possibly in Scotland. I was a bard and childhood friend of the lord of the area. I lived in his keep. I entertained his guests. I was part of his household.

    At that time, the Pagan religion was on the wain, mainly because it could give your "just" neighbors a reason to invade and take your lands "for God." So for the sake of appearances, we were saddled with a weaselly, sour faced little priest who never was happy unless everyone around him was miserable. And I made it my mission in life to torment and belittle him to the amusement of all. I made a complete mockery of the little man and his faith.

    I had always thought it was him who stabbed me in the back, but I was reading today and the thought just came to me that maybe it wasn't him. It doesn't matter what I was reading beyond the fact that it used reincarnation as a central theme of the story. There's no continuity between what I was reading and the errant thought that came to me as I stared at the page.

    I never saw who stabbed me in the dark. I was drunk. One reason I don't drink now or in any way blunt my mind. Possibly a reason I don't sleep soundly or for long. It was dark in the hall that led to my room. All the torches were out. Something that should have roused my suspicion, but I was drunk, and it did not. And then someone stabbed me in the back, low and on the left side. All this time, I thought it was the mealy mouthed little priest silencing his tormentor. But what if it wasn't him.

    Curious I never had this thought before. I never thought anyone else would have reason to stab me in the dark, but it came to me while I was reading. There was one other person who would have had cause to kill me, if only to keep people from thinking he was hostile to Christianity. The thought made me cry because we were like brothers, but it could have been him. He laughed just like everyone else when I would make fun of the priest, but I knew it also made him anxious because the priest could call down our neighbors on us with little provocation. It could be that I was sacrificed on the altar of convenience once again.

    I don't know who killed me 900 years ago, but this thought made me cry; it was such an aha moment. Why didn't I ever think of it before? I'll likely never know which of them it was, but in all this time I never even thought it could be anyone other than the priest. I should have. I feels like it could be a true thought, and I honestly don't know if I cried because it is true, because he was like a brother to me and just the thought of such treachery hurts right down to my soul, or because it's an uncharitable thought unworthy of our friendship.

    I just don't know.

    Currently
    Voice of the Fire
    By Alan Moore
    see related

Saturday, 10 October 2009

  • It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

    October, that is. I love October. Well, I love autumn, but October specifically because Halloween (Samhain) is at the end of it.

    So I have this idea for a board game but I don't know how to go about developing it or selling it to a game company like Parker Bros or whatever.  I doubt I could put it out myself, so developing it and selling the idea are probably my best bet.

    The Game of Life and Death

    So this would be a trivia board game. You'd basically have to get from one side of the board to the other, from home to some "safe point" like a police station, Church, or hospital, etc. And once there, you'd have to defend it from other players. The path would loop back and forth with shortcuts between each loop if you were brave enough to take them. Along the regular winding path would be random encounters which could cause you damage or conversion to a monster. These would be the "easy" trivia cards with less penalty. If you took a shortcut, you would automatically have to pull an encounter card and answer the trivia question correctly. If you got it wrong, you'd have to roll the dice to see whether you were injured (went back a loop), infected (became a monster), or killed (went back to start).  Once you became a monster, every time you overtook a human or vice versa, there would be a trivia question to see who survived the encounter, and the loser would have to go back a loop. If you made it to the safe point as a human, you'd have to defend it against monsters by asking them trivia questions when they arrived. If you made it to the safe point as a monster, you'd have to kill or infect any humans who made it by asking them trivia questions. The game would be over when either the monsters or the humans won. There could even be different themed games, like slasher flick, supernatural, zombie, aliens, Lovecraftian, ect.

    What do you think? Too complicated? It's definitely too late to get something like that out by this Halloween, but maybe next. Or adapt it to a video game somehow, not that I'm at all clear on how that could happen. I'm more concerned about copyright infringement, but I'm pretty sure that trivia isn't covered, only if I tried to use the likeness of specific monsters on the board or packaging.

    The Candy Horror

    I'd also like to create a line of horror themed candies. I want to create something called Soylent Green for the WTF factor. heh Maybe Soylent green could be green "white" chocolate bars with a dark chocolate fudge filling. Raspberry syrup filled dark chocolates could be BloodDrops. Crunchy bits of scale shaped toffee in white chocolate with dark chocolate bits could be Scales from the Black Lagoon. Brown (cinnamon flavored) cotton candy could be Hair of the Wolf (that bit you). Serpent's Teeth could be marshmallow shaped like teeth and filled with green syrup venom. Hard candy bones in fun-dip dust could be the Mummy's Bones. Translucent multicolored hard candies with liquid centers could be Zombie Eyes. Something akin to Cadbury cream eggs, but with a green/blue/black colored goo in the middle could be Alien Eggs.

    I think the candy would be more prone to copyright infringement than the game, but since I don't even know how I'd go about developing either, it's kind of moot. Any ideas?

Monday, 05 October 2009

  • Winter, bring it

    Enough! Enough!

    What the crap!

    Just when it's been cool a couple days straight, and I start to think that maybe.... Maybe we'll finally get the first frost, and I can stop taking my allergy medication, we get a warm snap and all the little pollinators start spurting their nasty little pollen granules into the air in a desperate attempt to impregnate their nearest neighbors before winter. Enough already you filthy ragweed, you grasses and skunk cabbages. chickweed and fleabane. You various other weeds in and around my house. Enough. I've gone through a forest of tissues already, and I love trees more than I love you, green and festive as you may be. I love you Nature, but it's autumn and you're killing me. Stop already.

    Bring on the frost.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

  • Dreams of being elsewhere

    When in the course of human development it becomes necessary for one [person] to dissolve the bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God(s) entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    Today was really rough at work. It was all I could do not to scream at my boss and walk out. I get so sick of her self indulgent, oh-poor-pity-me whining tirades. She just goes on and on, restating her complaints in different ways as if that will make me feel sorry for her. I had to raise my voice to cut through her yapping. I don't even remember what she was whining about this time... something about being the only person who is doing their share and then some. Riiiiight. Let me tell you, I sit down less than any of the other supervisors or managers. I am always moving. I don't have time to goof off or sit in front of my computer (Yeah, read on to find out about *MY* computer). There's no payroll for anyone not to be doing their job and anything else and everything else that crops up.

    And when my boss starts saying things like, "we need to do this and we need to do that," what she's really saying is that *I* need to do this or that. I wish she'd just come out and tell me she wants me to do something instead of rooting through my signs and drawers like a pig in search of a truffle while telling me what "we" need to do. No wonder signs have gone missing lately. The new zone VP wanted everything "clean," so I cleaned and tucked everything out of sight. But my boss can't keep her sticky fingers out of my well organized signs, and things wander about like chitinous centipedes when I'm not at work. I designated a spot for anything anyone takes down and still no one uses it. Things are just thrown on my desk without any consideration of the time I spent in cleaning and rearranging things so they would not be messy. My job and my boss are driving me nuts, and it's really hard to say which of them is doing a finer job of warping my sanity points.

    It's not that I don't have sympathy for her position, I do! But she's captain of sinking ship, and I am not one of those who think the captain, or the mates, must all go down together. It's not her fault the company is now led by a bunch of micromanaging hydro-cephalic imbeciles, but she's a team player, so she's either willfully blind to the water lapping at all our feet or she's determined to risk insanity for the sake of a few more months of pay. I'm not, and I refuse to be dragged down by the greedy rats who've gnawed the gaping holes in the hull of our ship in search of bigger profits. Why is solidarity a good thing only when it means you're towing the line? You know some Borders out west are unionized. If only we were so lucky. If I managed to convince my coworkers to walk, we'd likely be replaced within a week.

    Good thing this is the first day of vacation for me, though my manager guilted me into offering to come back a day early just to ensure that the merch for next week gets done on time. Far be it for anyone else to lend a hand, but then, we have no payroll hours, despite the fact that our district VP has taken up residence at our store like a festering hemorrhoid... even insisting that we allocate some portion of the store for remodeling so that he can have his own office. Not a remodel of the whole store, mind you... as they've been promising pretty much since I started working there, but simply stealing floor space so he can plant himself in an office where his big mouth will not be heard like the braying of some deranged ape even after he shuts the door. Sure, he tries to make "nice" whenever I have the misfortune of working on a day when he has taken over the manager's office, but it's an act... from his Hitler-stache to his pretense at concern over my allergies. He is a posturing fraud... clueless, starry eyed, middle aged, middle management. My instincts say he is another tow-the-line, kiss ass, fawning sycophant like my dear, brown-nosed boss, indifferent to the fact that he's been contracted to ferry a sinking ship, merely content to draw a paycheck until there are no more and he has to look for another job.

    So take my desk! Please! Put up a wall, and steal office space instead of floor space. It's not like I even have a working computer any more. A monitor on the floor blew, so they came back and stole mine, over a week ago, and it hasn't been replaced because they are backordered with the company. Never mind that they downsized the number of computers we had almost a year ago. What happened to those monitors, I wonder, after we sent them to corporate for safe keeping. Probably sold off to line the pockets of our corporate louses. Do you know how frustrating it is to try and do my job when I have to fight one or even two other managers/supervisors for access to an office computer?

    Oh I know jobs are few and far between in this economy, but when the competition is flouting a 12% profit for the last quarter while we seemingly lost close to 50 mil (not really, we just didn't preform to the forcasted and hoped for sales goal), I think it's safe to say that our days are numbered and no band-aids are going to stop this hemorrhaging wound, though our corporate overlords are sure to gather up as much of the seepage as they possibly can to spin it to their best benefit. And they can always sell the victim for spare parts, right?

    Oh, but how do I really feel about this situation? Let's ask my subconscious...

    The other night I dreamed that I was trying to get to work, but kept ending up in a park where I used to play when I was a child. After returning the park for the umpteenth time (I lost count of how many times I drove away from the park on my way to work and ended up back at the park), I decided to stay. I found a crystalline crevice near the water fountain and inside was an old witch. I asked her how I could get where I needed to go and she gave me a sewing needle made of crystal with which I had to scratch out a "spell" on the crystal wall. Then I left the park once more and somehow ended up at the sea shore, stepping over craggy, water-broken rocks and through muddy tidal pools that threatened to steal my shoes. Apparently, even in my dreams I don't want to go to work; if the dangerous sea shore is an analogy for my job, it's a bloody, life threatening mess at the moment.

    Interestingly enough, I recently went to a Holistic Expo and bought some black kyanite which is very needle-like. It is also a stone said to promote clarity in dream work! Hmmm, the plot thickens.

    It is quite obvious that I don't belong at my job any more. I've always believed that anything worth doing is worth doing right... and well, I simply don't care any more. If I can't even bring myself to care about my job performance, and I've always taken pride in how well I do my job, what's left?

    Well, would've been five days of vacation, but now it will only be four. Least I have over a week left that I'm taking in October. Wonder what they'll do about merch while I'm gone then?

    Wonder what they'll do about merch when I'm gone forever...

Sunday, 16 August 2009

  • Slave Labor, It's a job...

    The curse of malfunctioning equipment is upon me. It seems, whenever I am stress and/or exhausted, electrical devices breakdown around me. The dryer just died this week, taking out a circuit breaker with it. We've been line drying our stuff, though that's problematic with my allergies. I also sucked the life out of my IPod in a matter of three hours the other day. It simply stopped working as I sat listening to it on break, though I had only taken it off of the dock that morning and it should have had a full charge. And speaking of the dock, the bass/treble has gone kablooey. My music is oddly muted now, and I have no money for a new one. For almost two weeks, the interior lights in my car were not working before miraculously snapping back on last week. The security light had been on for a month before fixing itself at about the same time as the interior lights. Now there's something wonky with my car stereo. It's hard to describe aside from the fact that only half the display lights up and where it used to stop playing as soon as I opened my car door to get out, now it continues to play until I actually turn it off. All I would need is to leave it playing to drain my battery while at work. Last night when I drove home, all the streetlights on my side of the road were out.

    I haven't destroyed my computer yet, thank goodness.

    I'm taking a personal day tomorrow to go apply at a security company to be a dispatcher. Oddly enough, I had just been talking to my mother about seeing about getting a job like this and she had said there was a place nearby that she drove past on certain days. I looked in the paper when we got home from grocery shopping, and there it was, the exact place she had mentioned. It's about as far away from the house as my current job, but far less traffic since it's not a mall. I can live with that. Maybe even graveyard shift... That'd be nice.

    I called my boss and blamed it all on my sister. I said that she was preggers (true) and has a bad cold (true) and that she plans to go to the doctor tomorrow (lie) and so I have to watch my nephew (lie). I don't think she would have been so understanding if I had told her the truth. lol But I have really had it with that place. Last night was nightmarish. Weird customers... this one guy who comes in all the time and mutters under his breath while reading home magazines... (muttering yeah, baby yeah in a gravelly voice... CREEEEEEEEEEPY) and another lady who's mother died last year and her sister is trying to take the "entire estate." I got her whole life story, not that I wanted it. She dug out a pocket full of tacky jewelry that she plans to sell because she can't find a job and she "pissed away the $6000" she receive as her part of the inheritance. I feel for her, but why was she telling me this? And there's the possibility that a vice president might visit at some point soon, so an email was sent around with a list of things that might irk the man. First on the list was to make sure the hinges of the front door were not rusty, and if they were, to scour and oil them.

    Scrub the rusty hinges. SCRUB THE RUSTY HINGES?

    You have got to be kidding me. My manager has had her father in repainting the walls so that the huge holes and slashes evident in the thirteen year old paint job from when the store first opened would be less noticeable. But rusty hinges? Please. I'm sorry. Remodel the store, give us more hours to get all the regular crap done so we can maybe get to inane items like scrubbing rusty hinges (and dusting the top of the DVD fixtures which no one can even see, let alone reach)... don't make a list of asinine chores that we have no time for between our regular tasks and cramming product (that we won't even read because it's just that bad) down the customers' throats. Hey, there's a quota. It's certainly not by choice!

    Good news is though... everyone has been telling me I take things too personally. That's why I get migraines and stomach problems... because I have too much integrity and so when something isn't done to my satisfaction, (I don't get to complete a task in the time or to the degree I'd like) I take it personally. Well fine. I just won't care about my job at all any more. I'll just be like every other worker in America, right? Positive work ethic? Nope, guess I don't need to care about my job to do it. Who cares if I was raised to believe that anything worth doing was worth doing right. I decided all this yesterday and guess what? My stomach didn't hurt at all while I was at work. So I just have to stop caring in order to do my job. Seems to me I might as well not be there at all if that's the case. Don't you agree? At this point, I've basically talked myself out of my job. It's no longer an issue of getting my work done. Now it's an issue of caring if I get my work done, which I don't. Apparently none of the other stores can be bothered to get their crap done in a timely manner, but we're almost always on time. Despite that, I still get harangued by the management to do things their way, when my way is obviously working better than their way. So... I just won't worry about getting things done on time any more. I'll do it their way.

    Sounds like a plan...

    Man I hope I get this security dispatch job tomorrow. At this point, I don't think I should be working with the general public any more. Working security appeals to me. I like the idea of helping protect people. My current job... I feel like a useless lump of human waste. Well, you know... that's how they treat me so it's not a surprise that's how I feel.

    I was thinking of writing a book and calling it "Life in the Trenches: how corporate America killed retail; a memoir." Does anyone know how I would go about seeing what percentage of the holiday suicide rate is composed of retail workers? Because I really do think it's probably a very large proportion. and the public, which is composed of an inordinate number of retail schmucks like myself, should be aware of the health risk of allowing corporate America to rule the roost. I am convinced I have post traumatic stress syndrome. I wouldn't be surprised if many people in retail do.

Sunday, 02 August 2009

  • Stress

    You may have noticed a lack of updates this week. Frankly, I haven't had the energy or the good health to sit and post anything. My stomach's been hurting for a couple weeks now. I've always had pretty good digestion if I stay away from things to which I'm allergic. When my stomach has hurt in the past, I would just eat something, anything, and usually it would go away. This won't go away. It ranges from nausea to outright pain. Nausea is what I feel most of the time, except when I'm at work, when it sometimes ranges into sharp jabbing I-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore pain. The past few days, I've been on the verge of puking every time I go to work. I've been like that all day today and it's my day off. Eating something doesn't help any more.

    And the migraines. I'm used to headaches of all sort and size. I can deal with most of them. I'm used to the pain. But I haven't had so many migraines since high school. It's every day, sometimes instant stabs of pain that seem to bubble up from inside my skull and scamper across my brain like cockroaches of anxiety before finding a dark shadow to hide in before they scurry on out again. Sometimes just on one side or another, or in my neck and back of my skull making me worry about Meningitis, or in the front, making me worry about stroke. It runs in my family. In all likelihood, it's just a matter of time.

    And the panic attacks, which I hadn't had at all since I was in high school; when I was dealing with the constant stress of being bullied. Now I'm having them because we're being bullied and belittled by corporate. Mostly I have them when I'm at home and even think about work. I've been having them when I'm trying to sleep, and I start thinking about work the next day. Not very conducive to a restful night's sleep. I told my boss I've been having anxiety attacks, and she said, "Oh, well I worry about work too." I said, "No... my heart's trying to beat its way out of my chest. I'm sweating bullets, and I'm sick to my stomach. An ANXIETY attack. Not Worry." She doesn't get it. I told her I updated my resume and the reason I put for leaving my current job (when I finally find a replacement) was "ethical." Talking to my boss does no good. She doesn't get it. This job is killing me.

    I gave myself a goal of being out of there by October. By the end of October, I need to quit that job whether I have a replacement or not because I am convinced that staying through the two months of holiday shopping frenzy will kill me. I worry about a heart attack with my anxiety attacks, and I worry about a stroke with my headaches, but hey, who knows, maybe I'll die of a bleeding ulcer before either one of those happen. My brother's on SSI for mental issues... I keep wondering if I could apply for my obvious work-induced post-traumatic stress syndrome. Something has to change or I'm not going to be good for anything any more soon. I'll have a nervous breakdown and just leave... wander off the job in a fugue state and forget this miserable life. Selective amnesia. I wonder if my subconscious could invent a new personality for me. I'd like to be empress. I'm sure the drugs at whatever asylum I'm sent to will keep me in a cozy little fantasy world for the rest of my life.

    I have serious doubts I can make it to the beginning of October, let alone the end.

    My posts are probably going to continue to be sporadic, just so you all know... and I don't feel inclined to continue with the WCFQ at the moment either. Maybe later, if/when I free myself from the shackles of B_____'s emotional and bureaucratic tyranny. I'll still comment, since that's usually much shorter than my posts, but... well, you can consider me a ghost in the machine at this point.

Sunday, 26 July 2009

  • WCFQWC #4 Career Choices

    WCFQ Writer's Challenge #4:
    Choose a random work of fiction.
    Turn to the page which corresponds to your age.
    Go to the third paragraph and use the first sentence
    to begin your own short story or poem.

    When all had become clear again, the man was alone. The circle was empty and the candles at the seven points of the heptagram lit the room with a cheery glow. He tossed the book and chalk across the room with a growl.

    "Law-RENCE! What's that noise up there? I heard a thud," his mother's shrill voice floated from downstairs.

    Stalking to the door, he whipped it open and then said more meekly, with his customary horrendous stutter, "Nuh-n-nothing, muh-muh-mother. Ah t-tripped."

    "Well, keep it down young man. Your father and I are trying to have a nice dinner party."

    "Yuh-yes, ma'am." He shut the door much more gently than he wished he might, picked up the book and chalk, and tiptoed back to his bed. Not for the first time, Lawrence bemoaned the stutter he'd been cursed with since childhood. Not only did all of his classmates at the high school tease him about it, not only did it cause his mother to bar him from her fancy parties for fear he would embarrass the family, but now he couldn't even use black magic to right the injustices that had been inflicted upon him by his treacherous tongue.

    Whatever he'd just summoned had been nothing recognizable and certainly nothing that seemed interested in talking to him about his problems. Lying in the circle like a puked up puddle of pea soup with eyes, confined by the parameters of the chalk outline of the magic circle, it had bubbled occasionally in response to his attempts to communicate until in frustration he'd dismissed the thing with a few waves of his hands. It sure hadn't looked like he'd imagined a shoggoth. For one thing, it'd been kind of dinky. Now all he had to show for his efforts was a circle on his floor that looked like it had been burned into the wood by acid and his mother mad at him. No doubt, he'd hear about it tomorrow at breakfast, and again when she chanced to noticed the scorched floorboards.

    Or not...

    Lawrence smiled as he heard screams and the clatter of his mother's favorite soup tureen striking the floor. He sighed contentedly as the thunder of panicked feet passed through the front door.  The pea soup monster had understood his directions after all! He began to giggle madly as the house grew silent. Maybe a stutter wasn't such a bad thing to have when trying to pronounce the glottal tongue of the Old Ones. He sat on his bed and began to page through the book at his leisure, flipping the piece of chalk through his fingers.

    Mary Alice would be sorry she'd mocked him in homeroom this morning.

    ... he wondered what a flying polyp looked like.

    (First line from The Adventures of Robin Hood, edited by Paul Creswick.)


    July 26

    The Hopi Niman dance marks the end of a visit from the Kachinas which began in February.


    The Asatru festival of Sleipner, Odin's eight-legged mount, honors the creature's ability to travel between worlds. Sleipner is a shamanic steed that can be used to travel to other levels of consciousness.


Thursday, 23 July 2009

  • I don't know what to do any more

    I went with my sister to her job today. Actually, I followed her through torrential downpours, mad truckers spraying more water than the sky above us, and drivers scarier than my sister who don't know enough to turn their headlights on in a rainstorm and who merge into lanes where there is really not enough room for them. Ugh, someone find me a home job. I don't want to drive anywhere anymore. People are scary.

    I will probably not apply for a job where my sister works. It's even farther away than my current job and though its in a lovely area, surrounded by centuries old stone houses (many of which were up for sale, sad to say), I just can't see making that trek everyday. Not for a job that my be as toxic to my frazzled nerves as my current job is.

    The residents I met were nice enough, but some of the stories my sister told me make me less than eager to apply. On the one hand, it would be an opportunity to acquire new skills. On the other, the thought of trying to calm violent people down is about as appealing as it is at my present job, and I'd have to deal with it more often where my sister works.

    At this point, I have enough saved up that I could afford to be out of work about two months. I'd like to have at least three months worth of funds before I let my job push me to the point of walking out. I'm trying to get back into crafting, but finding the time to do it is hard. I spend most of my free time online and/or writing. Maybe I should spend less time online. It's hard to work with clay, make paper beads/mache, or paint between surfing the web. I am very good at dividing my attention into multiple areas, but I'm afraid if I fracture my attention too much I'll give myself attention deficit. Some kind of ADD may explain why I never seem to finish much of anything.

    One things is certain, I need to get out of my current job, but I don't think I can do what my sister does. It's clear she loves her job, but I can't see myself in her shoes. The drive alone was enough to send my back into spasms. I don't think I can do more than my current 20-25 minute commute. Her trek is 45 minutes to an hour. Maybe I should go to Hollywood and try to make it as a scriptwriter. It's not like I can do worse than the people currently shaping Hollywood.

    What can I do? I don't know any more. I need to do something different. I need to do something that uses my creativity, something that uses my brain and my knowledge. I need to live in a society that values money less and ethics and art more. I think I was born too soon. Society makes me sick. I don't know how to live in this world.


    July 23

    The Neptunalia honored the sea god Neptune and his wife, Salacia, goddess of the wide-open salty sea and the mineral water of springs. Originally Neptune was a god of fresh waters while his wife held dominion over the salty seas. The goddess Sulis of the hot springs of Bath may have been one of her aspects. Neptune and his wife are equivalent to the Norse deities Aegir and his wife Ran. In Greece, Salacia would be Amphitrite.


    In Egypt the Festival of the Rise of Sothis-Sirius, the star of Isis was celebrated in conjunction with the rise of the Nile. This was usually celebrated on the 3rd day of Thuthi. The Egyptians referred to this as prt Spdt "the going up of (the goddess) Sothis" and was called wpt-rnpt, "the opening of the year" one of three "New Years" festivals of the Egyptians. This was the third New Year's festival and heralded the first day of the Sothic year.


    Gwyl o Cerridwen is the Feast of Cerridwen which begins at sundown.


Wednesday, 22 July 2009

  • WCFQ #18: Little Runaway

    WCFQ #18:
    Have you ever thought of running away?
    Oceans_Beautiful_View

    When I was younger, I, my sister, and a friend of ours went so far as to load up a wagon with our worldly possessions and got as far as the park, which was about a mile away. We were convinced that we could live off the land if given half a chance. Before packing up and leaving, we each headed off in different directions to see if we could find some place to go. I was the one who suggested the mountains. From the park, you could see mountains far in the distance and we, being little kids, didn't really have a concept of how far away those mountains were. We got as far as the park before my sister and friend gave up. We went home where our parents laughed at us. I sometimes wonder how far I would have gotten on my own, wagon in tow, before I gave up.

    I think constantly of running away now. How sad is that? People think running away is a little kid thing. I think more adults than kids want to run away but they think it's immature to want that. I think everyone wants to run away, deep down inside. No one's content with their lot, or very few are. Who doesn't want to head out into parts unknown and explore? When I was a kid, I could lose myself for hours on end in the woods and fields around the house. I was completely unsupervised, and I don't think anyone ever missed me in all my ramblings except once when I was at my great grandparents, about six years old, and I got it into my head to go visit our nearest neighbor at about 7 am before anyone else had got up. I think I nearly gave them heart attacks, but I never wandered so far away when I was at their place again. That didn't stop me from wandering anywhere my feet took me when I was at home. It wasn't as if anyone noticed.

    I've written this before, but some days I just get in my car and consider driving until I run out of gas. I rarely drive for pleasure, never to the point that I get lost, but more and more I feel like just driving in a random direction, preferably a direction in which I can find large wooded tracts, driving to some remote spot, driving with the intent of getting lost and never coming back.

    You hear about people getting lost in forests and no one ever sees them again. It's never their intent to get lost, and search parties set out to find them, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I think about getting lost on purpose, just to get away from everything. I want to get away from everything that man has created. Part of me wants to see if I can survive. Part of me doesn't care if I do. I'm not suicidal, but I am... desperate.

    I have this deep and abiding loathing of my fellow man. Not on an anonymous, individual basis, I have friends... I like specific people... but as a group; I think we suck. We should be wiped off the face of the earth. We're nothing but a parasitic virus. I am ashamed of my humanness. I'd rather be a tree or a raven or snake. I'd rather be nearly anything but a human being. They say you can't run away from your problems, that you carry them with you, but I don't want to run away from my problems so much as I want to run away from existence. I don't want to be a who or a what. I just want to be.

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

  • Dreams

    Nothing really to say and I don't feel like writing... I'll relate this dream instead.

    Let me just say that I like prunes. I'm not one of those people who resorts to prunes only when they are constipated. If not for their unfortunate gastrointestinal effects, I'd eat them a lot more often. So... my dream.

    I dreamed I had a bag of prunes at work. For some reason my boss took my bag of prunes, opened them up, and dumped them in a bin with dried apricots (which I do not like). There were a lot more prunes that my one little bag would have held, and a lot more prunes than apricots. Apparently she wanted the customers to buy them, but I just wanted my prunes back. My feeling of incredulity at what my boss had done was very similar to how I generally feel at work any more. In my dream I had a headache (and also when I woke up) and since the prunes had now been exposed to the air, I expected they would be hard and maybe the chewing of them would help my headache, but they were soft. Softer they would have been even in the bag. It was was like biting into a piece of butter. There was no taste and very little sensation of anything in my mouth. I did not like it, not the texture and not the lack of taste. I was pretty upset by the whole dream and I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and couldn't fall back to sleep until it was almost time to get up for work anyway.

    My interpretation has to do with the ____ that as of late we have been forced to ply to the customers against our wills due to certain quotas I alluded to yesterday. (fill in the blank... it has to do with what people eat prunes to do)

    I had another dream a couple days ago about snakes. They're one of my spirit animals. There were snakes everywhere, in boxes, on the ground underfoot. People were upset about the snakes. All of them were poisonous. I was not very frightened, as I knew how to handle them. I picked up a cobra by the base of its head (yeah, not the way you should handle a cobra, but this was a dream lol). These long "tongues" came out and wrapped themselves around my hand and arm. Apparently the cobra objected to being removed for the safety of others. The "tongues" were sticky-tacky as if covered in burs and came off my skin grudgingly like Velcro.  I was not poisoned by the tongues, though I thought it was possible that they were poisonous.

    My interpretation... I need to be heard, but my words are attached to me and will follow me wherever I go.

    Probably means I should be more careful what I say/write....


    July 21st

    The Mayan New Year was celebrated today. Each day, year, decade, century, and millennium had its own god. The Mayan solar calendar possessed 365 days, and they also possessed a sacred calendar of 260 days for determining which deity was in charge. Every fifty-second solar New Year was dangerous because the gods might leave their duties and time would stop.


    The seeress Damo, daughter of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras and Theano, was honored today. All of Pythagoras' secrets were entrusted to her care after his death.


    According to the Egyptian calendar, Aten was born today.


Monday, 20 July 2009

  • I just want some stability

    It seems every time I've tried to post in the last three days, my connection has conked out. Has anyone else been having internet issues lately? Sunspots or something?? I don't know.

    I am truly tired of work. I mean, I don't mind working, but I'm tired of my present job. I just want it to end. Every week it's something new.... which I can't go into here or lose my job. It's a Catch-22 thing. Damned if I do, and damned if I don't. I can at least write in a public post that I am unhappy. No names, no specifics, just not... happy.

    My sister works in a halfway house for people with psychological/emotional problems, and I'm going with her on Thursday to check it out, see if it's something I could do. Because I have no experience in "in house care," they'd want to test me out for a month, but potentially I would have a supervisory position afterward. This is based on my college degree and my supervisory experience. One way or another, I'd have to leave my current job to see if this other job would be tenable. If I or they decided I was not suitable, that would leave me high and dry without work. Is leaving my current job for a trial job worth it? I aim to find out on Thursday. I may be giving my two week's notice on Friday.

    According to my sister, they are desperate for help. I probably can't go into detail, not knowing what their policy on the subject is, but apparently the state does spot checks and certain night shift employees currently working there did something very naughty and irresponsible. If I did get the job, it would be third shift, which I have no problem with. I would actually prefer this, being a night owl and all. Plus apparently night shift gets paid more. Whooo! More pay, I can deal with. My sister was not specific about pay, but she seemed to think that I'd be making a lot more than I make now (and sadly, it took five years to work my way up to what I am currently paid).

    One way or another, I just can't stay where I am. I don't think I can do retail at all any more. I am completely burned out in regards to retail. I definitely can't still be working retail come the holidays. I'll go completely bonkers. After my car accident in December, I am still completely paranoid about driving anywhere near the malls, but especially during the holidays. The stress of it all isn't good for me. It's not even that I'm afraid of being hurt, it's more concern over finances and the hassle of dealing with insurance companies. I don't like hassles. I like things simple. I like to know what's what and have some stability. I like to know that my expectations are realistic. My current job may not be going anywhere any time soon, but it's hardly stable. Every week, it's something new. Every week it's the stress of changing everything and not having what they tell me I should have and therefore being unable to do what they tell me I should do. I don't want quotas and big brother tactics. I don't want names on lists. I don't want to be compared to other people in other stores who seem to be better than us even though the don't make their quotas either.

    I want a nice job where I deal with maybe two dozen people in a day (instead of hundreds) and where change occurs slowly and with warning. I want to be able to ease into changes. I suppose in that respect I am somewhat like the residents where my sister works. I don't like change. I want to know what I am doing at all times and not have to worry someone is going to pull the rug out from under me and change the rules without a moment's notice. I want to know my job and be respected for doing my job and not belittled for all the new things they add or change at a moments notice on a weekly basis. I don't want to be treated like I am stupid or insufficient. I've told my boss many times that I can't do this any more. So far as I'm concerned, when I finally do give notice, it should be the least surprising occurrence in our average work week.

    I sincerely think I may have post traumatic stress syndrome. There are days when I practically have a panic attack going out the door. Just the thought of going to work gives me a migraine some days. I feel sorry for everyone who works with me because I know what I'll be leaving them with when I finally do find someplace else to be. I am damn good at my job, if I do say so myself (and since no one else in a higher capacity will). Everyone at work is wound so tight, it's a wonder no one's snapped yet. Maybe when I finally find some where else to be, I'll go into more detail... since I will then not have the potential loss of my only paycheck looming like an anvil over my head.

    My job just fills me with so much loathing any more, it's not even funny. And it's not even the customers or my coworkers, it's the policies... the economic environment of my workplace, the crushing dogma of the common dollar and what the company, any company, thinks the public wants.

    I am not a number, corporate America. I am a human being. We are all people, and you're like the sludge monster from a Godzilla movie. Make of that what you will.


    July 20th

    no holiday entries for the 20th


    Currently
    Boo Hoo
    By Voltaire
    See You in Hell
    see related

Friday, 17 July 2009

  • $$$$

    So you all know how I've been trying to win the lottery. I've been "sending out the desire" for more money and I've even had some of you kind folks sending out the good vibes for me.

    Well, I still haven't won the lottery. lol

    BUT, the other day I received a check from my car insurance company reimbursing me for my deductible for the accident that I had waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in December. So, it only took them seven months to settle all accounts. Is that normal? I don't know. I'm happy to report that I've had very few car accidents. (knock on wood)

    So though I didn't win the lottery, I did get back a fair chunk of change that I never expected to see again.

    All I can say is... keep sending the money vibes my way. My money luck seems to have turned around about a week ago when I found a silver quarter and added it to my little money worries box. I can only hope my gods and my friends have turned my luck around....

    hmmm, now I'm going to have to see about buying Ganesha some nice candies. I did say I would. Maybe some flowers too.


    July 17th

    This is the Japanese feast day of Amaterasu-O-Mi-Kami. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the first procession takes place. This is the Yamahoko-junko, which consists of twenty floats. When Emperor Seiwa of Japan successfully drove an epidemic out of the city of Kyoto in 869, the day was commemorated with a festival. He performed the fete by displaying sixty-six spears before his imperial shrine. Every year after, he paraded the spears through the streets in honor of the gods. This is continued in the Gion festival. The spears are carried in sapling topped shrines accompanied by dozens of musicians led by a boy dressed as a Shinto priest.


    The birth of Isis, wife of Osiris, child of Seb the earth god and Nut the sky goddess occurs on the 4th of the Epagomenal Days. She is the mother of Horus and an agricultural goddess identified with Demeter and associated with the seasonal rise of the Nile river which brought fertile soil up from the river's bottom.


Thursday, 16 July 2009

  • WCFQ #14: The People, the People, the people

    WCFQ #14:
    What has been your biggest
    disappointment in life so far?
    my_final_username

    People have always been my biggest disappointment to the point that sometimes I feel like Sybil. People scare me and they make me sad. It's a well known fact that you cannot control anyone but yourself, and sometimes not even that, but the things my fellow human beings do often boggles the mind. Whether it's genocide or pedophilia, hate-mongering zealots or ignorant money grubbers, parents who kill their children or children who kill other children... it makes me wonder what is wrong with my species? The world would probably be better off if the Neanderthals had evolved dominant instead of homo sapiens sapiens. We're so full of ourselves, we had to call ourselves wise (sapiens) twice. We're probably the vainest and stupidest creatures to ever walk the face of the earth. Our vanity is in fact the root of our ignorance because we can conceive of nothing beyond ourselves. If, as the Christians say, we were made in god's image, then conversely god is shaped by our consciousness in our own image. We become a reflection of the divine and can do no wrong, even though we do... lots of it. We do enough harm to our world, our fellow beings, and each other to beggar belief.

    In the course of human history there have been thousands to hold up as examples to follow and thousands who should have been cast out of humanity entirely. Why is it that we always find it easier to follow the evil example en masse than we do to follow the good one? When was the last time you heard of an army of good Samaritans following along in the wake of one ennobled soul? Instead, we have criminally self-centered depots with armies only too happy to commit genocide to keep their misbegotten leader in power. We have religious zealots who convince their followers that only killing others will get them into paradise.

    While it is true that we rally when some natural disaster blights some region, we seldom maintain the level of attention required to address the issue fully. We still have people living in trailers provided during their displacement from the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. And what about the Tsunami that hit India... all water under the bridge it would seem. If we were to live up to the standards that we envision for ourselves, famine, disease, and pollution would already be things of the past. Victims of natural disasters would not languish in a purgatory of enfeebling bureaucracy.

    We fail. We fail as a sentient race, and we fail at enlightenment. We are not worth the carbon monoxide laden air we breath, the pesticide laden food we eat, or the chemically altered water we drink. Humanity is not so great as it thinks it is, and the sooner we get that through our heads, the sooner we can actually make strides to fix the problems we have created and begin the process of spiritual perfection.


    July 16th

    In Haiti, Voodoo pilgrims seek healing and good health in the holy waters of the Saut d'Eau, a waterfall where the voodoo spirit of love, Erozulie Freda, appeared twice in the 1800s.


    The 3rd Epagomenal Day is the Birthday of Set(h).

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

  • WCFQ #11: It's all circumstantial

    WCFQ #11:
    What would you do
    in the case of a zombie outbreak?
    Do you think you'd be a survivor?
    Bizy_the_Pirate

    I really couldn't say if I'd survive or not. It really depends upon circumstance. Points in my favor, I don't live in a city, and I know various plants which are edible. Even if I ran out of food, I would be able to forage.

    Points not in my favor, I don't have any guns and even if I did, I've never had the need to learn how to aim and actually hit anything.

    Which leaves much up to chance. For instance, if I have some warning, I might be able to scope out a safe place to hole up for a while, but what if the outbreak occurs while I'm at work and some shambler makes a meal out of half the clientele before anyone's the wiser. I mean, I work in retail so half the clientele is already zombie-like.

    The only real edge someone has in surviving a zombie outbreak is if they get wind of the zombies before the issue is brought home to them. No plan is going to save you if you get bit before you even know you should be worried about being bit.

    Of course, from the other end of the spectrum... how does the zombie feel about all this? Enter this zombie haiku contest to find out and win an autographed copy of Breathers, a zombie's lament.


    July 15th

    On St. Within's Day, a Christian version of the Norse sea and storm god Aegir, rain meant more rain for the next forty days.


    The Day of Rauni is a Finnish and Cornish holy day. The Cornish goddess Rowana or Rauni, guardian of rowan trees, is patroness of the secret knowledge of the runes. Her tree is protective, and its wood, bark, and leaves, used for making protective amulets, are especially effective if cut today. A simple charm consists of binding some leaves and bark up in white or gold cloth with red thread while visualizing the goal of the spell. In Finnish mythology, she is the wife of Ukko the Thunder God. The name comes from 'ronn' or 'raun', the Nordic names for Rowan.


    On the 2nd of the Epagomenal Days, Horus was born.


Tuesday, 14 July 2009

  • WCFQ #12: It's a lifestyle choice

    WCFQ #12:
    What are your thoughts
    on the vegetarian life style?
    Oceans_Beautiful_View

    I'm a vegetarian, though not vegan. Even if I moved away from my carnivorous family, I'm still a cheese addict. I'll never be able to give up the creamy goodness. I do eat free range poultry and wild caught fish, though I have misgivings about the fish. With the state of our oceans today, I'm not sure that it's even ethical any more to eat fish unless you catch it yourself and know the approximate impact of your next meal on the environment.

    I'm a vegetarian for ethical and health reasons. Ethically, I don't buy mass produced meats because factory farms constitute cruelty to animals. The animals are fed foods to bulk them up, but which are not necessarily good for them and that extends to the meat not being good for us. Their diets are basically restricted to the livestock equivalent of junk food. Kind of makes you look at obese people in a whole new light.... Not that I'm slurring overweight people, but by extension, if we bulk up our livestock with a junk food diet and then consume that junked-up meat in addition to all the normal junk food that people have access to, it's no wonder morbid obesity is one of the main health issues in America today. And junk food diets make people feel ill, weak, bloated, and craptastic, so imagine how sickly the animals must feel before they are killed when that is in effect their only food source. There is also the fact that the only reason Mad Cow Disease ever happened was because we were (still are in many cases) feeding the waste bits of slaughtered animals back to herbivorous animals, first of all turning them in unintentional cannibals and secondly introducing diseased proteins into the food supply. Yay us! We're sooooo smart and junk. o.O

    There is also the fact that the animals are kept in pens much too small for comfort or health. This serves the purpose of allowing the factory farms to "grow" a maximum number of animals and glean the largest profit from their "harvest" while keeping the meat tender from unused muscles. The animals have poor ventilation and often are left to wallow in their own filth. Chickens, in particular, because of their propensity for pecking each other in tight quarters, are de-beaked and force fed because they cannot feed themselves. Hens are forced to lay eggs until they get osteoporosis (because the calcium depleted through egg laying is not replaced in their diet) and then they are slaughtered.

    And like I said, I also question the ethics of eating fish. Many of the ships used to harvest fish from the sea use drag nets which kill everything they come in contact with. Not to mention the reefs it destroys as it drags. And anything which is brought up and not fit for human consumption is let to die, rather than being returned to the sea to live. I'm sure that some methods are better than others, but finding out which methods are used by which companies is the difficult part. Better to eat as little fish as possible. Not to mention the amount of pollution in the seas is rising. Mercury poisoning is the least of what you have to worry about if you eat lots of fish.

    Now, don't get me wrong. I think everyone is entitled to decide what they ingest. I'm not a PETA crazy. We're omnivores, and we are able to eat both animal and vegetable proteins. I don't have a problem with people who eat meat. I just think that some people might choose differently if they knew exactly what their food went through before hitting their plate. One way or the other, ethically or for health reasons, eating meat is just not that healthy. In moderation, I don't think it's so bad, but I know lots of people who like nothing more than a big heeping plate of meat, a big old meat sandwich on bread so processed it's nothing more than empty calories, heck we even have the low-no carb diets... all meat, all the time. It's just not healthy. Not to mention the fact that our digestive system is that of an herbivore. Our intestines are simply too long to properly process the meat. Unless we also ingest large amounts of fiber to make it pass quickly through our digestive tract, the meat will fester and rot in your gut before you finally um, process it and get rid of it.

    What I'm saying here is, I don't think it's ethical to eat meat unless you know where it comes from and that it was treated right before being killed. Health-wise, you just don't know what you're eating if you buy it from the supermarket. Speaking as an empath, the chemicals produced by the animal's short life of misery and horrific death is something you ingest too. It's one of the reasons it's better to reduce or remove meat entirely. I honestly think that our diet contributes to the epidemic of depression people are facing. Drugs are not the answer. A healthier, more balanced diet is.

    I haven't eaten meat from mammals since the 90s. I eat free range poultry about once every other week, and fish about once a week. Like I said, I probably wouldn't even eat that much if not for my family, but my mother has this thing where if she doesn't make any meat for me, she says she feels like she's not feeding me at all. Of course, I do most of the cooking, but that just means they want me to cook meat-heavy dishes for them. :-/


    July 14th

    The 1st of the Epagomenal Days is the Birthday of Osiris.


    This is Reed Dance Day in Africa.


Monday, 13 July 2009

  • Pro-choice, not pro-abortion

    So, my sister is pregnant, but not happily. She and her boyfriend are constantly fighting. They say they are not, that they are just teasing each other, but it doesn't seem that way to me or anyone else. Really, I don't think they will stay together. Personally, I don't see how anyone could stay with my sister. She's... well, she's a b****, with a capital B. She always has been. She's downright nasty at the best of times. I truly worry about my nephew and what living with her will do to his state of mind. Not that I've ever seen her do anything that could be construed as abuse, but psychologically? She's a mess, moody as heck even when she's not pregnant.

    My sister is, in a word, selfish. No matter what she does for others, she thinks of herself first and all others be damned if they don't fit into her plans. She has as much as admitted this. I am sure she loves my nephew and has said that if her boyfriend treats the new baby better than my nephew, as in playing favorites to his own child, then he is gone. But she also bluntly talks about abortion, makes jokes about it, has gone so far as to look up how far into her pregnancy she can still have one done. She does so loudly and in front of my nephew and her boyfriend. I can't figure out if it's a threat to keep her boyfriend in line or if she's just being her typical self-involved self.

    But I don't think it's fair to my nephew. He's getting close to six, and I don't imagine he's completely oblivious to what's going on. We've all taken steps to ensure that he's "involved" in the pregnancy. He puts his head on her belly and says the baby farted or giggled or all manner of things. He talks about what he's going to do with a baby sister (he doesn't want a little brother). He's already attached to the baby.

    And yet my sister keeps up her jokes about abortion. She holds it over her boyfriend's head like an anvil. Personally, I don't think he's going to be a good father. He's like a big child himself.

    Regardless, I don't appreciate the jokes, and I told her so. I think it is ultimately her choice and gods forbid anyone gives her advice on how to raise her child or live her life, but if she's going to have an abortion, she needs to think about how her son is going to feel about the death of his unborn sibling, especially with how we've all worked to keep him a part of the arrival. (Not like when my sister was born, and I was basically ignored. No one made any attempt to involve me in the process, and we had rivalry issues for years.) We've all worked hard to make sure E- isn't threatened by this change to his family. And yet my sister is acting as ignorant as can be about how an abortion would affect my nephew, especially if years later he remembers all the talk about it beforehand.

    Frankly, I'm repulsed by how my sister is acting. I'm pro-choice. Like I said, it's her decision and I don't contest that. But it's not a joking matter either. It's a serious decision that affects more than just her. It disgusts me that she can joke about it at all. I understand that the life the baby is coming into may be less than ideal and that her relationship with its father may not last, but we've bought her furniture for the baby. We've bought E- books dealing with new babies and being a big brother. If she decides in the month left to her that she is not going to have this baby, E- is going to be devastated. At this point, I think it's late in the game to be considering abortion. She says she can still have an abortion up to 24 weeks. Personally, I think 16 weeks is pushing it even if she can't "feel anything yet."

    I just think she is way too cavalier about the possibility of getting rid of the baby.


    July 13th

    During the three day Buddhist O-Bon festival of Japan, the spirits of the dead mingle with the living. It is a time for family reunions so that the entire family, living and dead, may share in the day's festivities. After house cleaning is finished, the family moves on to the shrine or grave of their loved ones and fill the site with offerings of herbs, flowers, and food. On the evening of July 12th, the family gathers at the grave-side to greet ancestral spirits and escort them home. Called the Feat of Lanterns by foreigners, the nights are illuminated by lanterns and torches. For the rest of the festival, families feast, laying a place at all meals for their deceased. Celebrants gather outside in parks or squares to participate in the traditional Bon Dance intended to greet and comfort the wandering souls. At the end of the festival, farewell fires are lit and lanterns are set out to help the spirits find their way home. In some areas, little boats equipped with lanterns are also sent out.


    The birthday of Ra occurs on the 30th day of Mesore.



harmony0stars

  • Visit harmony0stars's Xanga Site
    • Name: Candace
    • Country: United States
    • State: Pennsylvania
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 4/10/2001
    • True Lifetime

Tattoo


the webnovel so far...
(updating MWF)

Chapter 1:
Blood is Thicker
In which nerdliness does not make one infallible

Chapter 2:
A Farewell to Arms
In which many mistakes are made

Chapter 3:
Small Sacrifices
In which Glory is a hero despite herself

Chapter 4:
The Shape of Things to Come
In which preconceived notions are much abused by modern medicine

Chapter 5:
Of Mice and Men and Other Things
in which the Jersey Devil does not make an appearance

Chapter 6:
The Endless Knot
in which Glory explores Otherworlds

Chapter 7: (Current)
Xenites Beware
Chapter 7.1
in which Glory takes cover
Chapter 7.2
in which someone's in the closet
Chapter 7.3
in which Glory shows the cops the door

  • I make no apologies for my feelings and thoughts. As an individual, I am entitled to them.

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