Dancing Around the Four Sides

1) Dreamed last night that a snake turned into a child. In the dream I had been asked by my Dream BFF (who was someone I used to work with, decades ago) to watch her daughter for the day or the afternoon or whatever. So we met in a parking garage, and she laid a small snake (like the size of a harmless little garter snake) on the concrete floor (this all felt like an ordinary occurrence in the dream), and when I picked it up the snake transformed into a laughing, squirming toddler in my arms. My friend was in a hurry, so in the dream it was BFF, snake, toddler, boom boom boom. I also knew in the dream that I had done this many times before, and I was happy to do it (even though in Real Life I am definitely not a Kids Person). So. That was that.

2) Stayed up way too late last night reading Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's Vita Nostra, and holy shit, kittens, this is one creepy and fascinating tale.

3) Beautiful spring weather today. I should plant the basil, cilantro, and bee balm seeds I've bought, but for some reason it's very hard to get motivated. :-P

Ye gods, what a profoundly dreary day. Cold and damp and grey, with a fine, thin mist drizzing the air. It's supposed to stay above freezing tonight, so I pulled the towels off the deck plants. Then I came back inside and turned the heat up.

I saw this on sholio's DW the other day and thought it was interesting -- it's a Trope Sorting Meme, and it made me laugh (in recognition) when I saw my results. Obvious attractions are obvious ...

1 Fairy Tale/Mythology AU
1 Daemons
1 Found Families
4 Enemies to Friends to Lovers
4 Hurt/Comfort
4 Friends to Lovers

( The rest are under the cut ...  )

Dreamed last night that I had bought a necklace of some kind from the David Morgan store in Bothell, Washington (while I have been to Washington state, I've never been to Bothell). I was standing in the parking lot, trying to put it on, but I was having trouble fastening the clasp so I asked Mister Nightdog_barks to help me. There were three or four bald eagles nearby (like perching on the roofs of low buildings) watching. A young woman -- a clerk -- came out of the David Morgan store and started talking to me, but I was having trouble understanding her. Eventually I realized she wanted to know if I wanted to purchase an insurance policy for the necklace. I was trying to tell her "no" and still having trouble understanding her when the dream simply trailed off and ended, as dreams do. OK then, brain.

Oh my god I am in such a cranky mood today. I will blame it on not sleeping well, and when I did sleep, I had a profoundly creepy dream about fixing locks on doors and a small blonde child standing in the hallway telling me I'd better get them fixed before she came around again. WHAT.

Also I just want to say the "singing packages" commercial from Amazon is weird and icky.

Clear and cool and SUNNY, yay. Squirrels have been very active, galloping across the roof and teasing Layla, scolding and chattering at her. :D

Dreamed last night that there was a 9th season of House. I was watching an episode and realized I'd never seen it before -- it was something about House being in a mental facility, only Wilson was with him, and Wilson had ... lost his memory? -- so I looked at Wikipedia to see which episode it was and there was a whole list of 9th-season episodes there. I scrolled back (the display was on the TV screen) to see how many episodes I'd missed. I saw "House's Head" (4.15), but nothing else looked familiar. I wish I could remember the other episode titles.

And then after that I dreamed I was helping a young couple smuggle drugs in pineapples. I was at an airport, and some official-type guys in uniforms were cutting the pineapples open, but it was all okay because I knew the uniformed guys were in on it. BRAIN, WHAT.

Football on the TV and can hear a neighbor nearby practicing the trumpet. Badly. LOL

And I'm not sorry to see you go. You were entirely unseasonably warm all the way through, except for those few days we had unseasonable rain.

Dreamed last night I was reading a newspaper (a real paper, with newsprint) and stopped to look at a quarter-page advertisement for ... Canadian blueberry trees. Trees, the size of mighty elms. With blueberries. They had four varieties -- the names vanished from my consciousness as soon as I awakened (as happens with dreams), but I think one of them may have been MacLeod. I don't know. I do know that last week I had a dream that involved a talking wolf. Brain is braining some strange stuff in the night.

Finished Ron Chernow's Grant and what can I say, it was amazing. Two enthusiastic thumbs up, but wow does it require an investment of a big chunk of time. Was it the perfect biography? No; I wished Chernow had spent a bit more time on the role of Grant's son Frederick in the extremely ugly West Point hazing of the first black cadet, and I wished there had been at least a short follow-up on the lives of Grant's wife and children (one of his granddaughters married a Russian prince!).

Anyway. Started reading Lesley Nneka Arimah's What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky: Stories last night. I was very surprised by the ending to the first story, "The Future Looks Good." I have liked all the stories so far, though.

Slept terribly last night, due to a snoring husband and a VERY restless dog. There was SOMETHING in the backyard that she didn't like -- could've been a possum (most likely), a skunk, a bunny rabbit, a rat, a fox, who knows. But Jesus Christ she was bent out of shape about it. Plus she couldn't decide if she wanted to sleep on the bed or the floor, and if it was on the bed, was it on my right or left side, or do I want to curl up at the foot of the bed, I DON'T REALLY KNOW SO I'LL JUST TROMP AROUND ON MOM TILL I FIGURE IT OUT. Oh my god. I was ready to kill her. When I finally did fall asleep, I dreamed something about getting on and off planes going to/coming from St. Louis. Brain, what.

All is forgiven (mostly), and when I was out on the deck earlier I moved the lemongrass plants to a lower shelf so that she could nibble on the ends of the leaves. (She loves it.) :D

Just finished cutting up the fresh pineapple Mister Nightdog got last weekend at Sprouts. No waste (besides the core and rind) -- tasted a piece and it was DELICIOUS.

Ordered a little Herkimer diamond charm for myself from an Etsy merchant. They're not really diamonds, just quartz, but I like them. And it cheered me up. *g*

So early this morning I dreamed that I was in the backyard, standing on the deck, when I happened to look up and see three hawks circling in the sky directly over my head. Which is not all that unusual, except that one of the hawks only had one wing. I watched it for a minute, trying to figure out if the hawk's wing was somehow tucked behind its back, but no, it only had one wing. And then the dream, as dreams do, either ended or switched to something else.

Got out and went to Kroger and Whole Paycheck Foods today -- the latter was a rare visit, but they had their NY strip steaks "on sale," and I have to admit their steaks are some of the best we've ever had. I also bought a few blood oranges there because they smelled so good. On the way home, a Great Blue Heron flew right over my car -- there are lakes and marshes around us, so we see them occasionally, just not usually so close up. With their ungainly body and long, gawky legs, it looks like they shouldn't be able to fly. *g*

Now reading Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing.

Woke up this morning from an anxiety dream in which a couple of grocery store employees were demanding to see the credit cards in my wallet before I shopped because they thought I was Not My Real Name. I said I was My Real Name and was going to show them my American Express card, but then I saw I had two American Express cards, and I knew one was expired, but which one? Somehow this segued into me standing with a grocery cart inside the grocery -- a friend had been there (my BFF from high school), but she'd gone to buy a bottle of whiskey and I was alone, unsure what to do. :-P

Still discovering new aches and pains -- stretched and my abdominal muscles were SO SORE. Ouch. Today it is two weeks since my surgery. Somehow it feels longer.

Good stuff -- we are making a savarin sweet bread. Something new for us, but it's fun to experiment. :-)

Oh, and I've copied Letters of Transit to my DW (locked) to get it ready for posting to AO3. So, probably tonight sometime.

SO. I dreamed last night that I was sort of a groupie in the entourage of some famous woman science fiction writer (I have no idea who it was), and we ended up at the University of Wisconsin, which in my dream was like a huge open-air tent city out in the middle of nowhere. Even the public toilets were outdoors, WITH NO WALLS, and I was attempting to use the toilet without attracting too much attention. And nobody was really paying attention, but I was still nervous. BRAIN WHAT.

I don't even know. The weather here is beautiful, and we have Early Girl tomatoes, little green Romas and Patios, lovely long banana peppers and poblanos and Santa Fe Grandes. I am still reading Nell Painter's History of White People and it is pretty interesting.

I keep forgetting to say that I watched Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog on HBO the other night. I really liked it, but then I'm a Laurie Anderson fan. :D

Also I finally went ahead and ordered my own DVD copy of The Drop, since I keep watching it every time it turns up on a movie channel. It's become one of my favorite films -- I think it truly is a little gem.

I had the strangest dream last night, which I'm going to cut because come on, not everyone wants to read about other peoples' dreams.

( Read more... )

Read Evie Wyld's All the Birds, Singing, and liked it a lot. Parallel storylines, going in different directions -- one in the present, one backwards. Kudos to Wyld for this excellent, innovative approach that she totally makes work. Also read Blake Bailey's The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait, which is nonfiction and is just terribly depressing. Right now I am reading Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which so far is terrific.

Layla is growing like a weed. I am pecking away at glacial speed at a couple of Housefics.

That's all I've got for now.