The 70 Things to Do Before I Turn 70 List

1. See the Redwoods in person (new)

2. See the Pacific Ocean (new)

3. Learn to surf – or at least paddle out into it and pretend. (new)

4. See the rest of the Grand Canyon

5. Learn to play World of Warcraft (new)

6. Buy a lottery ticket all by myself (new)

7. Be a bit part actor in a movie other than “Logan’s Run”

8. Pimp out the 15 novels I’ve written (new)

9. Go back to the East Coast and this time see the Atlantic Ocean (and visit that Thai restaurant again for more Kra Tong Thong)

10. Buy a Zoo Pass and visit every Zoo and Museum to which it gives entry

11. Build a Robot

12. Make and scatter fairy houses all through the country

13. Produce a Movie

14. Do some “Bouldering”

15. Play Paintball

16. Organize all my photographs

17. Organize all my books (not just catalogue them, which has actually already been done)

18. Acquire and learn to play a variety of German Boardgames, like Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne.

19. Plant the dwarf orchard I keep talking about

20. Go to Burning Man (new)

21. Go to Pennsic (new)

22. Learn more about thanatochemistry

23. Build my own wood-fired outdoor bread oven

24. Enter some of my artwork in an art festival or competition

25. Camp out in the Ozarks and the Rockies

26. Install a woodburning fireplace in the library

27. Get WindSpirits started and active outside of myself and handful of others

28. Buy a miter saw so I can get all my art properly framed (and maybe a router?)

29. Build an edible garden labyrinth in back, using my gazebo as the focal point

30. Learn ASL well enough to actually use it, and not just say snarky things in it

31. Learn more than very basic plumbing so I don’t have to pay those price gougers anymore ($4,000 and counting on plumbing work since I bought this house)

32. Learn more than very basic house wiring so I can re-wire the house

33. Actually draft the design for those shelves and build them in the library

34. Spend time visiting long distance friends – a week or so with each.

35. Install a tankless hot water heater

36. Build up the data bases I’ve started on disaster preparedness, locavorism, and sustainable living (I started this after I turned 60, so I won’t count it as “old”)

37. Learn self-promotional skills (or befriend someone willing to barter promoting my skills for the fruits of those skills) and build up a demand for my lectures and classes

38. Find an apprentice willing to learn my herbal knowledge and carry it on (must live near me or be willing to relocate to be close by – might be able to live with me in a year or two, once I have things better organized)

39. Sort library and discard unused books via craigslist/freecycle/garage sale

40. Take a class on building a cobb house

41. Wake up my sourdough cultures and start baking with them again.

42. Open my “herb bar” (or Gargoyle’s Roost) (See posts about these dream businesses of mine)

43. Make gifts for assorted friends

44. Spend more time wild-crafting nature materials for making gifts

45. Learn more than the basics of Hawaiian dancing

46. If WindSpirits doesn’t catch on, maybe go back to the SCA (I don’t think they want me, but eh, I liked it well enough)

47. Finish the bathroom – put in a new floor and side to the bathtub, get the new lavatory installed, paint, repaint the fairy door to match the new decor.

48. Remodel my kitchen/living room – make them one large room with a breakfast/wet bar-type island dividing the rooms

49. Finish landscaping the front yard with edible plants – mostly herbs and edible flowers.

50. Install a roof over the patio

51. Haul all of Beaners’ car parts and mechanical bits to a scrap yard (or hold a garage sale to get rid of them). He wants me to keep the three engines and the axle, and possibly one of the bicycles, but the rest goes

52. Repair the stairs into the attic so I can safely get up there again.

53. Put everything stored in the attic into mouse-proof containers (I’ll probably have to wash a few things as well)

54. Install a storage bench on the front porch, with a trellis behind to block the hot evening sun.

55. Geocache outside of Oklahoma

56. Become the Crazy Hat Lady (much better name than Lady of the Weird Accidents that the ER calls me)

57. Actually do more than plan to host a Bacchanalia – just do it. If no one comes, I’ll still have fun.

58. Build a permanent place for my brewing and distillation gear (maybe when I enlarge the laundryroom?)

59. Contact the citizens of my micronation and do something more with it than an emailing list I’ve practiclly abandoned

60. If there isn’t a Terry Pratchett’s DiscWorld Fresh Start Club, create one for doing cool Halloween parties and things. (There’s a filk that could be used as the anthem.) I know I’m not dead, but I am very old.

61. Finish the book on Eldering Numenously that Bacca and I started before she died.

62. Write a WindSpirits Play Manual and Rewards Book – call it “Pearls and Patches”?

63. Due to the ice storm, repair the gazebo by buying new screws and some really good metal glue – and sew a new canvas roof for it.

64. Sew some nice Rennie costumes for myself

65. Get a laptop with WiFi

66. Burn all my digital photos to disc – by category

67. Become a Food Writer columnist

68. Organize all my papers into real file folders and cabinets (or the trash), as appropriate

69 Update my funeral plans and make sure they are current and the people doing assorted things are still alive to do them

70. Retire from my current job? If I don’t retire, write the 80 Things to do Before I Turn 80 list.

Harder Than I Thought

Coming up with 70 new things to do before I turn 70 is much harder than I thought.

People, pace yourselves when you’re younger so you don’t reach my dilemma when you’re older. Don’t try to do it all as soon as possible. That lesson I mentioned about going through life too fast or it will all be a blur? That’s personal experience speaking. Don’t be like me. Take it slower. Spread it out more.

I can’t think of a single arts or crafts category I haven’t done, nor any type of dance I haven’t tried, nor any instrument I haven’t attempted to play, nor sport or extreme sport I haven’t done (and broken the bones to prove it – don’t, I beg of you, try tandem skateboarding when there’s still ice on the ground!), nor bizarre injury sustained doing reasonably normal activities (how many people do you know who had a duck stuck in their thigh when they were just hunting a fox den to rescue baby foxes? The ER knows me as That Lady of the Weird Accidents). There’s not a food I haven’t eaten – or cooked. There’s not a subject where I can’t at least pretend to understand what’s being said because I’ve dabbled in it all. I have an extremely high need for cognition, and an insatiable desire for new knowledge. That all knowledge is useful lesson I mentioned? Again, personal experience. You never know when some snippet of information will come in handy or what will happen when two disparate pieces of information join up to form a really interesting alliance.

I have shed the need to own every book I’ve ever read – and I thank all the Gods and Numena that have ever existed, exist, or will ever exist for that loss. I have over 10,000 volumes right now, and more would be superfluous.

Oh! I could add that to my 70 Things To Do List! Pare down my library to the esential books – the ones I truly must have. I may be building up to one humongous garage sale/craigslist listing/freecycle listing.

70 Before 70

Thanks to zoethe, my 60 Lessons in 60 Years morphed into 50 Things To Do Before She Turns 50 (and an interesting list it is).

And, unable to resist a challenge, I’ve decided to emulate her and try to think of 70 things I’d like to do before I turn 70.

I have 8 years to accomplish this, so I think it should be challenging. Even more, I’d like it to be 70 things I haven’t done before. Considering how action packed my previous 60 years have been, that’s where the true challenge lies. 70 new things to do before I turn 70.

This is going to require some thought. And I wouldn’t mind a few suggestions, if anyone has any.

Shedding and Gaining

A meme presented by sunfell.

Instead of doing New Year’s Resolutions, list what you are shedding and what you are starting.

I’ll add, “what are you keeping” to that list.

Shedding

I don’t think I’m shedding anything this year. I’ve pretty much pruned a lot of things out of my life already over the years. I might shed my volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity in favor of something else. Lately, there seems to be far too many bodies at the Habitat homes, and we get in one another’s way. If there are plenty of people there to do the work, I won’t be missed.

Keeping

There’s a lot I intend to keep.

Religion – Not just Numenism, although that is the bulk of what I mean. I am a Numenist Elder. Since Bacca died late last year, I am the only active Elder left in Numenism. All of our Founding Members are dead now. There are a few other Elders, but they are either unable physically to do Eldering work, or their path within Numenism isn’t one that actively engages others outside of Numenism and their House. I will finish Bacca’s final project – the book on Eldering Numenously we started just months before she died. I have a couple of other slender books underway for Numenists – a book on celebrations, one for running a House, and one with children’s activities in it.

Volunteer work – I plan to keep on doing my Sandwich Saturdays. I was able to feed just over 2,000 different people last year. I think that’s a comfortable number for one person. I will continue to work with the search and rescue group. Last year was a slow year. We didn’t have any major disasters that required our services the whole year. I will continue to offer the classes on urban survival, locavorism, and disaster preparedness.

Podacst – I plan to keep my podcast. I’ve made 38 ‘casts so far, and even though I don’t have a lot of listeners, I like doing it. So I will.

Gardening – I plan to expand my gardening. Eventually, I want the entire landscape to be edible or medicinal. I have a good start with the small herb garden and the veggies tucked here and there. I will be using the square foot gardening technique, but more as a grid, than as actual square feet, because I want to make a veggie labyrinth in the back yard.

National Day of Prayer – I will once again do the NDP for non-Christians who want to participate. We will gather on the south capitol steps for a brief ritual and a few words, then retire to a nearby park for a potluck.

Supervising my Elected Employees – I will continue to write my elected employees, will continue to speak up about important issues like abortion, imminent domain, freedom of speech, torture, poverty, feeding the hungry, disaster preparedness, and locavorism, among other things.

NaNoWriMo – I plan to do this again. I like the people I meet during it, and I like the community that developes during it. Writing is not the point, for me. If I push, I can write 2 or 3 novels during that time, and I write all year long. Not just blogging. Blogging is the teensiest tip of my writing iceberg.

SF Conventions – I will do ConEstoga and SoonerCon again this year. SoonerCon, I’m the Guest Liaison and in charge of the Green Room. This makes me very happy. I do hope SoonerCon shifts away a bit from being almost exclusively a comic con, and branches out to more literary areas, but I’m cool if it doesn’t.

Starting

Food onna Stick Book – I plan to write this cookbook this year – and take photos of the dishes I make. I may or may not blog about it.

WoodSpirits – I’d like to actively pursue this. I love the idea of having an awards-based adult camping and craft organization. I know lots of adults would like it, too, because when I lead youth groups, the adults always take over the craft things from the kids, and I have to be very stern in making them let the children make things. As adults, we have more resources, and I don’t see why it’s so hard to recruit adults to this. This year, that’s what I want to do. I want to recruit other adults to play with me in a nature-oriented, awards-based, craft-making, camping club. Are you game?

I’ll have to revisit this later and see what I left out or forgot.

Soy Rumor

Do y’all remember a year ago, when I jokingly said we could reduce the amount of soy infiltrating our foods if we would just spread the word that soy made people gay?

It was a joke, and I mentioned it only because soy has been creeping into foods that shouldn’t have soy in it, simply because it’s cheap.

Well, apparently some people have picked up on the joke and believe it’s serious. Not that I’d take this particular news source too terribly seriously, but still. That the joke has sprea that far is kind of – interesting

If that means food manufacturers (and isn’t that a scary thought – that food is “manufactured” and not “cooked” or “prepared”) will stop putting it everything (like peanut butter), I guess I can live with it.

edited to add I posted about spreading a rumor that soy makes people gay on July 24, 2005.

Holiday Meme

Ganked from sunfell, just because.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Both, plus hot tea, chai, mulled cider, mulled wines, mulled cranberry juice, grog, Santa Caws coffee, and warm flavored milks, like rose milk, vanilla milk, aniseed and cardamom milk.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa comes by on December 12th for cookies and warm milk and a long cozy chat. Santa and I don’t do gifts, we have an Understanding. The visit is always nice, though.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
No tree at all. No decorations other than splatters of cookie dough, icing, dragees, and sprinkles all over my poor kitchen.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
Yes, among all my other hanging herbs, so I make one killer heart medication with it. Ummmm – maybe “killer” was the wrong word to use. Mistletoe is good for certain kinds of heart problems, and that’s what I use it for – to heal those problems.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
I don’t have any seasonal decorations to put up. However, I do have seasonal tools I use. By mid-December, I’ll be hauling out the distillation gear for the making of salves, lotions, ointments, and healing syrups. I’ll also be setting out the sewing and crafting supplies because winter is the best time to sit around warmly indoors to make things. My embroidery stand will be out, and visitors better look before they sit, or they might get knitting needles poking unwelcome places. Half-finished projects will be littering most of the horizontal surfaces or poking out of boxes.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Stuffed Soup.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
All the villagers gathered in the streets, dancing to the oompah band, clanking steins of beer and singing loudly, huge decorated lebkuchens, tables laden with piles and piles of festive cookies, and wandering from table to table with my very own basket to fill with all the cookies I wanted, knowing that a pile of the cookies on the table by my door were baked by me, and would be enjoyed by my neighbors. I love Cookie Day – it’s the best holiday in the whole world. The skin-pebbling cold, with the first snow piled in the shadows, frosted breath rising from everyone’s mouths in the flickering gas lights set around the town square and lining the streets, the deep laughter of the adults and the shrill shrieks of children allowed up way past their bedtime, the sound of clogs on cobblestones, the angry squawks of the geese, the comfortable grunting of the pigs skirling out of the opened wooden shutters of their indoor sties, the smell of smoke wafting from chimneys and everything overlaid with the rich smells of cinnamon and cloves, ginger and cardamom, oranges and lemons, and underpinned by the yeasty smells of new ales and the sourer smells of people who’ve over-indulged in the gutters. Every year, it was so wonderfully the same, with the same people, and I loved every minute of it.

OK, I’ll be honest here. I regret that I was never old enough to sit with the adults and dunk cookies into steaming cups of coffee. I did get old enough to bake cookies to share and to sit with them, but I had to have ale or beer instead of coffee. My grandparents were convinced coffee would stunt my growth, but beer and ale were full of good grains and would strengthen my bones and add inches to my height. Even at 19, when I left Germany, I wasn’t quite 5 feet tall, and weighed less than 80 pounds. Coffee is still a guilty pleasure for me becaue I didn’t get my first cup until I was 42 years old – after my youngest was born, because I finally crossed the threshhold my grandparents had set – and that only because I had cancer and it affected my pituitary gland so I grew 5 inches and packed on a few pounds.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I wonder if the writer of this meme even knows the real truth of Santa Claus? In Germany, at least in our little village, everyone knew Santa Claus was the King of the Gnomes. Gnomes, as we all know, are protectors of things that grow: crops, gardens, forests, meadows, and the beasts of forest and stream, and even of humans. Humans have a favored spot among the guardianship of the gnomes, because like the gnomes, we, too grow crops and care for animals. The gnomes do what they can to help those who display even the least desire to have a garden or to care for critters. They are even more eager to help when they are paid for their work through bowls of porridge with big pats of fresh butter melting in the middle, or with small mugs of cream. They’ll gladly stop by to share a meal when invited. The King of the Gnomes is the most generous gnome of all, and s/he will leave gifts just because s/he feels like it to those who have tried hard to do well by the land and the beasts. Gnomes are displeased by selfish behavior, by cruelty, by rudeness, and will punish those who display such chracteristics by ignoring them at best, and using corporal punishment of various sorts at worst.

Because so many people behave in ways displeasing to the gnomes, they’ve withdrawn from much of the world. Fewer still set out the proper invitations to the gnomes, so Santa Claus’s real work has become less and less burdensome over the centuries. The people visited by the real Santa Cluas number so few, it’s easy enough for him to visit everyone for whom he wishes to leave a gift – and s/he doesn’t do it all in one night. My time happens to be an hour on December 12th. Santa Claus doesn’t draw up lists of people for whom s/he will give gifts and punishments (that “naughty or nice” list is truly a made up thing). S/he gives gifts on a whim, because s/he wants to, to humans s/he has befriended. If you’re not a friend of a gnome, you likely won’t be visited by Santa Claus – ever. And you definitely won’t be gifted by one.

As for the rest of the world – they want so much to believe that Santa Claus will visit them they attempt to emulate him/her as much as a human can. That’s why they wear solid colored suits with wide belts and workman’s boots just like the gnomes do. They didn’t get the hat right, though, it should be conical and stand up tall and pointy. The hat is red, but the rest of the clothes can be any color. Only humans would think to color co-ordinate the hat with the rest of the clothes.

Humans tell children to be nice or Santa won’t bring them any gifts as a way of controlling the children’s behavior. The problem here is that it isn’t the real Santa Claus bringing the gifts, it’s humans, and it depends entirely upon the humans the children know as to what gifts they receive (if any), and it depends upon human judgement as to whether the child has behaved well enough to receive gifts. Wealthy parents are more likely to shower even undeserving children with gifts, and poor parents are forced to deprive even their most deserving offspring of even the smallest gift. This makes mean children smug and good children hurt. I think it’s a cruel and vicious thing those who celebrate Christmas do to their children and wish they’d stop it.

Humans have built up a huge false myth about Santa Claus, to the detriment of people everywhere.

To be visited by a real Santa Claus, you have to befriend a real gnome. Everything else is just people giving gifts to people under a disguise.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
No, we don’t limit gift giving to just one day a year. There is no special day (other than birthdays) where we expect gifts – either to give or receive. We’re more likely to be feeding people than worrying about getting gifts.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
We don’t put up a Christmas Tree.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
I like looking at snow and playing in it, but as an adult, I dread it. I have to go out in it to work, and like rain after a long drought, people drive stupidly in it, making my life much more stressful than it should be even when I’m walking. Where I work doesn’t get snow days, so even if the whole city is theoretically closed due to snow conditions, I still have to go to work.

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes! I used to be a champion figure skater when I was much, much younger. I still have my last pair of ice skates from when I left Germany, a parting gift from a dear friend. It’s a good thing, too, because apparently Americans don’t make ice skates in my size.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
A case of mixed blank papers, scrap from a print shop. I got it for my birthday one year. Best. Gift. Ever!

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
December 12th – Cookie Day!

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Ah, now I see why the (excepting dessert) was placed at Question 6. I like all sorts of baked goods: cookies, cakes, pies, rolls, sweet breads, nut breads, fruit breads, tarts, and pastries, as well as puddings, trifles, gelatins, ambrosias, rice puddings, Indian puddings, compotes, chocolates, spun sugars, and sweets of all sorts.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Eating and visiting with friends – that’s what we do for every single holiday.

17. What tops your tree?
I don’t put up a tree, so – nothing.

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
Both have their pros and cons. But we don’t limit it to one frenzied day of the year.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
I don’t know any of them very well at all, but I prefer the snarky ones, like what you’d hear on Dr. Demento.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
I like peppermint, and don’t really care if they come in canes, sticks, pillows, ribbons, lozenges, or chocolate. The sticks and canes are good for stirrung hot cocoa, coffee, milk, or teas with. Any of them do well in baked goods. I guess it would have to be “yum”.

Meme

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
Cookies. Need more be said?

2. What’s your current relationship status?
Complicated, expansive

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
Not in the “light at the end of the tunnel” sense, but I’ve faced several different sorts of death, from violent to tedious, and each one has changed me.

4. Name an obvious quality you have?
Old, opinionated.

5. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck in your head right now?
“Ben” by Michael Jackson, followed by “Gaudete”

6. Any celeb you would marry?
I’m not hte marrying kind, and all the ones I’d like to seduce are young enough to be my grandchildren (which, let me tell you, was a shocker when I actually looked at their ages – some of them look older than I do. I guess acting is hard on the skin.)

7. What’s next on your Netflix queue?
I don’t have a Netflix account.

8. Name someone with the same birthday as you:
I can’t. I don’t know exactly when I was born, just an approximation.

9. Do you have a crush on someone?
No crushes, a few lust objects and friendships.

10. Have you ever vandalized someone’s private property?
No.

11. Have you ever been in a fight?
Is it a fight if you knife someone because they threatened you and your little sister? We didn’t really exchange blows, he tore my sister’s blouse and I cut him, then he ran away screaming like a baby. And is it a fight if you financially bankrupt someone and destroy their chance of ever having a well-paying career just because they abused your children? No blows were exchanged, other than legal ones. I never even saw the woman I destroyed – it was all done through police and lawyers.

12. Have you ever sung in front of a large audience?
Not only “no”, but “absolutely not”. I’d be dead if I ever tried that. My singing voice is so bad I have been expelled from more school and church and volunteer choirs than anyone can reasonably count. My own children would cover my mouth to prevent me from singing them lullabies as soon as they could control their arms.

13. What’s the first thing you notice about the OPPOSITE sex? About the same sex? About gender outlaws of any type?
Hands

14. What do you usually order from Starbucks?
I don’t shop at Starbucks

15. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose?
No, I do it often enough accidentally that doing it on purpose seems sort of redundant.

16. Say something totally random about yourself.
The Dandy Lion is reading my new herb book.

17. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
No, I look sort of generic.

18. Do you wear a watch? What kind?
No, but I do have a small wrist-sized replica of Stonehenge I wear occassionally so I can keep track of millennial time, and I have a sundial I sometimes wear..

19. Do you have anything pierced?
Ears.

20. Do you have any tattoos?
Yes

21. Do you like pain?
Not really, but I can tolerate an insane amount, which is useful since I am allergic to every known analgesic and anaesthetic out there.

22. Do you like to shop?
No.

23. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
Groceries, yesterday.

24. What was the last thing you paid for with a credit card?
I don’t have a credit card.

25. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
Privately? It was 2 or 3 years ago. I think it was one of my children. I don’t have a telephone now. Work-wise, some fax machine called and I hung up on them.

26. What is on your desktop background?
A picture of 3 cats sitting in boxes..

27. What is the background on your cell phone?
I don’t have a cellphone.

28. Do you like redheads?
I am one, a natural redhead with red skin, and olive-drab colored eyes.

29. Do you know any twins?
My grandfather, my nieces, my great nephews, my grandchildren…..

30. Do you have any weird relatives?
I am the weird relative.

31. What was the last movie you watched?
Toys

32. What was the last book you read?
Steven Saylor’s The Venus Throw.

33. Did you or are you planning to go to college?
Been. Got a Ph.D. in Fairytales.

34. What is your favorite pair of pants that you own?
I don’t wear pants..

35. Do you like to party?
I like to go to parties, drink sodas or teas or maybe wine coolers and play games and listen to and tell jokes and such. I don’t like going to drunken beerfests or stoner parties.

36. Where do you see yourself in five years?
Alive? I’ll be 66.

Fragment Friday

Just because:

Syr paused outside the door. Permission had been granted, her presence here encouraged. Still, as she gazed inside, she hesitated.

Varg knelt inside the room. He looked so small, this man who had been her strength, lashed in the light that revealed the two minute bodies laid out on the raised stone bier.

Drawing in a deep breath, she crossed the threshold. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone floor, her body too slight to displace enough breeze to flicker the candles. Still, he sensed her presence, and turned his head to look at her.

”Wife.” One word. She dropped to her knees, half a room away, felled by the pain in his voice.

He came to her then, helped her stand, supported her to the bier that held their daughters.

It was the first time she’d seen death. Pain, yes, she thought she knew every color of pain, had endured agonies beyond description. Death was a new pain. This was more terrible than any pain she’d ever experienced, for it was not her pain she endured, but his, echoing through her.

‘Touching and touched’ he had told her that day when their bond was formed. He had felt each abuse she suffered from her captors, each birth pang. Now, she felt his heart pain at the death of those babies. She did not know how to ease it, or ignore it.

She reached a thin hand out to hover above the shroud. Then, resolutely, she uncovered their tiny faces.

”Husband, they were just women children.”

He growled low as she searched for understanding in his face.

”Husband, I feel your pain. But, they were just women children. Tell me why it hurts you so?”

Rather than tower over her, he sat on the unforgiving stone and tugged her down into his lap. She was still frail, and she knew he did it to keep her warm. “Syr, they were our children, our firstborn.”

”But – women children?”

Varg looked at her. As a breeder, her genes were impeccable. Her looks, marred as they now were, were important only in bringing pleasure to him. She allowed her failure to tinge her voice, asking forgiveness for birthing girls, reminding him she could breed again. This time, perhaps she would birth a manchild. The pain in his heart, the pain that echoed in her, should not be there, not for daughters.

”The women of your world are not properly valued,” he said. She felt his eyes linger on the pale scar that reached above her collar to mark her chin. It was a visible reminder of why the babies lay cold and still before them. He raised a large hand, dark and calloused and capable, to tug at a curl of her shorn head. He slipped his hand behind her head, and pulled her in close. “You have never known your true worth, and I have not had time to teach you. Our beautiful daughters would have been like you: strong, brave, generous. I loved them before I knew they were twins, before I knew they were girls. I loved them because they were a part of you.”

”Varg –“

”Shh. I mourn them for many reasons, Little One. Our daughters were your freedom. Conceiving them allowed me to claim you as wife, to carry you away from Kasi. I felt them grow inside you, their first kicks. I saw their tiny heartbeats in the viewer. I wanted to watch them grow up, free.”

”They were your seed.”

‘More than that. They were a part of us, both of us, and when they died, that part of us died with them.”

”Is that why you hurt so? You felt their death?”

”Not the way you mean, my kor. It could have been you on this bier. I pray that their spirits will be reborn fresh, but I pray harder that you will remain with me. I am – glad – they are on the bier, and not you. It could so easily have been you.” He buried his face in her hair, and she felt his lips move against her scalp.

This loss was a pain she could understand. The fear of losing him was all that kept her alive during her captivity among the Federated Alliance. It was that potential pain which allowed her to ignore the abuses to which they subjected her pregnant body. She had been willing to sacrifice the daughters she bore to be back with Varg. They were only female, after all.

Would she have been so willing to sacrifice sons? She dwelt upon that thought. Sons, dark and strong as Varg, growling deep with pleasure, laughing heartily, growing to tower above her. No, she would not have let them be so hurt they would have been born too early, would have struggled to live as these – her – daughters, had done. Tears filled her eyes.

She turned in Varg’s lap, pressed herself against him. At last she knew how to ease his pain. And if this baby was a girl, she knew she could love her, now.

Button Pushing Meme

cadhla recently had 2 separate posts about button pushing: things that set her off and things that made her happy.

There are lots of things that minorly irritate me, but really, on deep reflection, very few that set me off. See, I’m one of those people that chuff. I express my frustration immediately and clearly, and then it’s gone. Over. Done with. I’ve even, most of the time, forgotten what it was, because I am so truly and completely purged of it that it slides right out of my mind like it was coated in Teflon.

What sticks and causes a long term reaction are things like making me late. I’ve come to terms with other people’s tardiness (well, except for extreme tardiness, like say, days as opposed to hours). If I have an appointment with someone, and they are half an hour late, then carry on and on and make me late for my next appointment, where I have to then apologize for my tardiness – that makes me never want to deal with them again – definitely not professionally, and probably not personally, either.

Being stood up, especially if it’s just to watch some TV show that’s in re-runs, that is the fast start to the end of a friendship, and might fatally blight the bud of a new friendship. If you’re a student of mine and you can’t be bothered to contact me? I don’t even ask that you contact me before-hand. If it was an emergency, I’ll accept hours or even days later as reasonable, depending upon the circumstances – but if you then attempt to show up for the next class, without any apology or excuse for your previous absence? You’re no student of mine. I don’t play chase-you-and-beg-you-to-be-my-student games.

Broken promises irritate me and put a strain on friendships, too. I won’t drop friends over broken promises, just as I won’t over their chronic tardiness, but I won’t depend upon them for anything. Professionally, a broken promise is a clue that perhaps I shouldn’t be doing business with you. Politically, a broken promise is a probation, and a pattern of broken promises is a lost vote. Depending upon how egregious the broken promise(s) is/are, it may also involve documenting it and urging others to also rescind their vote.

That’s it, I think. Those are the things that genuinely set me off.

As for things that make me happy, that list is entirely too long, so I’ll just give a core sampling.

Pictures of cute or pretty things, it doesn’t have to be baby animals, I’ll squee over an adult otter scratching his ear, or nice shot of a tomato, or a particularly vivid sunset, or even a nice shot of a can of soda or a rusty broken gear. I just like pictures.

Blank paper, especially if it’s mine to do with as I please, makes me very happy. I was given an entire box full of printer’s ends and other paper scraps in a variety of weights and colors, and that was the best gift ever. Of course, I’m equally happy with paper napkins, the backs of business cards, the edges of paper menus and the like.

People make me happy, watching them, talking to them, having them over for food, taking mental snapshots of candid moments and storing them up, eavesdropping to mix and match snippets of conversations, yes. People in general and in specific make me happy.

I need to move out of the “P”s, so far, Pictures, Paper, and People make me happy, and I was going to say “My Puppy” (even though he’s really a dog, now) for the next one, but I noticed the pattern I was creating. And the next up was “Painting”, so I have to fast forward a ways.

Ah! Creating things makes me happy – designing new clothing patterns or sewing up a new doll or toy, building a critter cage, finding unique uses for the Zombie Maple’s discarded limbs, coming up with new recipes (like fruit bruschettas with sweet spreads, or putting chocolate in my chili and cinnamon in my chicken soup), writing fact or fiction, writing Klingon Love Poetry, coming up with new games to play, and turning ordinary events in Adventures (like turning the long, long, long wait in the check-out line of the Friends of the Library Book Sale into a haunted line with cobwebby boxes and animated skeletons in the shadows or geocaching as if we were doing it as a pirate ship and crew), or creating entirely new languages (as if learning the existing ones wasn’t enough). Yes, Creating Things makes me very happy. Being able to share them with others increases the pleasure.

Doing my tasks to meet my standards because I set very high standards for myself. Oddly enough, while I try to meet other people’s standards, really, I’m as equally unmoved by far exceeding them as I am by falling short. My own standards, however, if I fall short of those, I’m grumpy, but meeting them makes me very happy. I am my own worst goad and critic. Or best.

Listening to my friends and family talk about their passions, and this includes reading total strangers write about them, too, even if it’s about things in which I have absolutely no interest, like my son’s restoration of that 1947 willy he bought off e-Bay, or someone talking or writing about their love of math, or their passion for finding the hottest peppers, or monster truck competitions. Because I will listen to anything if it’s said with enough love and passion, I have a passing acquaintance with a wide variety of topics, enough that I can encourage people to keep going no matter how clueless I really am. By the end of the conversation, I’m not so clueless anymore, and I’ve formed a nice bond with the other person.

Fresh radishes with sweet cream European style butter and salt., along with salted lemons, fresh tomatoes sliced onto buttered sourdough with salt, fresh leaf lettuce rolled around a core sprinkling of salt, chocolate, freshly baked bread hot from the oven, and Dr. Pepper.

That’s a core sample of what pushes my buttons, bad or good.

Friday Five Meme

1) Of the various cultures, ethnicities or nationalities you belong to, which most strongly do you consider yourself?

American

2) Is there a culture you cannot claim heritage from but which you feel quite close to?

Sioux

3) What’s one language you wish you knew fluently?

Kiowa Apache

4) If you could move anywhere in the world and be guaranteed a job, etc., where would you go?

Australia

5) If you had a time machine, and could witness any one event without altering or disturbing it, what would you want to see?

The signing of the Declaration of Independence