Deviant Dispatches

Source The next four years will be hard for this country. Our rights will be hacked at with ice picks, machetes, toothpicks that introduce cracks in the foundation. It is Day 1 and the White House's climate change webpage has already disappeared , along with the LGBT , civil rights , and ACA pages. Trouble is not brewing; trouble is here. So what can we do about it? Groundwork has some great starting points on their site, and I listed a few details more below. Artist Haley Gilmore Educate yourself . What issues matter to you? Learn about them. What issues matter to others? Learn, and then fight for those too. " A healthy society is one in which those at the center scream in agony when those furthest away are cut." Make calls . Phone calls are the most effective method of contacting elected officials. Set an alarm on your phone to remind you to call on a regular basis. Keep your senators' contact info  bookmarked (or on speed dial) so you don...

Yesterday was weird, so while we were at the dealership getting an oil change, I also had a manicure. The day was weird because we bought a house. It's south of Madison. We only saw it for the first time on Sunday, and within a couple hours, we put an offer on it. (It's that kind of market right now.) Three bedrooms, wood floors, and lots of potential. I'd love to share more about it right now, except that hey, we just bought a house. So there's work to be done, and I'll share updates as I can.

Source My apologies at this extended hiatus, and at the general lack of blogginess in the last few weeks. I've had some kind of awful bug that started with a hoarse voice, interimed with a cold, and seems to have settled on an unconsolable sore throat. Today features yet another doctor's visit so that I can do little things like eat oatmeal  without getting a lecture from my tonsils against ingesting things that feel like this. Source See you soon, I hope.

Yesterday evening, after my second day in a row of writing absolutely nothing (which hasn't happened in many moons), I was so befuddled that I put a can of whipped cream in the freezer, then promptly forgot I'd done so and blamed it on Spousal Unit. Before bed, I made the mistake of asking him to open and pay his credit card bill so I could send the check in the morning. Turns out our last payment never made it to them - I have never  lost a check in the mail, so naturally, we have no record of it ever existing aside from a skipped number in our bank statement. Stress like that is a bad thing to have before bed. I had just made a cup of tea, and it stayed in the kitchen, full, all night. This came after a surprisingly jubilant afternoon and, combined with the unusual heat, made for a tossing-and-turning night. This is probably part of why I started singing Sleigh Ride in the shower this morning. It's going to be a weird day. Which is why I gave myself two little heaps...

Well, I finally did it: I finished knitting The Sweater That the Universe Denied. It has a front, a back, and two far-longer-than-necessary sleeves. You may notice the look of terror on my face. I was afraid this was also possibly a pre-mortem shot.  The next step was to cut the sleeves, by crocheting stays into place. One tutorial suggested sewing by hand - but this yarn is so piece-y that I worried it wouldn't stay in place. I found another tutorial that suggested a crocheted steek, which sounded perfect. I added my steeks, and carefully snipped one stitch at a time. It went perfectly, and I'd begun to stitch the cuffs when the cat nabbed a loose strand of yarn: the one for the steek. It was almost entirely ripped out. "Did you expect finishing TSTUD to go smoothly?" Spousal Unit asked. (He has a point.) The evil little culprit.  I pulled out some heavy-duty quilting thread, doubled it over, and did a kind of paranoid back stitch/whip s...

*Spousal Unit works at a medical supply company. He sent this letter last week to the woman who orders company supplies. He really did.* Hi Michelle, I had a question about the pens that we have. Well, it's really more of an issue. You see, earlier today, I took a pen out of the supply closet for use on an Official Document. This document was not time sensitive, though it could very well have been. I could have had need to write a note on an important certificate for a doctor's signature, or I could have needed a pen to correct an authorization request to Medicaid. What if the patient's house had been on fire and I needed to sign an attestation in order for Medicare to cover replacement equipment, but the patient was cold, hungry, and without their medical equipment until I could do so? I hope I've impressed upon you the gravity of this situation. So I took a pen from the supply closet for use on an Official Document. At this point, I'd like to refer you to ...

Last time, on Deviant Dispatches... A young woman on the move. An apartment hungry for bat-like affection. And possibly a secret passage... And now, the stunning conclusion. The Batcave is pretty cool. Thanks to some incredible sidekicks (a.k.a. moving helpers), we already have a passable living room and bathroom. The bedroom's even in tolerable shape, and the kitchen was assembled enough for Spousal Unit to make some gourmet spaghetti last night. There is little to no highway traffic noise, the neighbors have been friendly, and the only loss in the move was a bottle of cayenne pepper sauce whose head wasn't screwed on very tightly. (It went on a murderous rage, dousing everything in its path with spicy vengeance. Luckily, it was in a plastic bag and no one was hurt in the assault.) This place will be awesome once I get used to it. But the one thing I cannot and will not tolerate is the basement. I will never go down there alone. Here I am, unable to go down there to sn...

Progress is being made toward our move. I can prove it. See? The thing is, despite the huge number of boxes and furniture lining the walls, waiting for someone to pick it up and say, " I will love it and squeeze it and name it George ," I still feel like we're behind. Truth is, we're probably not. Last night, Spousal Unit and I counted out Q-tips and underwear, t-shirts and hair ties. Various bathroom monkeys jumped into boxes, and some beloved Packers gear followed - a treat to be discovered once victory is complete. But there's still the kitchen. And the closet. Hopefully, they won't be so bad. We've already packed certain extraneous items, and the diabolical closet plan is to just throw everything in a giant box and hope they don't all need ironing in the end. My biggest nightmare right now would be to start packing kitchen gear and discover a 20-piece set of wine glasses that haven't been packed yet, and still need to be loving...

All the physical therapy I've been doing this summer has at least marginally paid off: I've gone for three runs in the last week and a half. Okay, that statement is kind of misleading. When I say "runs," I mean "10 minute bouts of exercise featuring alternating walking and running." Which is still more than I've done in far too long. And the most excellent part of this? No back pain immediately after! Unfortunately, I am still getting teh painz of DOOM - they just happen when I've been lifting things. Like books. Oh wait - that's my job. Awesome. One of the more delightful moments in PT happened this morning, when the therapist was examining my spine. "Well, that's interesting," he said suddenly. (That's the phrase that's second most likely to mean something bad, directly behind "Whoops!" You don't want to hear either of these from your doctor, dentist, or waiter.) Luckily, the items causing the ...

I had a pretty terrible Friday. Almost immediately that morning, I lost all faith in humanity - I really hate starting my days like that.  It began small, with a realization (while perusing Facebook) what a propensity mankind has toward selfishness and ignoring the plights of others, and everything snowballed from there. The lowest point was probably when I looked up the New York Times and found an incredibly inappropriate and graphic picture from the Empire State Building shooting. On top of all that, I was working all day, and dealing with the masses when already in a low place doesn't usually help bring you up. Yep. I felt like that. Luckily, things really turned around over the weekend, despite my slaving away unpacking textbooks all weekend. (In a way, unpacking 35 boxes by myself on Saturday helped - noticeable progress was made, I interacted with relatively few customers, and I got a good workout.)  When I came home from work on Saturday, Spousal Unit...

Last night, I tried to make falafel. I had a new recipe I wanted to try, one that eagerly proclaimed, "Falafel didn't have binding agents back in the day, so you don't need any now! Follow our directions and you will be amazed at how utterly disappointed you can get!" I'd really been hoping to have a nice dinner ready for Spousal Unit and I - it's fun to take full advantage of my days off and make something a bit more involved than usual. Along with the falafel, I had lots of CSA beets waiting to be nommed, so I decided on creamy mashed beets. Yes, beets and falafel don't really make a full dinner, but I started later than I wanted to, it was the only idea I had, and I was counting on Spousal Unit being full-ish from the work pizza party. So it was okay to make such an odd combo. As you might guess, after processing the falafel ingredients and heating a pan full of oil, four falafel balls fell to disgusting, chunky pieces before my eyes. Now I had a ...

This morning, I head to the Dentist of Doom to get two fillings. I'm not too concerned about the dentist himself; he speaks like an evening jazz DJ, calming and reassuring. It's the assistants that kind of have me worried. When I went for a cleaning a few weeks ago, one of them flossed me like she was wielding a giant chainsaw. I'm nervous in general because I've never had fillings before. (This is what comes of not having been to the dentist in three years. Huzzah for finally having insurance.) I hear that fillings aren't supposed  to hurt, but I've also heard that they can go badly. I had my wisdom teeth pulled in high school, one of which decided at the last moment that I was its best friend in all the world and we were inseparable. It took a dozen shots of novocaine and my former dentist's foot braced against my jaw to pull it out. The new dentist had me fill out a three-page form, one question being about negative dental experiences, which I descr...

 For quite some time, I've wanted to make myself a black shawl. I have lots of shawls in many different colors: blue, purple, orange, tan, grey, and green. But none of those shawls can be worn with everything in my wardrobe. I wanted to make something more versatile - and lighter weight, so I could wear it in this ridiculous weather that we are calling "summer" instead of "hell on Earth," for some reason. That meant making lace. I love it more every time I make it. I made the pattern Summer Flies by Donna Griffin (click pictures for more detail). It's done on size 8 needles and works up really  fast - I started this pattern at the beginning of the month, and I had plenty of time to work on some other projects in between, too. This is the first curving shawl I've made, too - all the others are rectangles or triangles.  By the end, there were 400 stitches per row, but that was the only somewhat boring part of this pattern. Throw on some ...

I am incredibly cranky this morning, and I'm pretty much never  cranky when I wake up. Maybe it was Spousal Unit's NPR, waking me up 45 minutes before I like to get out of bed. Maybe it was the downstairs neighbor's bathroom fan, which is broken and rattles like a herd of elephants stampeding during an earthquake, and is always turned on in that morning moment when you're half awake and trying to go back to sleep. Maybe it's the low-grade headache I've had since then, which, if it doesn't go away soon, will likely get worse. Maybe it's having to work my third closing shift in this week when I only have one day off, meaning I get a total of two hours with Spousal Unit tonight before bedtime - and no dinner with him. Maybe it's knowing I have to work all weekend, too. Whatever the reason, I'm in the mood to pillage, burn, and kick flowers today. I should probably fix that before I go to work, or before 5:00 I'll be muttering about a stapler...

Once upon a time, toward the end of my time as a grocery store supervisor, one of my coworkers asked me out. We'll call him Carl. He was fairly new at the store, and a true farm boy. He was nice, and often had funny things to say. I enjoyed talking to him during down times at work. At a certain point, I realized he had a crush on me, but there was nothing I could do about that; I just tried not to say or do anything that he might misconstrue as romantic interest on my part. I didn't want to date him. Unfortunately, he didn't pick up on that. He asked me out, and I asked for some time to think about it. That may sound cruel, considering that I was just going to say no to him. But it was a delicate situation. I was about six years younger than him, and his supervisor. Regardless of what I said to him, we would have to keep working together. So I wanted to come up with a gentle way of saying I wasn't into him. After asking for some time, Carl and I had a convers...

Dear Writer's Block, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more obnoxious and more idiotic. You are not the bread and the knife, because I am the one wielding the knife, shaking it in your face in hopes that you will be frightened off by my mad antics. You are not the crystal goblet, nor the wine, which I imbibe in hopes of shaking loose some thread of creativity from your evil clutches. I often think the wine has done its bidding, only to wake up the next morning with the ache of a thousand puns raging in my skull. On my desk is a page full of words not even Dan Brown would publish. I do not love thee, Writer's Block, to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, because my soul does not extend to all four corners of the earth with a murky, hopeless darkness; only you are so special. I shall not love thee better after death, even though you (being the devil's most wicked torture) will not follow me to heaven. Freedom and rights have nothing to...

This customer I'm about to describe to you was real. (Presumably, she's still real, but no longer a customer.) I have not made any of this up. As my friend Nan says, "You can't make this shit up." At the bookstore yesterday, we had an event, during which we turned off the store music and spoke quietly so as not to interrupt or disturb the authors as they spoke. Some people are just oblivious to these clues; this customer was one of them. I dub her Oblivia. She wasn't shouting, but she definitely spoke much louder than most people I know, and she was one of those who just liked to talk. Sometimes, customers don't like to ask for suggestions, for whatever reason. Instead, they just start telling you everything about themselves, and everything they've ever read, hoping you'll pick up on the clues with your incredible mind-reading abilities. Sometimes it works, but customers, please understand: we are not psychics. Most of us don't even want...

I hate shoe shopping. In that, I'm rather unlike many of my friends. I don't care to have a lot of cute shoes, so long as they don't make me want to die when I wear them. I hate having to go out into the wild world of department stores and boxes of misery and people trying to clothe their feet (which are the second worst thing; armpits are the first). But sometimes it's a necessity. All I need is a good pair of walking shoes, so I can get to work without totally destroying my back. Here's what I found instead yesterday. Kohl's (slogan: now that's more like shit) is a nightmare to shop. I had to work for them in college; why would I have thought otherwise? Yes, sometimes they have good sales. But is it worth trading your eternal soul for? Their aisles are a claustrophobic nightmare, like walking into a cave that gets deeper and darker, and who knows if you'll ever see the light of day again, and here comes a giant Indiana-Jones boulder, so your only...

*This post has way more information about my internal organs than you may be comfortable with. Also, there's some crazy in it. Be warned.* A couple of weeks ago, I'd convinced myself that I either had cancer or a misplaced appendix. Not misplaced like, oh no, where did I leave my appendix, it was just here a second ago. Misplaced as in, possibly in the wrong spot on my body. It happened to someone I know, and my left side has felt like an angry cat is trying to claw its way out for a long time. The reason I thought it could be my appendix, after such a long time of hurt, is that an appendix can, apparently,  seal itself over before getting its toxins all up in your hizzy. Again, this happened to someone I know. So, hey, it could be both on the wrong side of my body and sealed over at the same time. Not the most likely scenario, but still possible. This pain, as I said, has been happening for a while, but only recently could I do anything about it, as we had insurance ...

Around Christmas, Spousal Unit tried to get me a book. I knew nothing about it, other than it was brand new and somehow, he'd heard of it and thought of me. I usually stay pretty aware of the awesome new books out in the world, and somehow, I had no idea what this one could be. I was especially confused when Spousal Unit said the bookstore couldn't get it - the distributors were all out of stock. What could be so unexpectedly terrific that everyone wanted it for Christmas? Finally, the book came in last week. It turned out to be what's regarded as the best Japanese science fiction novel ever written: 10 Thousand Days and 100 Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse. Spousal Unit heard about it on NPR . Intriguing from the start, especially because that swirl on the cover is both a galaxy and  a fingerprint. (It gets better: the cover glows in the dark. Insert squeal of delight.) The first couple of chapters are kind of slow-going. The book starts at the beginning of time, f...