"Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. 'Lead us not into temptation.'" Joseph Campbell
I experienced post fail this week. I guess the closer I get to finishing up the plotting side of my book, the further my head gets from non-fiction ways, and more into fiction. That's usually what happens. I've been reading a lot instead.
But here's a thing I thought worth posting. I was just catching up on Casa Pinka's blog <-- if you click that link it will lead you to the most excellent still life Junior Makes Toast. She posted a picture of one of this artist's paintings, and I had to go look up more and share with you. Her name is Kelly Reemsten.
The Hapless Romantic
Inconspicuous
Pardon the Interruption
Flower Girl
I don't have much to say. They just reminded me of that storyline from The Hours, of the housewife who abandons her family because otherwise she would kill herself from misery. And it reminds me of Mad Men, or rather the reason I can't watch it. What a suffocating life housewifery must have been for some women--depending on the women, depending on the circumstances. Just the idea that a husband is allowed to talk to his wife's psychologist about how her therapy is going makes me mental, I have to turn the channel.
I'm not saying Housewife is a bad job, but like every job, it's not for everyone. So when you take one job and hold it up as the ideal for one sex, and hold up one way of doing it as the ideal, and you don't even give that sex the control over how to do it and the resources for doing it... man... that has the potential for major psychic pain.
I felt the same thing when I watched the historical "reality" shows Edwardian Country House and Regency House Party. I love Regency romance novels, but the reality is women's lives were so circumscribed, so narrow, that if any of us were dropped through a time machine into the 1820s we'd go mad.
I didn't blog yesterday and almost missed today! My mind is totally lost is my novel--we're getting closer to Writing Time! But I figured I must have something in draft form, and indeed I found this one from March that I was never comfortable posting. Here it is, and I've added some notes at the end.
___
I don't read political vegan blogs, cause I don't identify with a lot of vegan politics. I try not to be "purist" about any of my opinions and isms, and things can just get too heated and bordering on judgmental in parts of Veganland.
But I follow some vegan food blogs because they tend to be friendlier, more laid back places. I don't read them every day, or even every week--I just pop in once a more or so. I don't even make the recipes, lol, cause I use cookbooks. I just like to see the pictures and read stories about their cats I guess.
One of my faves--I use her cookbooks all the time, especially for desserts--was telling a nice, happy, benign little story, and used this picture as a passing illustration:
It kind of bothers me. But I don't want to say anything there. I can't think of any way to phrase my feeling without sounding hostile, or it becoming A Thing. Every popular blogger has her Followers, and they will defend her to the death. We've all witnessed it, maybe we've been part of such defenses.
I just think you can make a point about McDonald's being unhealthy without using a fat image.
____
It must have bothered me more than I realized cause I don't think I've been back since. Ugh. The fat hate--no thank-you. For more good writin's on that subject, see La Fokker, she regularly writes about it and just did a 9 part series on weight!
Around that time this cookbook author also started asking people to send her their stories about how switching over to veganism made them healthier/feel better, and she started getting into the China Diet stuff (of which there have been thorough critiques) and I just tuned out.
I'll always love her cookbooks cause she uses great ingredients, but... you know how it is... we tend to read information that will reinforce what we already believe, right? China Diet says veganism's best? Then that's the only study we'll talk about! Neal Barnard says veganism cures Diabetes? Bring it on!
Well, when it comes to a lot of my big beliefs, I consciously try not to only expose myself to What I Want to Hear. I try to read not just the idiots from The Other Side, but the best representatives, as JS Mill would have me do. And this tends to lead me awaaay from True Believers. And now I'm too extreme even for the cooking blogs! :-D Oh la. Good thing I never needed to be the cool kid.
Haley's chewing on the power couplings, I think she wants breakfast. Gotta go!
Saturday I woke up to an even higher body count on the Norway shootings, and the news of Amy Winehouse's death. I guess we feel particularly sad when someone talented dies young, maybe because they embody the lost potential of anyone who dies young. Which almost personalizes the tragedy that happened in Norway. Over an hour of teenagers being pursued and shot at. Over 80 children whose potential barely had time to show its face.
To shoot your own peers--teens killing teens, college students killing college students--makes perverse sense to me. To turn your gun on yourself at the end, because you hate yourself that much, makes perverse sense to me. For an adult to plan, maybe for years, and then gun down over 80 teenagers, and then calmly hand himself over to the police... that's a new one.
So, though we were still under The Heat Dome (it was 32C/90F), I was glad to escape the news and attend a wedding. (Or as widdershins would say "I went to a heterosexual wedding this weekend!") Of two very very sweet people. Well, I don't know the bride very well, but everyone was crying over how sweet she is, so I think it's safe to say: The wedding of two very very sweet people.
Kaftan Man
I met the groom when we were fellow managers at my last job. He is honestly one of the kindest guys I've ever met. It's not fake, and it's not cause he's Kaftan Man, ready with a Kleenex and a Self Help Talk in a Low Tone. (Though he's probably in touch with his feminine side cause his best friend--who was Best Lady at the wedding--is a woman, and he did take Women and Social Issues in college, or so we were told by our table mate: "Groom likes to say it was a Humanities course, but it was Women and Social Issues.")
But he plays video games and loves Rush and reads Stephen King and can hold a debate about which is the best Indiana Jones movie. And pervading all this everyday-GUYness is kind-a-tude. He thinks about other people, doesn't want to hurt their feelings, remembers things about them, is gentle, and will do anything for you.
Since he was apparently marrying another kind, thoughtful person, this made for a weepy wedding.
When his beautiful bride...
Disney Princess Beautiful!
...finally appeared after a pause... which the priest filled with some jokes... and we filled with some of our own jokes... she spotted Groom and started to cry. And me and my pewmate (another old work pal) started to cry. And then I looked at Groom and he was totally tearing up (Best Lady rubbed his arm. She did her own balling later when she toasted them.)
No Proof of Groom Cry pics have surfaced yet.
Me crying, pewmate crying, bride crying, groom crying. Whole damned church just falling apart--you'd think one of them had been left at the altar.
OK at weddings.
When she reached the front, the priest wiped away his tears and chastised them for making everyone cry. He's known Bride for ages, and predicted these two would marry from the first time he met Groom. The priest was at the reception as well (at the very competitive Table 4 that kept giving us a run for our money in the MC's contests!!) >:-(
Pewmate-ex-coworker and I were at the Most Excellent Fifth Table. Credit to Bride and Groom for how they worked out the table chemistry, c'ause we had a blast. There were the right number of outgoing people to keep the conversations going, if someone wanted to dance, someone would join them, and we scored The Funny Kid in the Classroom (the Women and Social Issues guy.) I was sitting next to his mother, one of the most intelligent and interesting people I've met in a long time (excluding online friends.) Basically, we were sitting at the children's table. Awesome.
Being at the children's table is not an age, it's a state of mind.
So... a teary and informal wedding ceremony, time to catch up with pewmate-ex-coworker, laughs, politics talk, a little dancing, good conversation, and happy tears. A room of 50 people, some who've lived out their potential, little ones with their lives ahead of them, many in the Amy Winehouse age-range who will hopefully be old grannies and gramps at future weddings. It was an escape from bad news, but it was the real world too. Love always exists alongside the bad. After all, losing 80 children wouldn't be a tragedy if someone didn't love them.
When I got home I had this song stuck in my head: "There is a Balm in Gilead. Not because it was played at church. Maybe it was the word balm/bomb. Maybe it was the idea of going somewhere to have your soul soothed.
Thanks again for the invite, Bride and Groom. :-) Have fun on your honeymoon!
___________
Afternote: When we bought a gift on the registry we had a choice between wood hangers or a garbage can. We chose the hangers, but decided we needed something extra. So the kittehs put together a box of toys for Bride and Groom's cat Whiskey.
Random movie I taped to practice French, and it's now one of my favorite romances ever. It's rare to find an older woman - younger man romance that ends happily. It's SO funny! Unreservedly feel good. Leaves you feeling exactly how you want to feel after a rom com: Cheering!
It's about a 52 year old social worker who's husband has just died. He was sick for awhile and she nursed him herself, but at the very end he admitted he'd been having a long affair. After he dies a 20 year old man shows up who--unbeknownst to her--has been in love with her since she was his case worker years ago, when he tried to commit suicide.
She tries dating some tepid and rather selfish men her age, and you know that for years she's been taking care of everyone else, and hasn't had any sex, so when she finally succumbs to this man for whom she's the center of the universe... she falls hard. Which is why the fall--The Shower Scene--is woah. Like ... woah. And that's without anymore nudity than showing you his bum.
Then you add in his hilarious buddies, and her funny (adult) kids, the charming script, the mean coworker, and the family secret, and I was LOL-ing all over my sofa.
Directed by the great actress Sophie Lorain, from Fortier.
I hope you guys get the chance to catch it one day. It's a nice bit of fantasy. Perfect for a heat wave. Um dome.
If you think you'll never catch it and you really just wanna see Le Hot Sex Scene... in this video you can see it, and the important scene before. In the scene before he gets dressed in a suit at the place where he volunteers--where they take in donated clothes. He brings her this bouquet of flowers (totally stolen of course), and she's coming back from a very stupid date, so she's intrigued/unsure/flattered, but she asked him: Why are you in my husband's suit? And then they realize... it's because her dead husband's clothes were brought to the center where he volunteers. She can't help laughing her ass off, and he's humiliated and rides off. (And he has her watch. Cause he's always stealing shit.)
She goes by the center to see him, but he's not there. She almost waits around for him, but she still feels stupid chasing after a guy 30 years younger, so she just leaves a message with someone and goes.
The next scene is the scene where she's watering her lawn. So it's a great contrast from the last one where he's the supplicant, the suitor, fully dressed, in her dead husband's suit, trying to seem older, proper, and becomes she unmans him, strips him of what little power he holds --> to this, the shower scene. Where he's literally stripped, but completely powerful. Shiver me timbers! That's good writing my friends.
(Look how big Minion's gotten. Cause she gets into as much food as she can!)
Look at those wild eyes...
TRUBBLE
Came home today and found this.
"Ohh. What happened to Mr Peanut?"
"Like you don't know."
"Wha? Wha?"
You see the cereal on the top row? Minion likes to hang around on the top row of my pantry shelves and one night this week I heard "Ooh cereal!" and promptly heard her breaking into the Corn Flakes. I tried placing the boxes on their sides.
Later I heard a noise in a kitchen and found the Corn Flakes on the floor and Minion digging in.
I don't really know how she did it.
You see the yellow bag under the cereal? It's flour.
I went back to the livingroom and soon after heard a soft BOOM.
"Nom nom nom."
Sherry-cat used to like baked goods, but he never figured out how to go straight to the source.
After I confiscated the flour I found her chewing on this cleaning pad.
Ahhhhhhh!!!
By the time she wanted to wrestle the paper towels again, I was happy to hand them to her.
TOYS
And so we buy more toys.
Which she destroys beyond recognition.
She brings this, asks me to throw it.
Throw it? I don't even want to touch it.
Pink dye from feathers she was sucking on.
"Oh sigh. I am Le Bored."
I found tunnels at the dollar store, made her a 2nd one!
Tied them together for a super tunnel!
She ran up and down it until she made panty-face. Oops! Forgot it's 35 degrees.
HALEY
Why so smug looking?
(Sitting on your crazy box tower. It has a plastic lining because she has a small tummy and gets hairballs a lot and barfed on her tower this week. Bleh! And yet, still the smugatude.)
Because she's starting to stand up to Minion.
When I empty a can of food I let one them lick it. I try to have two cans going, and empty two at the same time so they can have one each. Or I lock up Minion for awhile and let Haley have a go, and then let Minion out--because otherwise Minion dominates the can.
But that morning I fed Haley and left empty can #1 by her, while I brought a different can, and Minion, to the bedroom. Then I put the still-full can #2 in the fridge and went to brush my teeth. When I returned, Haley was successfully guarding empty can #1 from Minion! She was dipping her paws into it, daintily licking the food off her paws, and sending Minion the occasional hiss.
But why was Minion respecting the his?? I don't know. This is about the third time I've seen Haley either defend a moth she's killed, or even ONCE a place she wanted to sit. Amazing. There's hope for Peace in the Meowee East. Gives me hope for the Middle East.
