Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

Long Hidden is taking submissions. Various people on facebook have already refused to talk me out of writing a story about the Silesian Weavers' Revolt (1844). I'm already kind of busy, between this online course and writing a novel, and I really don't need to start another project that involves extensive research.

Though this line of thought has already inspired a derailment into genealogical research, because the place my great-grandfather was born, and probably his parents and grandparents, because 150 years ago people didn't move as much, was one of the towns involved in said weavers' revolt.

(And heavenscalyx has given me pointers and dug up some stuff for me because she's awesome like that. All I could find was the record of Bertha, & Max's emigration (via Bremen, point of entry Baltimore, ship's name Köln) in 1908. (I already knew 1908 and that they settled in Lock Haven, PA, since that's where Grandpa's from. And for some reason, I can't pull August's.)

Bertha's occupation was listed as Textilarbeiter. She was probably a weaver. Something heavenscalyx found was that August was a silk weaver.

There were also siblings listed: Herman (1877-1959), Paul O (1882-1939).

If I knew people's maiden names, this would help. (I think my uncle Kurt has the most information of anyone in the family, so I should bug him. But he never answers his email.) *flail*

This is what I do when I should be writing.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born to parents who believed in the value of education.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born to parents who knew what to do with a gifted child.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born into the middle class, not the working class.

If I hadn't had the main notion of "I need to study something that will help me get a job that pays well," maybe I'd have gone into German 20 years ago.

But I also wouldn't have had the experiences that led me to have a passion for identity, belonging, liminality, and all that.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd gotten good advice as a kid, if I hadn't learned at an early age that mom wasn't useful for advice, if I hadn't labored under the idea that I had to figure everything out for myself because I didn't know there were people who *could* help you out.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been raised by someone who understood geeky kids, who understood that her kid's social needs are different than her own, who didn't think I was lying when I told her that smoking in the car made me cough really badly.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd actually gone into something I had a passion for 20 years ago, rather than doing the working-poor kid's thing and following the money.

Thanks to a conversation on twitter, I know I'm not the only person who feels this way; I'm just wondering how common it is.

I'm completely croggled that people casually assume or casually state that they'll be getting some sort of inheritance when their parents die. I've never assumed I'd get anything other than debt to pay off or possessions to sell off when my parents die. At least my mom's house is almost paid for; no idea about dad's. (And another comment on twitter reminds me that someone's got to pay for the funerals...)

To copy and paste someone's comment to a friend's post (completely without attribution and with some paraphrasing/editing), this is what sparked this line of thought:

There's also a sense of "it's spending down the inheritance either way; this way's just time-shifted". I trust my parents to have a good sense of their financial planning and what they intended to leave me, and if they happen to want to transfer some of that to me now rather than later, that's fine.

My mom doesn't buy me stuff. She stopped even sending me money at Christmas and my birthday a few years ago. She had to do two major home repairs last summer (ac/heat and water heater both died at the same time), and her tight budget got even tighter. I honestly don't know if she has a retirement savings plan, or if the United Methodist Church even offers one for their secretaries, or even if they did, if she'd have enough income to be able to split off a hundred bucks here or there to save up. (She's a blasted SECRETARY. For a CHURCH. If she makes more than 30k (or equivalent for the DC-Metro area), I'd be astonished.) The only thing I expect to receive from her is the treadle-powered Singer, which is what I told her I wanted when she asked when she made her will. If I'm still in this country, anyway. (It would be really cool if I could figure out how to get it to work, because it has feet useful for old-fashioned clothesmaking, like piping.)

Dad does buy me stuff sometimes, usually alcoholic beverages on the rare occasions we see each other. I have no idea what his financial situation is like. I assume not very good, because he's never been good at saving, and he's an owner-operator (that is, truck driver). I don't think you get 401(k)s with those jobs. He's got his truck and his house, which together could fetch probably half a million*, though I don't know what of that his girlfriend co-owns.

*Truck resale value depends on the age of the truck, mileage on the engine, and how fancy the sleeper area is. His has a huge bed (2 bunks, I think), a kitchenette, and a lav with shower.

Anyway, it just boggles my mind that people casually mention things like inheritance. Is it just me? Is it a product of my working class upbringing?

I have a cat on my lap, one in the loft above my head, and two on the floor of my room. Not sure where the last one is.

I didn't kill Ben's dad.

Ben sorted through a lot of things in the closet of his parents' house. They've lived in this 100-year-old, 5-bedroom, 3.5-bath house with attic and basement for 30 years, and as far as I can tell, no one's been forced to get rid of anything. (Apparently his mom forced his dad to get rid of his papers dating prior to 1990? And there are shelves in the basement that make Phil's look uncluttered. And stable.)

So, he found his stuff from his trip to Japan in college, including his pictures which are on SLIDES (who made SLIDES in 1997??), the Hanshin Tigers cheering bats, a really nice silk handkerchief, and a bunch of Super Famicom games that he forgot he even had. He also found his Transformers.

Into the garbage or to a yard-sale/sort later pile went tons of tchotchkes and trinkets and assorted small junk. Noisemakers, those tubes with the rolls of paper that unroll when you blow in them, finger traps, etc.

He's going to have to make some hard decisions if Operation: Move to Berlin happens.

I moved twice (that I remember; my first move was age 2) growing up. Once after 4th grade, into a house of similar size with a basement & large walk-up attic, then again after 10th grade, into a slightly smaller house (and a much smaller bedroom) with a crawlspace attic and no basement. We had to get rid of things. Yeah, mom kept the dolls and things Grandma brought back from her travels around the world, but if it wasn't something with immediate use or sentimental value, we pretty much got rid of it. Then when she moved from the last house I lived in out to WV to live with her husband, she had me go through what I still had there and either take it home with me or send it to Goodwill/the church yard sale.

I'd like to downsize & de-clutter my life. (I really need to just price out and list the mass of books I have to sell.) Ben's mom likes is obsessed with stocking stuffers. Sometimes they're useful: food, coasters, ornaments, whatever. And this year, they're sponsoring a snow leopard at the STL Zoo in my name, so I got a stuffed snow leopard & a certificate & stuff in my stocking. Sometimes it's things like bouncy balls that light up when you bounce them. The latter comprised a large portion of what Ben got rid of over the weekend.

But I don't want to ask his mom to stop doing something she likes doing (and is really excited about) in order to simplify my life. I feel guilty about getting rid of things people gave me, and I have the constant money-angst that someone who grew up working poor has: they spent their hard-earned money on this thing for me, I can't just throw it out/give it to Goodwill.

Shipping a lot of boxes of junk, along with furniture & such, overseas, and living in an apartment half the size of our house with essentially a big locker in the basement *if we're lucky* doesn't work well with "keep accumulating and accumulating and never get rid of anything."

Wednesday morning, I drove up to Maryland for Thanksgiving. I stayed with my grandparents for multiple reasons: 1) my mom's guest bed is dreadfully uncomfortable, 2) her house is smoky and gives me migraines, 3) Grandpa's 87 and Grandma's 82.

They live in a retirement/assisted living apartment complex. They're in one of the retirement buildings. If they need to, they can move into the more assisted sections of the facility. They've been there 13 years, and they love it. Their apartment is cute, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, living/dining room, tiny kitchen (there's a cafeteria on site).

Anyway, the drive up Wednesday was fine, if windy and periodically cloudy. I discovered that popping my sunroof decreases the sideways motion when the wind comes up hard. I didn't hit any traffic until Fredericksburg, though it persisted the whole way to 270. 495 wasn't as bad as 95. I got to NoVa around 2:30 or 3, then I made it to my grandparents' around 4:30. So a tad over 7 hours including 3 stops.

We went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner, then I showed them all my travel photos. We started with last summer's European vacation, then I paged quickly through the Berlin Xmas trip and Japan. Grandma said I travel a lot. As often as possible!

She gave me a bunch of stuff from Bath & Body Works, which always has a perfumey smell to it. Ah well. I also got socks. Grandma likes putting together little bags for us, and they've usually got shower stuff, socks, jewelry, etc in them. So I said, "yay, socks!" and she asked if I wanted more. She apparently just buys socks at the store when she sees them, and she sticks them in a drawer to either give to people or replace her socks when they wear out. So, anyway, I ended up with a dozen new pairs of cute socks. She also gave me a fleece vest, a sweater, and a velvety hoodie. And a copy of The Kite Runner. And a brooch that was her aunt's.

I also ended up with 2 bags of Nestle chips (1 milk, 1 semi-sweet) and a slice each of cranberry and chocolate pecan pie. (Let me tell you, chocolate pecan pie is fucking AMAZING. I bet it would be awesome with hazelnuts instead. Nutella pie? Hell yes.) Every year at Thanksgiving, Grandpa makes three pies: one either pumpkin or pecan, and two cranberry pies. He takes the pumpkin/pecan and one cranberry to mom's for dinner, and the other cranberry he eats for breakfast for the next week. Mom will eat the leftover cranberry pie for breakfast, too.

Thursday morning before we drove out to mom's, I sat with my laptop and wrote some more of my spy story. It's up to 2000 words, and I just finished the second entry (the one that was partway through in the last locked post). I'll see about doing more on that tomorrow. Today I've been catching up on teh intarwebs and doing laundry. Tomorrow I need to clean the bathroom, but that won't take all day.

I took mom most of a jar of sauerkraut from the farmers market. It's really nice, fairly mild stuff. Ben & I can always buy another jar, and I want to try it with caraway. Because I bet that would make it more awesome. Mom enjoyed it, and so did the grandparents. For years, I thought I was a bad German because I hated sauerkraut. As it turns out, I just hate the kind of sauerkraut that comes from bags in the supermarket.

My grandfather grew up in a German immigrant community in Pennsylvania. His father, who was born in Silesia (now Poland), had a friend whose house they'd go to that always smelled funky. They made their own sauerkraut in their basement.

So mom, G&G, my sister, and I all hung out at mom's for a while. Bin brought a quiche and some veggies for roasting (squash, beets, potatoes, carrots), I brought stuff for the sweet potato casserole which went over so well with Ben's folks last year (and equally well with mine this year; I xeroxed the recipe for Gram), and mom had everything else (except Gramps' pies). "Everything else" was a turkey, corn, green beans, rolls, cornbread stuffing, appetizers, and gravy. The only things I couldn't eat were the turkey and gravy (made with beef fat). Mom actually read the labels on the stuffing packages and determined that the Pepperidge Farms one was OK, but the Stove Top one had chicken something in it. Go mom? She just didn't read the gravy closely enough. (Which is fine; I'm not big on gravy as it is.)

We ate a bunch of food; everyone loved the potatoes. We sat around and talked while waiting for there to be room for dessert. All of us but mom talked politics and world news; thankfully no one there is knee-jerk Republican. Let me assure you that discussing things with my family is less stressful than with Ben's dad, because they don't treat living room conversations like they're Socratic inquisitions.

The grandparents are registered independent, which in MD (and NC) means you can vote in either primary. They think the current crop of GOP presidential candidates are really out there. I have no idea how I got to be the way I am--engaged with politics, interested in knowing about the world and seeing the world--growing up with my mother. She's completely uninterested in current events, news, politics, or traveling. I can't imagine being so completely isolated and insulated.

After dinner, grandma brought out this envelope from the Maryland Anatomy Board and asked if we had any objections to them donating their bodies to science. I think that's pretty awesome, even if it's a somewhat morbid Thanksgiving dinner topic.

Grandpa drove us back to their place, which was a little scary. (I mentioned that he's 87, right?) We talked a bit more before getting more sleep.

Friday morning, Grandpa made scrambled eggs, and I put mine on toast because I like them that way, dammit. We talked a bit more before I had to leave. I only hit a little traffic on 495 in Virginia, near the Woodbridge/Manassas exit. I left a little after 9 and pulled into my garage at 2:30, including 2 or 3 stops. Not hitting NoVa traffic makes a big difference. (Well, on the way up, there was more traffic on 27, and more cars at the stop lights, and I hit very little traffic on 27 on the way back.)

It was a lot of driving for a short trip, but, like going up for the 4th of July party, it was worth it. I'm not really close to my family as a whole, but Gram and Grampa have always been there. They're the reason I had clothes in high school.

If we had functional mass transit in this country, I'd go up more often.

- call grandparents about what we're doing for dinner tomorrow
- email mom about more planning stuff
- pack [clothes picked out, toiletries not ready yet; don't forget phone charger]
- email vet re Isis' blood sugar
- bake sweet potatoes & get 2 cups mashed to take up [start at 4:30 so only have to heat oven once]
- make gingersnap crumb topping
- make next/final attempt at alternate history spy story
- writers group @ 7
- get directions to grandparents' house

I think that's everything I need to do today... I've got all the refrigerated stuff I need to take up sorted in the fridge, and I'll put it in a cooler in the morning.

I'm not really looking forward to a 6-hour drive by myself tomorrow (and another on Friday), but my grandparents aren't getting any younger.

It's raining right now, quietly. I've been hearing this light rustling through my open window for a while now.

Isis has been sick lately. ( feline digestion )

At least we hadn't given her her insulin already, like the first time. Checked her blood sugar, and it was 407. She got a second feeding and her shot. She was limping really badly yesterday, so I called the vet and asked it we could give her some tramadol we had left from a different cat's dental cleaning. Isis doesn't fall for the hairball gel trick, so I had to give her some more food (on her already-wonky blood sugar). She was all stoned the rest of the day. Today, after 2 doses of fish oil, she's less limpy, which is good. And her blood sugar was only 200 this morning, which is a lot more normal.

I'm working on the synopsis of Iron and Rust. This draft is going to be 6-7 pages, and if I want to send it as the Kickstarter reward submission packet review thing, I have to get it down to 5. I may go through and extend it to 10 pages at some point, then also cut it down to 2 pages and 1 page, since those are the common requested synopsis lengths, and a girl ought to be prepared.

Then again, I have a few dropped plot threads I need to tie off and a few "more tension!" moments to fix, so I'll be changing it anyway. May as well wait until I've done all that to fix it up nice.

I changed my thyroid medicine again. I dropped down to 10 mcg of T3 after noticing I was really irritable and that my tinnitus was back. (Irritatingly, it happens for both high and low thyroid for me. Makes it a fun guessing game.) Since I've recently gone up on my T4, which is converted to T3, it's possible I was getting a little high on that end. I'm still having tinnitus for much of the day, but it's gone when I wake up. I'll give it a few more days to balance out (it needs about a week to reach steady state). I should probably call my dr and let her know I adjusted my meds. I may go down further if this tinnitus doesn't abate. I'll know pretty quickly if it's too low, because I get The Nausea. I lasted about a week when we dropped my T3 last month before feeling awful.

I'm doing things with people this weekend! I'll be missing the second half of Werder Bremen: Hertha BSC on Sunday, but I can download it if I have to. Twitter can keep me posted.

And next weekend, we're going to Asheville with Ben's parents and brother. We're staying in the same B&B Ben & I stayed at for our anniversary 2 years ago. There will be hiking (yay -_-) and the Biltmore and food and (hopefully) Beth (who is awesome & giving us comp tickets, so we only have to buy 1)! Our usual catsitter has a second job at the vet school hospital, and the backup one locally had problems with Isis (who growled and clawed and pissed and shat). The usual sitter hasn't gotten back to us, either, which is frustrating, because she's the only one Isis doesn't hate. Probably because she shows no fear of the crazy evil tortie.

We may have to do separate vacations for the foreseeable future if this keeps up. Especially at holidays. (And, joy, I really want to go to my mom's house by myself! It's so much fun!) I could ask if mom & co want to come here for Thanksgiving, but she doesn't drive that far, Grandpa shouldn't drive that far anymore (he's 87, and his artificial hip hitches if he sits too long), and my sister works retail, so she has to work that Friday. Which pretty much means it's always me going to them. We already have plans (but no plane tickets) for New Year's in St Louis, and I may end up begging off. The new catsitter charged us extra last time because she had to bring a helper and spent a lot of time dealing with the evil hissing beast (and wore WELDING GLOVES to give her shot), and at $15 a visit, 2 visits a day, times two for the helper/trouble charge, those 4 days away become 8 in catsitting fees. With me not getting any hours at all, we can't afford the extra charges. (And subsequent vet bills because Isis' blood sugar is whacked out due to stress and she gets sick again.)

It doesn't really help that I don't like Family Togetherness Time (tm).

I survived both sleeping at my mom's house (barely) and the, uh, first cousins once removed? Second cousins? idk, how does that work?

I never sleep well at my mom's. Her guest mattress is old and saggy, and the pillows are full of residual cigarette smoke, like all of her furniture. It's filthy and disgusting. And, of course, one of my migraine triggers! Isn't that great! So I'm trying to sleep in an uncomfortable bed with my face pressed into cigarette smoke, which makes my sinuses swell, makes me cough, and makes me produce so much phlegm that I almost choke myself on it.

Add into that the fact that her alarm system is broken and beeps LOUDLY every 4 hours, which means it went off at 1 am and 5 am. And I've suffered from insomnia since I was about 4. If I wake up, I can't get back to sleep. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes I don't get back to sleep at all.

So I got maybe 5 hours of sleep Saturday night, and they weren't restful at all. Sunday I was fairly OK, and I slept pretty well at my aunt & uncle's (despite my cousin randomly shouting overnight; she's profoundly mentally retarded, and that's something she does.) Yesterday, though, I was really tired much of the day, and my neck started getting stiff like it does when I haven't gotten enough sleep. (Apparently that's unusual? Low sleep is another migraine trigger for me, yay.)

At the picnic, no one asked me to hold the baby, yay. My mom held him for a really long time. She wants grandbabies. Tough shit. My sister doesn't want kids, either (last I talked to her, anyway), and beside that, she doesn't have a boyfriend, and she's in theater, which means she's out at rehearsal, auditions, her friends' shows, her own shows, whatever most nights a week. (She wasn't at the picnic because she had a show, apparently.) On top of that, she barely remembers to feed herself and doesn't really eat properly if she does. So, no, no babies from my sister. Considering that we're both in our mid-30s, I don't see that happening, like, ever.

The toddler was kind of cute (she'll be 2 the end of this month). She's not very good at going down stairs by herself, and as the closest big person, I held her hand down the stairs a few times, and I tried playing catch, but she hasn't figured that out yet, apparently. My cousin's pretty good at the dad thing. (And, god, I remember when he was smaller than me. He's like 6'3" or something, and so's his brother the former Marine. Their baby brother (who's 15, god) is pushing 6'. The men in my family are TALL.)

It's weird how strong the genes are on that side. The three guys above look so much alike, it's shocking. The middle brother looks just like his dad, and the other two look a lot like each other. I'd seen the oldest, Nick, with his girlfriend and daughter & said hi, then a little bit later the rest of his family showed up. I saw Max (the youngest), and was like "Wait, I just saw Nick a second ago over there...damn, Max looks like his brother." Max apparently plays goalie on his HS soccer team and likes Barcelona (before they were cool, he says). I said, "Man, I don't know if I can like you anymore," and he asked if I was a Madrid fan. (I'm not, but Madrid has one of my favorite German players.)

And this is my uncle's backyard. On the right edge, you might be able to make out his hops trellis. He's growing 6 different kinds to make his homebrew. He let us sniff them, and they do have subtle differences in smell. One was fruity, another smelled like juniper (the Willamette variety, popular among the American craft brewers who think MORE HOPS!!! is how to make beer better; they're wrong).

When I contemplate moving to Berlin, I think about things like furniture, health insurance, doctors (especially with my chronic illness and getting older), appliances, how we'll watch our DVDs (since PAL and NTSC aren't friends), where to get food, and that sort of thing.

Ben thinks about whether it's cost-effective to ship our furniture, dishes, etc overseas.

ESXJ meets INTP.

Whereas I like our dishes (they match, and they were wedding gifts), and several of our pieces of furniture (like the dresser and hutch, which were both wedding gifts from his family). I don't generally get sentimentally attached to stuff, but I'd feel guilty about abandoning these gifts (which we picked out ourselves). I felt bad enough selling my old desk & dresser set last year.

It's true, there's a lot of cool old shit available at the massive flea market every Sunday, but we won't have a car to haul shit. (That's one way we could keep costs lower. Parking fees, insurance, maintenance, and gas add up in a city, especially one where gas prices are twice as high as in the US.)

Other things I think about are whether I want to stay there permanently. I can't imagine moving back stateside at 75 or 80 or older. And our parents aren't getting any younger; driving 5 hours to Maryland, or finding a flight to St Louis, is a far different story than flying back from Europe. I don't have much emotional attachment to my family, but that doesn't mean I want to cut them out, you know?

And it's not like my mom would ever come visit me in Germany. She didn't while I was in Marburg for a year. She freaks out when faced with new things, and she's terrified of airplanes (and smokes, but Nicorette can help on planes I hear). Well, and she can't really afford airfare. If I could get both her and my sister to go, there's a chance it'd work, but I'm doubtful. Dad would probably come visit, if he can get airfare together. Ben's folks, assuming no physical issues, would come no problem. They're living in Basel right now while his mom teaches/does research there, and they spent a year in England (another sabbatical).

There's a part of my mind that's already separated itself from living here.

To recap, I spent Wednesday running around (picking up the quiche, going to the neurologist) and cooking. Thursday morning we started cooking at 9:30 am and finished at 12:30, then carried everything to the hotel where the in-laws were staying and were there until about 6. Friday we went to the Ackland and saw some art, then played a board game for a little while, then went home, fed the cats, and changed for dinner at 6:30 at Panciuto. Saturday we met the in-laws at 10, went to the NC natural history museum, then had dinner at the Flying Saucer and finished up the board game, then got home around 8:30 to feed the cats.

So I've had no time to do anything like writing since Tuesday. This is Annoying.

Spending time with Ben's family is just draining. It reminds me constantly of how different my background is, how much of a disadvantage I have in comparison. His mom tells the same dozen "my kids were in the gifted program and volunteered at science museums and went to all these educational camps and ..." you know, all the things rich kids of highly-educated parents do. And I sit there and get pissed off, because I wasn't a rich kid, and my parents sure as shit aren't highly educated, and I have some serious resentment and anger about my mom telling the school not to let me into the G&T program.

So them just sitting there all "educational blah blah gifted blah summer camp etc" brings up all the things I couldn't do, because a) we couldn't afford it or b) it wasn't considered important enough.

Then there's his dad, who's a special kind of jerk. He interrupts you when you're in the middle of your sentence. He lives in this little tiny bubble of very narrow, limited experience and can't see beyond his narrow experience to realize he's wrong about a lot of things, then when you explain that he's wrong, he doesn't understand what you're saying.

Example: we went to Pepper's for lunch, and for some reason, we were discussing the Appalachians. Oh, right, we were talking about the Biltmore house and Asheville, because his mom wants to go there.

Context: Asheville isn't as hot as it is here in summer, because it's in the mountains.
him: It can't be that high elevation, the Appalachians aren't that high. It's about 2000 feet.
me: What? The Appalachians are plenty high, what the hell are you talking about?
him: Well, Mount Washington in Vermont is the most extreme place in the US.
me: !?!!? Mount Washington is in the fucking Appalachians!
him: So?
me: You just said, "the Appalachians aren't that high," but Mount Washington is an Appalachian, therefore the Appalachians ARE that fucking high, QED. It's not like I'm making giant leaps of logic here.
him: What's the highest peak in the Appalachians?
me: Like I know that off the top of my head.
Ben looks it up on his iPhone. Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, 6684 feet, highest point on the east coast. (And 400 feet higher than Mount Washington.)
me: HA. Suck that, dickweed.

There may have been less swearing involved in the actual conversation, but I don't guarantee it.

Spending time with someone who's "discussion" and "conversation" style involves attacking and looking for holes and basically treating it like a particularly brutal grad student-level course is REALLY FUCKING TIRING.

I can't think fast enough to keep up with his changes of argument or tactic; I lose my train of thought easily, and when he interrupts, it's hard for me to get back where I was. And that's me on all cylinders; since I got sick, I get brain fog more often. And I have trouble processing sounds when there's a lot of background noise (and when over half the participants in the "conversation" are shouting).

It's stressful. I hate it.

Today
10 am: pick up quiche at WSM (also crackers & vitamins)
12:20: neuro appointment

afterward:
- make parmesan crisps (oven @300)
- roast green beans (oven @350)
- bake & mash sweet potatoes (oven @400)
- thaw puff pastry, roll out & shape, refreeze
- make topping for sweet potato pudding
- soften ice cream & stir in bourbon & molasses

Tomorrow
9 am: prep pear tart (cook pears, cook filling)
10:30: tart in oven (400), prep sweet potato pudding
11:30: pudding in oven (350)
unknown time: put quiche in oven with pudding
12:30: pack everything up and go to the hotel

What to take
- cranberry sauce
- green beans
- parmesan crisps
- chevre
- halved dried figs
- pudding
- quiche
- tart
- ice cream
- wine? corkscrew?
- beer?
- serving utensils?
- plates? (No idea what sort of/how many dishes this hotel kitchenette has)

You bet Ben's helping me with this mess. They're his famdambly.

So, every year, my mom's side of the family has a Christmas shindig-type thing. In years past, it's been the Sunday before Christmas, but they want to change it to the Sunday *after* now. (Which is 12/26 this year, and not exactly convenient for me, because it's easier to find pet sitters NOT on holiday weekends, ffs.)

Though that's not really the annoying part. Traditionally, we get a name from a hat and buy that person a gift. But since we're all grown up and moved away (though honestly my cousin L and I are the only people who left the state) and blah blah, someone had the bright idea of a non-specific exchange, wherein everyone buys a single $5-10 gift, wraps it, and marks it "male" or "female."

I trust you see where my issue is with that.

They'll be discussing it at a Labor Day picnic my uncle is planning, which, of course, overlaps with Dragon*Con, so I won't be there.

(And a funny from grandma. Appended to the end of the note, after a quick run-down of what the family is up to (Ben, I'll interpret for you) was this piece of understatement: "I hear you've been traveling." I suppose I should take that as a sign to stop being a horrible grandchild and send her a letter. But all my photos are digital, and she doesn't use email, so unless I burn them to CD, she won't see them. Though without explanation, they won't be all that interesting, I guess.)

Today I slept in a bit (though I laid in bed awake a while), then did the Saturday morning routine: Cup a Joe for coffee & breakfast, then grocery shopping. We skipped the farmers' market, because we didn't need anything, and, besides, the weather was nasty.

It's the type of day where you want to stay inside where it's warm and dry. It's been in the 40s and rainy all day. It's supposed to get into the 20s overnight. Brr!

I finished reading All the Shah's Men. I'll put a review and some thoughts on my blog later this week. I made a brief review on GoodReads already.

I wrote a couple reviews of books I finished earlier for my blog; they'll be autoposted at specified times.

Inspired by sabeth, I'm going through my hoard of BPAL and deciding what I want to get rid of. I'll possibly post here, then at the forum. Primarily looking to sell; I have more freaking perfume than I know what to do with. (You'll pry War from my cold, dead hands, though.)

Tomorrow, Mo & Nolan are coming over, and I'm making them Turkish coffee. One pot makes a demitasse cup for 3 people (approximately), so that should work out fine, since Ben can't have caffeine. I'll have to break out the antique cups I got from Etsy that I'm terrified to use (because they're 80 years old!), since I only have 2 cups from Ikea.

If you want to hear this year's Bad Sex in Fiction "winner" read out loud in silly voices, go here. NSFW, obviously. Possibly also not safe for your mental health. Or your sex life.

Off to the greater DC area for several days.

When I was growing up, going out with the family (me, my sister, our mom, and her parents) for berry picking was a late spring tradition. It was fun, taking a basket and filling it with strawberries. It was an early Saturday morning thing, because if you waited too late, the sun would get too hot and all the good berries would be gone!

I couldn't remember the name of the farm, but my sister asked Grandma, and she said it was Butler's Orchards. That doesn't sound right to me; I remember the name being more syllabic and Germanic. Baumgartner's, maybe. I tried the internet, but neither of the places listed in Frederick County, MD, were right. I remember it being up north of town a bit, up Hwy 15. Maybe they closed down. Or maybe it *was* Butler's.

I don't love strawberries like I do musk melons or pears, or even a sweet-tart autumn apple,* but biting into a dark red strawberry is wonderfully nostalgic. Sometimes mom would put underripe berries in the fridge covered with sugar. Mmm.

*Macintoshes are my favorite, followed by Braeburn, Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady, and Ginger Gold. I like Yellow Delicious, but not as much as I used to. I like Gala for cooking. I can't stand Granny Smiths. I'll hold forth on melons in the summer, no doubt, when the local farm that grows heirloom varieties has them out.