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Dec. 19th, 2025 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goodbyebird
thursday
Dec. 18th, 2025 07:29 pmsummersgate
I found Morgan's Tarot hiding in the clutter on my writing table so I thought I'd pick a card and do something with it. The "Who Am I?" card turned up.
Morgan's card. Probably meaningful to me right now. I have been looking inward TOO much. Looking negatively. All I've been seeing lately are my faults and the unattractive parts of my personality. But of course whatever I look at will be magnified. The Magic Magnifying Mind.
I can't remember where I got the idea to get a Morgan's Tarot. From someone on my friend's list, or Nancy probably. I got it quite a while ago but haven't delved into it much.
A seemingly busy day today. Went to Berdella's for group in the morning. Lunch at McCullough's Kitchen Table in Sandy Lake. Came home and took a nap. Got up just in time to go out before it got dark and put up clear plastic around the chicken's run for a windbreak. Dave helped. It was relatively warm today. The snow on the roof was melting and dripping down on us as we worked.
I had uneven heart beats early in the morning and that always puts a damper on things. It makes me think about my mortality. Am I ready to go? Sometimes I feel like I am. Other times I feel desperate to fix things before I go, but then I don't feel capable of fixing anything and that's depressing.
*****
About a week ago, before the snow, when I was still letting the chickens out into the yard, I went to check on them and saw they were all clustered in one corner of the run. I went to the doorway and there was a young opossum inside the run, right by the door. I motioned with my hand for him/her to come out through the door and they did, very nicely and I shut the door. Then a couple days later I came back from checking on the chickens and the dogs were sniffing something on the floor by the back door. It was the opossum, laying dead on its side with its mouth grinning open. Rainy was sniffing the mouth and Andy was sniffing its back end. I freaked out with Rainy's nose half an inch away from all those sharp teeth but it stayed "dead". I got the dogs into the house and watched through the door. As soon as we all got inside it got up and trundled off the porch. I kinda like opossums. Though I know if they get into a chicken coop at night while the chickens are sleeping they will kill. In the daytime I'm not that concerned - an adult chicken can take care of itself in the daytime. Now that there's snow on the ground and I'm keeping the chickens and their food locked up day and night I think the opossum will leave. I hope so.
almost a good dream
Dec. 18th, 2025 12:53 pmsistawendyThis may be the most me dream ever.
dystopian drugstore
Dec. 18th, 2025 06:33 amsistawendyI knew something was up immediately when I went to get a hand basket and they were missing, just a wire cart with wheels left. When prompted, I asked the dude behind the counter where they were. "They got stolen," he replied.
"Good God!"
As I walked around the store I noticed an awful lot of big bare spots on the shelves. Laundry detergent behind lock and key. I felt fortunate to find (something like) the items I came for. It was almost as bad as the early pandemic supply chain interruptions or even Bartell's death spiral.
The aforementioned dude offered me a credit card as I was checking out. Really? "No thanks," I replied.
I said as I was leaving that stealing all the baskets doesn't make sense even from a thief's perspective. "It helps them carry more stuff," he said. As if they're organized or at least cooperating.
Now, we've all heard by now that claims of rampant theft by retailers in the Seattle area and surely other cities are horseshit meant to excuse management's bad decisions, e.g. treating all their customers like criminals. Why aren't supermarkets locking up their detergent?
So now I'm wondering, did my local Walgreen's really get cleaned out by thieves, or are they being run by idiots like all the other drugstore chains? It's bizarre that I'm even asking that question.
(morning writing)
Dec. 18th, 2025 07:37 amelainegreyIf i miss writing in time, i hope everyone is able have the observations that make passing through this solstice period a joy or at least the darkness eased. I am enjoying my LED lit branch (up all year) and tree during the long dark morning, and found that BritBox has streaming holiday light shows to run in the background of doing other things.
Some quick notes
no car news, but we don't really need two vehicles, so we are OK. What we have is a good reliable car (that is now dmaged) and a vehicle for taking things to the dump. Christine managed to find a really nice take things to the dump vehicle some years back, so we'll drive it about more and live with the lousy gas mileage.
Bruno and Marlowe have had a step of improvement in how they get along and how Bruno believes he can access the rest of the house. He doesn't need coaxing to leave his safe room, Marlowe is not nearly as vigilant. It's odd to see how things seem to have little jumps and not gradual change. We went from much coaxing to get him to leave his room on his own to him dashing out in the morning.
Christine is having a more serious flare (infection) of the issue that sent her to the emergency room in June. Less than a month to the surgery that should resolve things.
I am fighting my own self denigration around gift giving and not really winning but avoiding. I hope i can take some time off today to label and wrap and pack and ship. I had so much joy making and thinking about giving -- years of it imagining when i could gift things from the orchard -- and ... anyhow, i will focus on that and try to take the insecure part of me and tell her ... that people already know i am a flake so it's ok? No, wait, that's not the message. We'll work on that.
i've gotten in my (pathetically low count of) steps the past two days. I think i feel better for it. I am worried about how fatigue hit me out of the blue a few weeks ago, but i have no evidence that the fatigue is caused by doing things, i just NOTICE when i am doing things. Acting like i am fatigued all the time is not the solution.
aaaand three minutes before midnight ALSO still counts!
Dec. 17th, 2025 11:54 pmgoodbyebirdReactor Mag has an excellent article up on it: Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man.
Btw does anyone want some screengrabs to make icons from uploaded to
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capshare? (Not the very best quality possible, but serviceable) If so, specific characters?Rec-cember Day 17
Gilmore Girls
They Go Just as Quickly as They Come by
At first, its emptiness wasn’t as pervasive. She accepted the house, and the stillness.
It hadn’t been so long. Not really. Richard had spent longer away on business trips. The house was empty, but not unfamiliarly so. But there came a time when, if Richard had been away on a business trip, he would have been back from it. And the emptiness pressed in until it is all she can see, all she can feel.
The house is empty.
She doesn’t wander the halls. She doesn’t throw herself at his portrait. She does not have a portrait made. She doesn’t shutter the windows and regress. She doesn’t dress in all black. She isn’t part of some maudlin tale, some piece of fiction Rory and Richard had once fawned over together. She is a graduate of Smith, after all. She still belongs to any number of groups, of charities and clubs and associations. She fills her days, just as she did before.
The house, though, is still empty, when she returns to it.
wednesday
Dec. 17th, 2025 02:31 pmsummersgate
Looking at the Entity Outside My Window. It's sunny today!
I've been busy all morning doing things like helping Dave cut the bottom off Candy's xmas tree and setting it up. Then I went with her to do meals on wheels and finally did some shopping at G E. They have the best mini oranges right now. I could live on them.
I called the vet and neither doctor was in but the vet we saw yesterday left notes to say that he wants to consult with the other vet before he talks to me. The notes mention possibly doing an xray. My most fearful imagined scenario says that she has cancer in her liver. I hate the idea of having to put another animal to sleep.
Thirteen minutes before midnight, so it still counts!
Dec. 16th, 2025 11:47 pmgoodbyebirdRec-cember Day 16
Scott Pilgrim
Afternoon Delights by
There is a bang.
The door, he realizes fuzzily. Possibly -- hitting something?? Definitely opening really loudly. He really wishes it wasn't doing that. He should probably start locking it while he's sleeping.
"I thought your shit had supposedly been gotten together, guy," says someone, who flings himself down on the sofa that Scott uses for a bed, hard enough that the cushions bounce under both of them. "What are you doing asleep at 3:00 on a sunny Saturday afternoon?"
"Frrrrsleeping," Scott groans indignantly, and then Wallace plucks the pillow off his head and out of his arms. Scott tries to grab it back without opening his eyes, and his hands mostly just flail ineffectually against Wallace's jeans.
"Whoa there, tiger," Wallace drawls. "I have a boyfriend now; let's keep it PG." He drops the pillow on Scott's chest. If it's possible to drop a pillow with force, Wallace does it. "You know, considering that you're the all-time evil-ex-fighting champion and the best fighter in the greater Toronto metropolitan area, it was very easy to pull that away from you."
tuesday
Dec. 16th, 2025 05:11 pmsummersgate
Snow. Yesterday's pic.
Sunset. Today's.
We took Skye to the vet for a follow up appointment early this morning. Now that she's not feeling so great she's easier to catch and load into the carrier. That's one good thing. They did blood work again so they could compare it to two weeks ago and gave her a shot of B12 and more subcutaneous fluids and we brought her home. I'm still waiting to hear back about the results of the blood work to see what the plan is for the future. It's 5:15. I wonder if I'll have to wait till tomorrow to hear?
it took me a while to understand, hayao
Dec. 16th, 2025 09:14 amsolarbirdMeta, the company controlled by babyfash Trump fan Mark Zuckerberg, the board of which thought it was reasonable to support Fascist politicians in the hope of avoiding regulation, and whose Facebook service has or had a “17-strike” policy for known sex trafficking accounts and not only doesn’t remove fraud posts but charges known fraud operations higher rates for their ads, puked this vile mixture of plagiarism, artist’s blood, and AI sludge posing as photography onto BART station walls in San Francisco:
And of course it’s shit. Of course it’s shit. Holy gods, it is such hot garbage, and I’m not even talking about the implied higher situational awareness of someone wearing an AI PHONE ON THEIR FACE over people looking down at their regular phones
tho’ that’s a pretty fuckin’ hot take for them to have right there too, I have to say
I’m talking about the raw clownery of this image. Holy hell. Let’s zoom in at one of the insults to imagery:
And I’m not even mentioning the ghost in the room, by which I mean the four ghosts in this one particular rendered room:
And I have to ask:
HOW CAN ALL THIS STILL BE THIS SHITTY AND PASS MUSTER FOR THEM? HOW?
Christ it’s so insultingly bad. It’s infuriatingly bad. As photography substitute, as AI generated Not Art. It’s… it’s like it’s Anti-art, an opposite of art that mocks the real, that imitates while degrading both itself and its opposite.
Anybody can make bad art. I’ve made plenty. Also some good art.
But it takes real work to make anti-art.
And that’s what makes me want to fucking scream.
We all know how monstrously wealthy Fuckerberg is. How much money he and his company have. How he could jerk off with thousand dollar bills, wipe himself clean, and burn the dirties the rest of his wretched life and not even notice the difference.
So when you see that they’d rather put out this slapdash, revolting, uncaring – no sneering insult of a render than pay a photographer and a few models a few bucks for an afternoon photo shoot, what’s that say?
It’s not the money. He has all the money. All of it. Well, him, and the other TESCREAL fascists.
I think… I think I have to think… that it’s a matter of principle for them. A sick principle, but a principle nonetheless. It has to be, because otherwise it makes no. goddamn. sense.
I literally have to conclude that they hate art, and even more, hate artists. They have to, to consider this better. It must be principle for them to not care about artistic creative work, to not pay artistic workers. It has to be principle to hold all that in contempt, to say, “see? We just steal everything you’ve ever done, throw it into our churn machine, and then rub out our own version in half an hour to show you’re not any better than us. And you can’t do shit about it.”
They’ve made it clear that they’d not only spew this kind of rancid splatter, this metaphorical scrawl of shit, urine, blood, and theft across the walls of a city than break that principle.
And they’ll enjoy it.
I used to think, once upon a time, that Syndrome from The Incredibles was a little too on the nose,a little too pointed, maybe – dare I say it – a little too cartoonish for even a cartoon.
I’m starting to think maybe he wasn’t on the nose enough.
But that’s flippant, and maybe a little too easy.
What I really feel is that… I’m finally starting to understand – really understand, at a gut level – what Hayao Miyazaki meant when he called AI “art” an insult to life itself.
Because, well, almost anything can be art. Art is an observation and an intent, as much as anything else, and handing that mantle to something which has no awareness, no observation, no actual knowledge of meaning, no ability to opine, no personhood at all, a chum machine with less actual awareness than a housefly maggot…
…how could that be anything less than an insult to life, itself?
It took me a while to understand, Hayao. But I think I’ve finally got there.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
If you're a devil, how come you're not wearing Prada?
Dec. 15th, 2025 11:20 pmgoodbyebirdI do need to do wrapping though. To think I used to love doing that back in the day.
+ Also found a Christmas calendar at 40% off, so now I'll have something to open every day after all. It's from the Finnish brand Lumene and if half of it is as good as the eye cream I've already tried, I got a real bargain.
+ Very sad to hear about the loss of Rob Reiner, and it just keeps getting sadder as I read about all the wonderful things he did and stood for.
+ Please tell me more of you are watching Pluribus? The last episode was the best one yet, and I find myself suddenly willing to go to war for one of the characters. But that whole episode, oh man. Ten out of ten. I even double dipped and downloaded a couple of episodes so I can make some damn icons. *mutters about stupid streaming apps*
+ Also I am now watching watch alongs for IWTV on yt. I need more people to be blathering on about these vampires. Still taking a predictable chunk out of my fic reading time, and now I'm down to one buffer rec for Rec-Cember. Somebody tell me to shape up.
Rec-cember Day 15
The Good Place
Free Netflix Subscription by
There’s a knock at the door. The weather here is perfect and mild — because of course it is — so they had left it standing open. This means that nothing obscures Eleanor’s view as an Amazonian gazelle of a woman steps theatrically into the doorway, one elegant arm sweeping up to rest upon the frame.
It occurs to Eleanor that this woman must have knocked on the outside of the house, then waited the exact right amount of time to make this entrance once Eleanor and Michael would be looking, but before they’d thought to shout “Hello?” or glance at each other or otherwise spoil the moment. Honestly, it’s pretty impressive, points for drama and also for wearing heels despite being damn near six feet tall.
“Ah, excellent timing!” Michael says, pleased. “Eleanor, this is your soulmate, Tahani.”
Tahani extends her hand, angled down and slightly curved. “Charmed,” she says, with the fanciest fucking accent Eleanor has ever heard in person.
“Soulmate! Wow!” Eleanor says. The position of Tahani’s offered hand makes her feel like she’s expected to take it in her own, bow over it, and kiss one elegant knuckle at a time, but she’s not really butch enough to pull off that kind of a Prince Charming maneuver, not even in flannel.
Whew! And yay!
Dec. 15th, 2025 01:15 pmsistawendySpeaking of expeneses, I do believe I've found a group that I want to camp with at Burning Man, no ambivalence necessary. Yes, I've dug out my packing list of doom.
Random fashion pondering
Dec. 15th, 2025 12:47 pmcupcake_gothsistawendy , and it looks fabulous on her. But I miss the idea of the skirt.
I'm pondering buying yardage of both those fabrics to make myself an ankle-length version. I'd be making it myself, because if I asked the Madwoman in the Attic to make something with both those patterns together, her head would explode.
Dear Body, that wasn't the plan
Dec. 15th, 2025 10:57 amcupcake_gothSo we could go do the other things, right? AHAHAHAHAHA Friday night my back decided to ~do the thing~, the thing that sent me to the ER at the end of 2019. This round wasn't quite as bad, but I did need the Stroppy One to help me stand up from any seated position and to escort me up and down stairs in case my left leg randomly decided not to work for a few seconds.
I lost the whole weekend to heavy drugs and being covered in lidocaine patches. Luckily I have a Dr. appointment on Thursday; I will go over all of this with her, say, "I've done all the things that can be done before medical procedures are discussed", and then ask what tests I need to get before I can get steroid shots. (Steroid shots are the next step, with the ultimate step being surgery.) The Stroppy One will be in the appointment with me, because there's a good chance I'll forget to mention something, so having a backup brain is a good idea.
Stupid bodies.
monday
Dec. 15th, 2025 07:21 amsummersgate
I Love You. My one art work yesterday. Done while I was painting one of the closet shelves over at Jules' house. That's the color of blue he's painting the room. It goes on lighter and gets darker after it dries. I like it.
About 15F outside this morning. But it's 26 in the chicken coop. The one light bulb that I have keeping the water warm and the chicken's own body warmth must be enough to raise the temp in there by about 10 degrees. I have a thermostat on order. It's supposed to arrive tomorrow for when it gets under 20 in there so the ceramic heater can come on. I have a feeling that we are going to have a cold winter and I want to be prepared.
I got up early (5 am) and cleaned up the kitchen and put the ingredients for white chili in the crockpot. I've been hankering for that for a while.
Planning to walk the town sidewalks again instead of hiking in the woods with Candy this morning.
Rainy goes for her haircut this afternoon. Not the best time for it (cold) but it needs done. At least she has a sweater to wear home afterwards.
I bought something today
Dec. 14th, 2025 10:26 amsolarbirdI bought something for my second bike trailer build on Saturday.
The trailer’s basically been done for weeks already. I’m adding details and accessories now, like, I want to sew a cover, and I want to add reflectors. So I took it for another little shakedown ride, this time to a hardware store I found out had DOT-grade adhesive reflectors in stock for… more money than I’d like, but not unreasonable money.
Here’s what I’ve done with those stickers so far. I think it’s pretty good. The rear view is my biggest concern, given that my bike is well-lit, and this… frankly ugly flash photo… makes the reflectors pop well, showing how they’d reflect headlights. It’ll help:
But it occurred to me as I was doing all this that…
This is the first time I’ve bought something for this project.
The trailer frame was salvaged from a semi-wrecked kiddo hauler abandoned outdoors for over a year. The platform is made from a cargo pallet someone illegally dumped and I salvaged; the metal clamps holding it in place I shaped out of old building strapping. I literally found the warning flag pole on the street, and it inserts into a metal tube salvaged from a housemate’s broken laundry rack. I made a flag for it from scrap fabric. The cage is made from Buy Nothing-listed DIY cube shelving, the kind that never really works right, but there’s nothing wrong with the wire squares that a whole bunch of zip ties can’t fix. Other parts are 3D-printed, designed by me, printed by me, at home.
Everything else was just ordinary supplies I already had.
But when it came to the reflectors… I looked around a little, but then… I just went and bought something. And I have kind of mixed feelings about that!
I mean, it’s fine. Really. At some point, I’m going to want to replace these tyres, too, and that’s a purchase – they were also in the outdoors for at least a year and as a result are semi-rotted. They’re only still usable because I used a lot of silicone glue to make a reinforcement coat on the walls. (Hey, it’s not stupid if it works, and it works.) So sooner or later, money was going to be spent.
But even so, just buying something – even if it’s something you legitimately can’t make at home, like DOT-spec reflective material – feels like cheating. I kinda don’t like it.
Part of it is that I started making these cargo carriers around the time Anna got laid off, and even after she finally got a new job earlier this year, I kept the same approach. Sure, it helped that I already had basically everything I needed by that time, but also, we’re trying to make up for a lot of lost money and time, so I kept doing things the same way.
Until today, when I didn’t. I did it the normal way instead. It’s a very normal thing. You need an item, a part, whatever – you can just buy it.
And… maybe… maybe it’s just how extremely abnormal everything else is right now, in this endless emergency… but…
I just don’t know how I feel about that.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Nun engages in consumerism, but doesn't feel bad about it.
Dec. 14th, 2025 08:35 amsistawendyFast forward to last night. T wanted to go to the open house at Equinox Studios, the place down in Georgetown with tons of artists & craftspeople. The open house in December is, of course, extra crowded and bAnAnAs. I ran into multiple goths known to me, including Diminutive** and Cyra Hobson, who's quite a sculptor and has her studio at Equinox. It was inevitable, then that I found the perfect vase from Jeanne Ferraro: opaque, cobalt-blue glass.
Lots of people including Ferraro remembered me because I was wearing The Coat. Some dude said he'd seen me walking around our neighborhood. We live less than two blocks apart, and I'd never met him. Who know a coat could be magic?
I completed my set of herbivorous dinosaur fridge magnets. I mean, Parasaurolophus. How could I not?
Things I covet but couldn't buy for various reasons:
- The Matisse dining set by John Kirschbaum. I've never seen anything like it, and yes, he knows how to make a comfy chair. If you meet the guy, be patient: he talks unusually slowly.
- A photo of one of the Iron Monkeys' pieces. I'd like a print to hide a dent in the wall that I put there while moving furniture.
- Jewelry by, oddly enough, Black Dog Forge. They used to be in Belltown, and that's all I can find about them in a quick search. I've seen at least one amazing bed frame that they made.
Spending the time with T was fun, too. She's almost as good an enabler as the lady who introduced us,
cupcake_goth. She's also a good transit communist like I am; we had excellent Metro mojo last night.I did not partake of ravey goodness last night because it was after 2300 when I got home, and my dogs were if not barking definitely grumpy. But I'd call the trip a success.
*He's this old South Asian dude who's been walking around selling flowers on Capitol Hill for decades.
**Her name is the diminutive form of mine. She's a full head shorter than I am. I'm never not amused by this.
sunday
Dec. 14th, 2025 11:20 amsummersgate
Yesterday's quick painting. I had to do something by the the end of the day if I was going to keep up art-a-day so this was it. A Cute Puppy.
I spent most of the day yesterday weaving this little piece of cloth. I wanted to try out joining methods for the pin loom blanket I'm going to make for Rowan. When I was done it seemed the perfect size for Little Me.
Passing time till I hear from Jules. I'm going to help him today paint some more in the middle bedroom next door. We did the walls last time but he's decided he wants to do the ceiling and inside the closet too. I helped do the trim last time but afterwards I was shocked at what a bad job I had done. I don't have the control that I used to have with my right shoulder anymore. Especially when I need to do things up high.