Uncategorized
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I Voted
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine made a statement about the stupidity of “I Voted” stickers. He called them a waste of money. I rolled my eyes. Lately I feel like I can’t go a full day without rolling my eyes at a white man. (In fact, the other day, I was trying to drive out of grocery store and a middle aged white man stopped on the sidewalk, right in front of my car – in a clearly marked exit – and began to tend to a hangnail. It lasted so long, I began to narrate. “Behold, the middle aged white man in his natural environment. Notice…
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Spoiler Alert
I just heard this story on an NPR podcast about a pair of Russian researchers who got in a fight in Antarctica. Apparently, they had spent way too much time together in their cramped quarters, and one of them thought it was funny to ruin the endings of the limited number of books available on the research site to pass the time. The other guy didn’t think it was funny, and stabbed the spoiler in the chest. Vodka was involved. Do you ever hear a story about a crime and get a little chill because you realize that, under a very specific set of circumstances, you could be driven to…
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Witches Brew
I just learned a historical fact that blew my mind. Matt is reading a book on the dark ages right now, and he told me that there is a paragraph describing that from ancient times, beer was made almost exclusively by women. But in the 1500s, men decided that they wanted to take over beer making as careers and set about putting the brewers known as “alewives” out of business. So they called them witches and drove them out beer making. Here is a video that shows how the details we associate with witches, such as brooms and cats, directly came from the legacy of the alewives. So interesting! Makes…
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Crossed Cables
I finished a blanket that I started in the summer. I knit in the evenings while we watch TV and usually I give the stuff I make away, but I decided I wanted to make something for us to keep. It was finally done, so I bound off and shaped it. Then, the first time I used it, I saw this: Gah! Matt says he doesn’t see what I’m talking about and that I’m the only one who will notice… but damn that’s annoying. Oh well. It’s soft and mostly purdy. Almost as purdy as my pumpkin colored toes. The pattern is the “Cross Roads Cable Knit Blanket” by Gayle…
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Deck the Howls
This is how I decorate for Halloween: This is how my neighbors decorate: To be honest, they are in a different neighborhood but I couldn’t think of a word for someone else that lives in your city but not on your block. Citymate? Neighboring-neighbor? I dunno. But I think of them as the owners of the Halloween House and I have to go by to see what they have come up with every year. (I’ve blogged about them a time or two before.) I think this is my favorite so far; they have really outdone themselves. One of these days I need to stop when someone is in the yard.…
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A Walk in the Woods
I was hiking with Matt the other day. I wasn’t supposed to be free that day. I was going to a baby shower and Matt was planning to hike on his own. Then, a few days before the shower, my friend went into labor and the shower has been postponed, indefinitely. With one extra guest. So I went hiking instead. We were walking up a trail and I was thinking about my friend and her new baby girl, who hadn’t yet been named. Matt made the comment that the terrain we were hiking through looked like the area where the show Deadwood was shot. I agreed, and that make me…
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Put a Bird on it
I made a shot glass with a swallow on it. Get it? A shot? A swallow? It is possible that I’m confusing my birds and this is a swift. If so, this joke makes no sense.
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Upgrade
The boys didn’t think my arrangement was all that “spooky,” so I added a raven and a severed limb. It is so fun to decorate now that there is a little one around. But if I’m being honest, it’s really for me. Ethan just wants the candy.
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Mammalian Chameleon
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What Would Myra Do?
So, I chose the wrong time to start The Handmaid’s Tale. Jesus. I wanted to hide from my phone. I knew that Brett Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed over the weekend, and I wanted to think about other things. I stayed in, I knitted, and I watched episodes of Handmaid. I emerged from my basement on Monday morning unsure of what year it was. Where am I, again? The black and white past? The red and white future? Oh, no. It’s just the dystopian present. Goddamn. I can’t stop thinking about the episode where all the women are sent home from work because a law has been passed making…