101 Posts and Concerning Fairy Tales

Yay! I made it! Sure it only took me a few years, but who's counting, eh?

Concerning Fairy Tales.

We often speak of them as the dreams of little girls, full of pink and tulle and beautiful princesses or princesses to be who are swept off their feet by the perfect man. It'll never happen, people scoff. True love doesn't exist. There are no fairy godmothers. The world isn't perfect so get over yourself and find a real job, maybe you'll run into someone who won't divorce you. And for heavens sake, don't act like a prissy girl.

Have you looked at the fairy tales? Not Disney, fairy tales. Do they look rosy to you? Are they happy? Does everything sparkle with fairy dust? Does the shoe always fit? No.

They're horrible. These are the tales of young women locked up or cast aside who must persevere. They are raised in the most horrid conditions, treated in a children services worthy manner. They may not have enough to eat, or warm clothes to wear, or even a bed to sleep in. Look at the old illustrations. They're hideous. The witch looks like something out off a nightmare, the thorns cut cruelly, there are creatures crawling out of the woodwork. Look at the heroin. She's terrified. But she's beautiful. She's sweet. She's kind. She is something different, something that doesn't exist in her world. She shouldn't be. She should look just like everything else in her world. Cold, cruel, jaded.

So what do these stories teach? That every little girl is a princess and will have a wonderful life when her husband magically appears and takes her away? No. It teaches her that she must persevere. That no matter how bad it gets, no matter how badly she's treated, that she can be pure. That she can face hardship with courage, if not without tears. That sometimes the right way won't make sense, but you must follow the guidance given by others. That a prince, a man worth having, a man of honor, will look for the maiden who is not like anyone else. He will look for a woman of virtue in a land of vice. That the husband is the reward, not the goal. It is always the step-sisters who are chasing after the men and see how they fare.

The saying is, after all, and they lived happily ever after. If you take a good look at their lives before the prince comes in, it would be hard pressed to make it any worse.

Just some thoughts.

Home Alone.

I am not internally motivated. This is a new but blatant discovery.

The boy is traveling for work and I am home alone. At first I thought I could use this time and totally blow off my 'work' schedule and focus on knitting or story writing for three days. I was kind of excited and reminissed about all those nights in high school when I would draw till the wee hours of the morning in my closet (it was a walk-in with a light inside and usually kept me from getting caught).

I don't want to do anything, and I mean anything. The kitchen is a disaster, I didn't eat super (it seems to much effort with no one else to feed so I snacked instead). I knitted, pulled it out, knitted again, put it down to work on in the morning when I'm functioning. I drew some, doodled some, sat and stared at the wall some. I'm in bed but settling in enough to actually fall asleep doesn't sound appealing, mostly because it means I'll wake up to an empty bed, but staying awake is taking too much effort.

I'm not unhappy, just off.

We'll see what the morning brings.

Contentment

I ask a lot out of life. I ask that it be simple. I ask that it be fun. I ask that it be full of love. I ask that it have a rhythm. I ask that it be fulfilling. I ask that it be full. I ask that it run in my time line. It does all those things at some point or another and it doesn't do any of them at some point or another.

What Life asks out of me is that I be content with what I am given when it's given. I am, at some point or another.

Right now I am knitting. I love it. It's not something I would have expected to ever love. I have always preferred crochet. The more I knit the more I find it hard to be content. I read several blogs of women who live on small farms or just run a small home that includes live stock and a garden, who have 3+ children running underfoot, who have yarn and lots of it, who show pictures of kitchens covered in flour and a pot of soup simmering on the stove, of art crafts strewn over tables and cats perched in windows. I wish these were my pictures. But they're not. Sometimes I look at what I have at this moment and think, 'yeah, this is pretty good' and sometimes I can't wait to have all those things that I think I really want.

Knitting does that, it calls me out of what I have into what could be, perhaps because it is one of the first few steps that get me there. Knitting allows me to create, it allows me to transform yarn into a garment, a blanket, a hat, slippers, a decoration, anything. It gets me more involved in providing for my family. I love that I can pour hours of time and love into an item and then just give it away. I can give my love away in an item that a person can have close when I am far away. I must learn to be content with that and wait patiently for the chicken.

December

Do you want the good news or the bad news first. Well, I'll just assume you're like me and always want the bad news first...

I've lost my camera. It's gone. Poof. Nowhere. I suppose it's somewhere but it's keeping that location to itself. Which means no more pictures until I scrounge up the money to buy a new one... which will be a few months. Which is very, very sad because it's December, which means presents, which means projects, which means lots of stuff I would really, really love to post pictures of.

The good news is, it's December, which means presents, which means projects, which means I am very, very busy.

I'm attempting a handmade Christmas this year. I started out thinking of making one or two things but once my hands started making they just couldn't stop, so the handmade Christmas was unintentional. I've really enjoyed it. I've been learning new skills like hand embroidery and pattern making. It's amazing all the things you can do at home.

I know lots of people talk about making things 'in house' as a cost saving measure, less money spent, more in your pocket. That's somewhat true. While it does cost less money, it takes way more time to make everything than to walk into a shop and buy it. I ran the numbers for the Christmas apron I made based off the pattern I drafted (see last post). If you paid me minimum wage for the time it took me to make the apron (not to mention create the pattern) it comes to $41.25. That's pretty much what Mary Jane's Farm was charging and I didn't include the cost of materials. I would argue that if I was really good at this sort of thing, it would take me less time. I would also argue that the value of learning that I could draft a pattern and learning how to work out all the kinks through the production process was more than the value I would have received if I had just paid $40 for the apron and had my five and half hours of time. But that's just me.

I've also been learning how to host people. We've invited several people to celebrate Advent with us in our home every Sunday this month. It's exciting and kind of intimidating. I'm a quiet person, I don't like being around a bunch of people. But I love Advent. I love the waiting and the daily reminder of what Christmas is about and why it's the best time of the year. I really want to share that but to do that I have to get over this whole 'I don't really like being around lots of people' thing. I'm trying to keep it simple: people come over, people share a pot of soup and talk, we all move to the living room where the Advent wreath is and read the official Advent scriptures, light the candles, talk about the subject of that particular week's Advent candle and why it's important, then do whatever fits the mood: sing, talk, sit in contemplation, leave in silence, whatever. I need it to not be stressful... Christmas shouldn't be stressful. It's God's work, all He asks is for us to come and see. If our houses aren't perfect, that's okay, if our cookies aren't perfect, that's okay, if our hearts aren't perfect, that's okay, if we refuse God, that's not okay. Hm... I'm vaguely reminded of something I thought of in the car on the way to Thanksgiving but I can't remember what I wanted to say, I can only remember the feeling and mood, something about how the verse says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks and we always think about this polite little man politely knocking at the door... but maybe He's standing at that door and pounding... perhaps it will come to me later.

In any case, I've been trying to put my heart into Christmas. To be gracious and open to others, to make my gifts personal and full of effort and love, to craft and create. To put Christmas in my heart where it belongs.

New Toy

I recently purchased a Wacom Bamboo Tablet. I love this thing. Below is the first presentable image I have created. She is called Rosaline and is a character in the comic I may or may not create in the more or less near future. The story is really choppy but has a complete story arch in bullet point draft (which is farther than most of my stories have ever gotten... okay, that's farther than any of my stories have gotten). I'm excited to see how the quality of my work improves.

Bread and... butter!

So. Butter is possibly the easiest thing I have ever made. Pour cream in to bowl. Beat. Don't eat the whipped cream. Wait until the butter separates from the butter milk (you can't miss it, the butter sticks to the beaters and suddenly there's white liquid in the bottom of the bowl), about 20 minutes. Strain buttermilk. Kneed butter in bowl of cold water to get all the butter milk out. The buttermilk will make the butter go rancid and the cold water keeps it from melting all over your hands. Salt if desired. Eat. Yum. $4.50 for the quart of cream produces $3 worth of butter + however much 2 cups of buttermilk costs. I am so making my own from now on.

Budgie Birdie

My husband and I have started to train our bird, Spring. Spring came to us as a refugee this past fall. She was four years old at least. Her former owners kept her fed and watered but that was about it. She didn't have a whole lot of human interaction and, as budgies are flock animals, has some mental damage because of that.

Spring has finally become comfortable in her new home and we like to think that she's warming up to us, too. She acknowledges the fact that we're alive, which is more than she seemed aware of when we first got her. She also seems interested in what happens outside of her cage, which is an improvement. At first, you could almost drop a book right next to her cage and she wouldn't even notice. I think never being taken out of the cage for the first four years of her life caused the "world" to become a cubic foot.

She loves running water. She sings to the dishwasher, she sings to the sink, she sings to the shower. She has begun to sing to Dustin. He'll whistle a three note ditty and she attempts to whistle it back. She even 'practices' his whistles when he's at work during the day. It's really the cutest thing. She is mated to the small bell in her cage. She spends hours snuggled up with it and 'preening' it. Sometimes they get into lover's fights and that's always a hoot. Especially, when the bell wins. :P

She will sit on your finger and feel safe when she's there, it's convincing her she wants to get on that's the problem. I have brought her out of the cage on my finger twice out of I don't want to tell you how many attempts. She'll eat off your finger but not out of your palm.

Training will be a slow process. But for a four year-old, pretty-much-wild bird, that's kind of a given. How to cause a five inch creature it should care about the world and accept two towering giants as the flock it's never had? Patience, lots of patience.

Socks

I just finished my first ever pair of crochet socks! See and admire!

Truffles!

Dustin and I had dinner with new friends last weekend and, after an amazingly delicious homemade ravioli dinner complete with winter vegetables, salad, and bread, we were served homemade truffles. Did you know you could make truffles at home? I most certainly did not. It was just one of those things that someone else made and you paid for.

But no more! A good friend and I decided to try our hand at the ancient and revered art of chocolate making (we used pre-made chocolate. Sorry, we're just not cool enough to roast and press our own chocolate... yet... Hey, Sarah...! ;) ).

These beauties are what we ended up with after several hours and ounces of chocolate. We now know what mud-pie making is really training children for.

Note: The tray was full when we were done, but Sarah was entitled to her half. :)

What I've been up to

Alright, then. Sorry about the long pause in posts, I really don't know why it happened.

I've been making some actual progress on my story this past week. Hm, let's start with Halloween, actually.

SO, the big Halloween party was a blast. Mom and I got everything decorated and the massive amounts of food made and on the table in time (as in, after I spent two full days doing nothing but cooking and baking, we were slicing up the chicken and setting it on the table as guests arrived). Everyone showed up in pretty impressive costumes, although Matt gets the prize for his Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas costume. Too bad he had to change after he got murdered. Two of my brothers successfully staged the over throw of the Egyptian Queen and the twins did a marvelous job with Dustin and me as the Fae Court. Even my dad had a good time (we were worried, acting's not generally his thing). He got to go around and intimidate everyone as the Phantom Inquisitor. I just wish we'd had more time :( But, all in all, a grand time.

Since then I have inherited a massive amount of yarn from my in-laws and have been busy making a blanket and a baby set (I'll post pictures when I have them). BTW, the baby set is not for me, no I am not pregnant, no we are not planning on children in the near future. I seem to be getting those types of questions often, lately. I prefer to make baby clothes and blankets because they use less yarn than adult sized things and because they take less time. Plus, they're really cute!

Finally, after the madness of Halloween, my story has been pulled off the back burner. I'm really pleased with the progress I've been making. Yesterday alone I did six pages of character profiles and four pages of actual story. I love how the story seems to develop itself. I do not mean that it writes its self, trust me, lots of effort here. But that if I want my characters to end up in one place, several other events must take place before they are emotionally or geographically able to be in that place. Every so often another piece to the puzzle just pops into my head. I am beginning to understand that old light bulb metaphor. I'm also surprised to find that my characters change, or that a stock character I want to use just won't fit any more. Sometimes that makes me sad, some of my characters have existed in my mind for years and I was really excited to use them, but mostly the change in character makes sense and I just have to deal with it. Besides, I'll always be able to use them in another story. :)

Hm...

If my dreams have any prophetic meaning at all:

We're running out of time.

Round 2

I pulled out my Ancient Greek materials today. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

All grown up

'Real life' is interesting. It's strangely... routine. And they said it would be scary and different :P It's interesting because it's both, except the scary part. We've simply been put in the roles our parents were in. You know, they paid the bills, fixed the car, went to work, cooked, cleaned, were in charge of our family's social life. Now we're doing them. This is nothing I haven't seen before. It's rather nice. It's like finally being big enough to wear your mother's evening gown, instead of having it falling off your shoulders and into a puddle on the floor. I've been watching this rhythm my whole life. Suddenly, all the tasks I was too small or inexperienced to do just happen. I was worried that it would be hard or take a lot of effort but I've been trained for this. I'm here.

Not to say it doesn't have it's own set of challenges, some I wasn't expecting. But it's like taking a practical exam. You haven't seen the composite problems before, but you do know all the tools for the small ones. It just takes some patience to work it all out.

I don't know if Dustin feels the same, he hasn't had the same experience as I, but he seems to like it fine. I am happy to have him, he most certainly makes life better.

Spontaneity

I was bored, hubby was at SPR, I was tired of cross-stitching so I created this:

It's just a square of afghan, crocheted in the standard baby-blanket pattern (I don't know what the official name for the pattern, it might just be baby-blanket :P) I found it on The Handmade Dress. All the instructions were explained with photographs (yay! crutches for us visual learners :)).

I had the sudden urge to learn it but didn't think I had any yarn :( But then I remembered that my old roommate gave me a leftover skin of teal yarn about a year or more ago that I stuffed into the bottom of my sewing box. I figured I'd never use it because teal is about my least favorite yarn color. But voila! I had yarn. When I pulled it out I discovered I also had leftover yarn from my de-stressor afghan project from my Cluster Quarter (whew, glad that's over.), which is the green/brown yarn.

I think I'm going to be one of those crafty women. You know, the ones who always have half finished quilts and sewing all over the place :D Well, okay, not all over the place because that would drive me crazy, but one of those women who have always got a project going.

Okay, back to dishes xp

Lonely

I miss my husband. He's gone for the weekend on some Survival trip that's not supposed to kill him *rolls eyes, right, and his wife's not supposed to worry *sigh. Men have no concept of women at all. He's my very best friend and I'd worry even if he was going on a roller-coaster with full safety marks. He was in the worst mood I've ever seen him in this morning and admitted to being rather nervous. Well, duh, I'd be nervous, too.

It didn't hit me until mid-afternoon (he left at 1) that I'd be alone tonight. No one to cook for, no one to play games with and laugh with over the dumb stuff. It was very saddening. I thought about finding someone to hang out with but decided that loneliness might teach me something now that it doesn't completely depress me. We'll see how many pages of story and thought I crank out this weekend...

Because of her...

I was pursuing articles online and found this. I don't follow tennis, I have no idea who this woman is. But after reading the article, these words struck me:

"She never lost her composure and held the microphone firmly.
But her coach, Carlos Rodriguez, broke down in tears.
"Because of her," Rodriguez said, 'I am somebody.'"

We do not live life only for ourselves. Our success is not only our success. Our failure is not only our failure. We do nothing on our own.

Just a thought.

Camping!

The boy and I just rolled in from our first ever camping trip together :D It was a lot of fun. We randomly bought a tent last Saturday (well, not randomly, we're camping this summer and they happened to be a pretty decent price) and were just dying to try it out (okay, okay, I was dying to try it out Dustin just humored me).

We set out about six with a tent, six blankets, two pillows, enough chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers to make four S'mores, our P.J.s, a jug of water and his survival kit. Oh, and a roll of toilet paper, you never know. And other than wishing we had brought a couple more snacks, we did alright. Who says you need all that fancy stuff?

We most of our time starting a fire... and warding off the caterpillars who seemed to think the fire was a good place to crawl to. Everything was still wet but we had better luck than last week. I believe our fire died out twice before we got it going and even then 'going' was a very watched and tended 'going'. Dustin has mastered strike anywhere matches :D so I can rest easy about his upcoming trip. It amuses me that my absolutely briliant and creative husband, who has no trouble diagnosing and fixing computer, learning how to fix our car and just about any other mechanical thing, could struggle so much with a teeny-tiny strike anywhere match. But in the end, we had our S'mores, could warm ourselves by the fire, and laugh at how even after all those years of schooling, we still have trouble lighting a fire.

We're really happy we had those six blankets, two on the bottom and four on the top and we were toasty but one less either way and we would have gotten pretty chilly. I'm so glad we keep emergency blankets in the car. But it was really nice to be snuggled in a mountain of wool, down, and sleeping bag. I think I'm going to start leaving the curtains open at night, it was wonderful to wake up with the sun, it didn't feel too early at all. We ended up heading back about 7:40, when we had originally planned on waking up, just because we were up and ready to go.

I like camping, I hope we go again soon.

Starting Over

I just threw out my journal with a large chunk of started stories. I decided it was time. Some of those stories are six years old, some of them are only six months old, but it was time. I've spent so long jotting down bits and pieces that there was really no hope of going back through them all and resurrecting long dead plots and characters. I finally admitted that they were all false starts and what I really needed was to let them die and move on. I've almost thrown it out several times but never did because of that nagging feeling of 'maybe one day'.

It reminds me of the day we helped clean up Paul's basement after it flooded. I have a dim memory of him standing in his garage looking around as we brought in one soaked and ruined possession after another. I felt sorry for him because the water damage was pretty substantial. I forget exactly what he said but it was something to the extent of, "it's amazing all the things we keep and store because we think we need them but really, when they're ruined, we find out we don't. I keep looking at this stuff and being amazed that nothing really important was ruined."

So I've voluntarily thrown out my half stories. They're not important, I just keep them and move them around with me because I think I need them, they make me feel like I'm productive even though they don't really prove that.

I had a good dream last night. In the middle of a bad dream, but I had a good dream none the less. In the midst of basketball teams mourning their murdered team mates and some guy who was stocking me rather overtly but I couldn't find my husband and unfinished business with high-school friends, there was a little bit of... I don't know... resolution.

It was a dream within a dream, because I was in a library in the first dream and I fell asleep while working on my homework. It was linear, which means that I was paying attention to one thing as it unfolded and I was completely unaware of any other story or plot in my other dreams while in this dream. I could hear and sense the memory of music and incense when I first woke up and, and I'm glad I remembered then because I only remember the memory of remembering now. It was sweet and clear. Unlike anything else. There was also only one person other than myself in the dream but I never saw her, I could only hear her voice and see what she wrote, although I still have the vague sense that her actual body was there, I just am not able to remember it. Besides, I was much more captured by what she was writing than what she looked like. She wrote a story, all of which I can't remember, and especially not exactly what she wrote, but it's a story I know well.

My salvation.

She started at the beginning, before the beginning, with the parts we don't know. While reading aloud as she wrote, or did she sing, or was it the same thing. She wrote it all in short understandable sentences. Everything. The what, the why, the how. Every step, every reason. From Adam to Noah to Abraham to Jacob and Issac. To David and, in the end, to Jesus. But she wasn't writing the human side. She was writing God's side. For a brief moment in my whole life, the entire reason for everything there is and everything there will be was written before me in black ink that seeped into the parchment.

But the part that made me remember, the part that made me actually get up to write it down, was the part that I carried with me back into my other dreams, the part she wrote at the end. In regards to my salvation: AFFIRMED. COMPLETED. RESOLVED. SEALED. IT IS FINISHED.

It was not until I woke up that I realized what she had written and in what form it was written in. She wrote it as a law case brief, of which I have had to read quite a few this quarter. They consist of the transgression, the defendant and plaintiffs arguments, the law, the explanation of how the law applies, and a simple statement, usually no more than a word, as to the decision of the court. Usually: affirmed or remanded (if the judgment is overturned from a low court decision). Affirmed. She actually continued writing synonymous words until I awoke from that dream back into my first dream in the library. Affirmed, from the highest court, no chance of remanding. It is finished.

Back in my first dream I looked at a friend and asked her if she ever wished she could read a book in a dream because it might say something other than just the words it shows while we're awake. She gave me a very Kati-ish 'you're out of your mind' look. Which I suppose was appropriate given what I had just said.

But then I realized that everything that had been written, every last word, was written on my forehead. It was written over the top of it's self so the only thing you could read at first glance was the verdict, how the whole verdict fit onto my forehead at the same time baffles me because she wrote a lot, but it did. For anyone with eyes to see. Which apparently wasn't anyone except some guy whom I assume was a demon in human disguise, but that's another story.

This is my story. And I am affirmed.

It is finished.

Balance

I must have a balance deficiency. Balance is not something I gave a lot of though before coming to college. I simply did what I did and did it with all that I had. I suppose I was one of those 'over-achievers' people talk about, but that's not quiet true. I was just an achiever. I never though: is this too much? am I stressed? do I have good self-esteem? I just didn't worry about it. Things always turned out and failure was sometimes inevitable but not stressed over.

Then some where between the end of my Junior year and Freshman year of college my life fell apart. I tend to blame it on the fact that I started working (outside of school). I would go to school, come home and eat, change, pack a lunch and head to work where I would stay until 11 PM, then come home and fall into bed. Thank God for study halls, they seriously saved my grades because, like the achiever I was, I was taking five Advance Placement classes (most people take two, tops). I cried all the time, alone of course. There was no sense in making a public fuss over something that was necessary. I had to go to school and I had to work so I could pay for college, there was nothing to fix so I shouldn't complain.

Unfortunately, this mood of despair lingered even into college when I wasn't working. I pushed/was pushed away from most of my friends and I didn't really bother to make new ones. I grew to detest school and I resented needing to work. I just wanted to go home. I had no close friends and I was separated from my family, whom I am fortunate enough to have very good relationships with. It was the first time I realized what it meant to be lonely. For an introverted girl who tends to do things on her own, that's saying something.

Balance. My husband, then boyfriend, was the one who put a name to my ailment. I don't think he was even talking about me at the time but he was adiment that everyone needed balance in their life. Balance between work and school, themselves and others, liberalism and conservativeness, everything. At first I though he was nuts. The world is black and white, pick your side and stay there. He insisted it was shades of gray.

I still believe it's black and white but I've learned that even black and white is complex. But that realization has opened up all sorts of things. It helped me realize that just because something is white (meaning respectable, honorable, expected, encouraged, etc.) doesn't mean you have to do everything that's white. I didn't have to be a perfect student, work a million hours a week and be 'successful' in this worlds terms. Yes, these things are all 'white' but that doesn't mean I have to do them all. I can pick.

So I picked homemaking. And funny enough, when I choose, really choose, not just wished, I found my balance. I wasn't running in a million directions any more, trying to please everyone. I had 'found' myself. Which is a phrase I used to hate, how can you find yourself? Does that mean you lost yourself. Well, yes. But I still suspect not everyone does and that most people only loose themselves because people tell them that they still haven't found themselves and they get confused. Read that twice.

But balance. It is a good lesson and a fragile one. It only takes one too many 'yeses' to the outside world for my balance to become unbalanced, for me to loose sight of what I want for my life and the life of my own family.