Prize Fighter

Well, I did it.  I hit my personal NaNo goal for this year, and I'm feeling pretty dang pleased with myself.  I'd meant to start re-writes tonight, but technical problems got in the way of that, and as it turns out, that was a good thing, because it gave me a chance to get some truly excellent feedback from my Katie.  She confirmed some niggling concerns of mine, but better than that she gave me a freaking solution.  So I'm stoked to work that back in with all the other tweaks (/complete revamps) I have in mind.

Once I lumped everything together (including that bit I wrote back in October), The Oathbreaker came out to be over 20,000 words long, which is a perfectly respectable novella.  Perhaps even an anchor work for a collection of short-stories?  You know, the short-stories I, uh, didn't write because apparently I was too busy writing a novella...

::cough::

(It's cool you guys- I have plenty in the archives.)

Although the feeling of triumph I have over actually managing to fight through exhaustion/distractions/time constraints/illness/etc to write at least 10 minutes a day (and often closer to 20 or even 30) every day for a month is pretty damn rewarding, I also feel like maybe I should treat myself to a more tangible prize.  Something writing-related, of course.  Maybe one of those pens that turns longhand to typed words... mmm, luxury.

Crossing the Finish Line

Praise be to Brutha, my team has crossed the official "finish line" (1,296,000 collective steps) with three days to spare.  Woo, go team!  Although let's be real, here- it's more like, "Woo, go half of my team!"  Because definitely only three of us were hitting the 8k/day goal.  But I think it's pretty awesome that two of us were spanking that goal with such enthusiasm that we managed to make up for the rest and not just finish but finish early!  Go over-achievers, go!

I am suuuuper excited not to be having to carry my phone around everywhere anymore.  Especially since I haven't worn anything with a skirt in like four weeks in my attempt to keep said phone in my pocket at all times.  All hail the return to cute work dresses!

Good Things in the Morning III

It's New Year's Eve, and this is my very last entry into the 365 Project for 2014.  And it's weird, because it really doesn't seem all that long ago that I took the first picture.

Not that a year is a long time, by any stretch of the imagination.  Well, not when you're 33, anyway.  But still.  I have at least 350 photos that I took for this project- and more when you start counting up all the ones I didn't use on a given day.  That's a lot of little moments for me to remember.  And if I didn't quite meet my goal of crowding out all the bad, well... maybe it was an impossible goal to begin with. At least I tried.  And as shitty as the worst parts of this year were (and I will say they might in fact go down as the absolute shittiest) (please dear stars let them go down as the shittiest) at least the best parts were mind-blowingly, joy-fillingly, sparkler-lightingly good.  We take the bitter with the sweet, and all that.

Speaking of sweet (and bitter) Nathan and I are now back in the 'Couve- but we had a wonderful family breakfast this morning before we took off, and my brother made us all smoothies using one of his Christmas gifts:

this is the rainbow I prefer to taste

I think the O'Richey-Os are going to ring in the New Year quietly on the couch (my voice is back, but not  necessarily strong yet), which is just fine by me.  And tomorrow will be a new day, and a new year, and I will take photos if I feel like it, or maybe I won't, but either way I'll be looking for those little moments to savor, and hopefully remembering to savor them.

On the Back Porch

I have spent the last hour catching up on the blog- I had all the photos, and I even had about half of them edited and uploaded... but I had to edit and upload the other half, as well as put them all into blog entries.  Isis has been my faithful companion as I did so:

...what if I put a pea under there?

(Please notice the double-decker bed.  She truly is a princess....)

And now it is time for delicious dinner.  Curry-rubbed chicken with cauliflower.  Heck yes.

What Was Old is New Again

Writing letters to far-off friends... others have made the observation, but I'll make it again: I'm now more excited about getting hand-written letters than I used to be about getting emails back in the early nineties.

A flourish is always in order.

I like to think it's a pretty common feeling.

Balms for the Soul

This past weekend Nathan and I (and Isis, of course) took a long-overdue trip up to Poulsbo to see our dear dear friends, Lara and Chris (and Moose, of course).

(Isis and Moose not pictured, because they are even shorter than I am.)

The last time we'd scheduled it... well, something came up.  They understood, of course, but that is past and I was super ready  to see them again.

March is a very special month for our foursome, because March is The Birthday Month.  All Caps, because All Four of us are affected.  We like to get together sometime in the middle and celebrate- preferably as Epically as possible.  Our Epic plans for this (self-made) long weekend included doing some National Park hikes... except someone (::coughcoughmeI'mthegimpyone::) managed to aggravate her knee* to the point where anything harder than a stroll seemed like a very bad idea, indeed.

So.  We kept it low-key and instead took a two-mile "nature walk" (as Lara put it) in Twanoh State Park.  The dogs loved it, although the leisurely pace was not, perhaps, their favorite (in addition to my limitations, the guys were having Camera Bonding Time, which meant lots of stopping and fiddling).  The humans loved it, too- it was really pretty, and not at all difficult.  Sometimes it's nice not to push too hard.

These dogs are lying about how tired they are.

Moose very sweetly helps Isis out with her Heavy Chin syndrome (common amongst the block-headed pit bulls of the world).

That night we went out for some wine to celebrate the birthdays- we each had two glasses, because we are crazy-indulgent that way.

CRAZY INDULGENT.

"What's that, Jenny O?  Wine?!  What happened to 'no alcohol in 2013'?"  Yes, well, we'd already agreed waaaaay back in January that our birthdays would be Special Days on which we would indulge in sugar and alcohol if we wanted to, thus relegating those substances to "special occasion" rather than "every day".

However, I have to say that after two glasses of wine (one a Riesling, one a port), I felt like such crapola the next day that maybe I am done with wine forever.  Grape wine, anyway.  Experiments must be done re:apple wine and mead, because those are my favorites and I'm not going to make any assumptions about them.  But.  Experiments must wait until next year, I suppose.

Speaking of the next day, after a delicious paleo breakfast, Lara and I decided to get our Domestic on and make organic lip balm and bath salts (not the zombifying kind).  We made a half batch of the lip balm because we were sort of getting a feel for it in anticipation of Greater Experiments later in the year (Crafts for Christmas!  Yay!)  One thing we figured out is that although we were pleased with the results (which we put into four tiny jars and one tube) we want to use less oil and more peppermint extract next time.  Also, I'm thinking perhaps coconut oil instead of almond oil.  We shall see.

The other ingredients were honey and beeswax.

You're technically supposed to wait two hours for the balm to set before you use it, but do you think that stopped me?

No it did not.

Check us out, lovely ladies with lovely, soft, and smoochable lips!

Sorry boys and girls, we're super-taken!

I don't have any pictures of the bath salts (I know, I know- you were hoping for demonstration shots.  Sorry again.) but rest assured they smelled of lavender and lemongrass and worked quite well.

Our next adventure was to plant some seeds.  This was a Big Deal for me, because as we all know, gardening is Not Exactly My Forte.  In fact it intimidates the hell out of me, so having a friend almost literally take me by the hand to guide me through some steps was sorely needed.  Lara is currently rocking some gorgeous kale...

Also Swiss Chard

...so I felt particularly safe in her work-gloved hands.  She'd already bought everything we needed, because she is the sort of thoughtful friend who says to herself, "Jenny O is not comfortable with this 'gardening' business, so I will make it as painless as possible for her!"  She'd even saved up a bunch of egg cartons so that we could just stick the little suckers straight in the ground once they've sprouted.  She is a Rock Star Urban Homesteader for sure.

I hand-labeled cartons, because I AM comfortable wielding a sharpie.

Lara fills the cartons with bat poop**.  (And some other stuff, but mostly we were giggling about the bat poop content.)

Ready for action!

This may have been my favorite part, bat poop or no.

Those teensy little things are mint seeds.  I kept mongo-ing them, so who knows whether or not they'll actually grow.

Into the bat poop, little seeds!

 So that was well and good and I came away feeling like there's hope for me yet.  That evening we all went for a nice long walk, and then came home and played Cards Against Humanity, which is one of my all-time favorite (grownup) games because I am a horrible, horrible person, and so are many of my friends.  Here is just one example of a winning combination:

"I'm sorry; I'm still laughing about child abuse!" said someone about half an hour later.  It may be a new catch-phrase.

We stayed up way too late.  So late that Lara fell asleep and I desperately wanted to, but the boys were adamant that we finish the deck and I am a sucker for proving I can keep up with the boys.  (AKA "dumb".)

The next morning we went with them to their box so we could cheer them on as they (re)did Open Workout 13.2  They both improved their scores, which was definitely something to cheer about.  As for me, I was warmly welcomed and chatted up by multiple people, even tho' I was just strolling around with a sketch book, which was awfully nice.  I met and cheered on one of Lara's friends who absolutely blew my mind with her performance, and was ridiculously sweet to me when I told her how inspiring she was.  The whole experience reminded me how fun/awful/fun CrossFit can be, so maybe I'll return in the near future...  Plus I miss making CrossFit comics...

And then, sadly, it was time to head home, so we packed up our exhausted puppy and hit the road.

Three days of wresting with Moose wears even the bounciest of Pigs out.

So that was my super-fun weekend.  How about you guys?  Do anything that repaired your soul?





*(Apparently if one has taken four months off from commuting by bike, one should not assume that one can ride as hard as one could at the end of the season.  Not without properly warming up first.  Nor should one further aggravate the knee by hyper-extending it.)

**(bat poop)

The Making of a Bib

Or, rather, not the making of the bib, per se, but the embellishing of it.

Tricks of the Trade

Last week I promised you a Process Blog, and this week I make good on that promise.  As I've mentioned before, I make bibs for people when they have babies.  And since my brother's firstborn is due in less than a month, I figured I'd better get started on the bib for my newest nephew.

It starts, as these things do, with an idea (Yes, I've been planning this since August.  Sometimes I am slow.)  Once I know what illustration I want to use, I freehand it onto the bib using an air-erase marker:

There is a reason for the patch.  A darkly humorous reason.

And then I pick out my colors, and begin to stitch.  In this instance I decided I wanted a gray and cream bunny (the colors of my childhood stuffed animal), with dark blue script (since my brother is Air Force).

Here is an idea of how long the actual stitching takes me:

80 minutes in

160 minutes in

240 minutes in (yes, that's four hours, and not consecutive because I'd go blind.)

Now at this point I knew I wanted a vegetable next to the bunny.  Originally I'd sketched in a carrot (you can just barely make it out in the 80 minutes in shot), but it seemed to me that you don't have to be particularly brave to try a carrot.  A radish, on the other hand...

Notice there is no trace of the carrot I'd drawn the day before.  Air eraseable marker, you are THE AWESOMEST.

The first few times I embroidered something, I made iron-on transfers out of my drawings, but now I find it much easier and faster just to draw directly on the fabric- and since I make a habit of doing my doodles in pen, I'm comfortable working that way, and generally end up with pretty clean lines (see above).

This is how much thread I used to do those two little green leaves.  It is also how much thread it ended up taking me to do the last, large leaf.

All in all, it took me six hours (360 minutes) to finish, which isn't so bad.

The compass star is to guide brave little bunnies home again.

The backside.  Not the messiest I've ever done, but I'm sure I could be cleaner, given more time and practice.

My handsome modeling cat.

It was good to be stitching again- it had been almost a year since the last time I did something, and it's really put me in the mood to do more.  It may be that I do stitched valentines this year... hmmm...

My Little Cockatiel

Here is a fun-fact about my husband: he has hair like an animal pelt.  Thick and lush and ridiculous.  It's so thick that it is in the habit of performing gravity-defying feats on a regular basis, to the point where I affectionately call him "my little cockatiel".

Somehow or another this came up in conversation with my mother today, and she was so amused by the mental image that she demanded an illustration.  So here you go, Mom- your son in law the cockatiel:

Long-suffering cockatiel, that is.

Simplified Babies

Sometimes I work with my mother to make patterns for stained glass.  By which I mean, sometimes she likes a drawing that I've done, and I volunteer to simplify the lines so she can make them appropriate for patterns.  I told her I'd do these last night... I didn't, so I whipped them out this morning.  Ta da!

Babies babies babies... and balls!

Why Go Sligo? Why Not!

Start: A crappy little room in Avalon House, Dublin

Finish: A charming little room at Strandhill Lodge, Strandhill, Co. Sligo

We got up this morning at 0540 so that we could catch our 0620 shuttle to the airport and be there before 0700, when we were scheduled to pick up our car.

That’s right- our car.  Today was officially Day One of our Wrong Side of the Roadtrip, starring Nathan’s ability to split his brain two ways and my ability to shut the hell up and let him drive, damn it.  We were both mostly successful at these things, and mostly forgiving of the other when they slipped up.  And, to be completely honest, it only took Nathan about fifteen minutes before his knuckles returned to a normal color, and mine only took an additional ten to follow suit…

Our first stop was the visitor’s center at Bru na Boinne.  Everything I’d come across had said that the queues could be outrageous, and that they only let in a certain amount of people each day, regardless, so one had best get there early.  Therefore, we got there early.  So early we were the first ones at the door.  So early they were not yet open.  So early we said a cheerful hullo to at least three workers on their way in.

Things to do while waiting for a Thing to open.

But we didn’t have to stand in a queue, damn it, and we were on the first tours of the day.

The bus took us up to Knowth first, which is the less well known of the three sights (Newgrange being the most well-known, Dowth the least), but pretty friggin’ awesome nonetheless.  We had a wonderfully enthusiastic tour guide, and since our tour was relatively small, I got a chance to nerd out with him over the book Temples of Stone, which I’d read in preparation for our trip and thereby recognized it when he quoted it (geekery knows no international boundaries).  The tour was approximately  thirty minutes long, which left us with about ten minutes to wander, which was not enough time at all, and I barely even got even one rock drawn and could happily have spent another hour there at least, but back on the bus we got, so we could be returned to the info center and herded onto the second bus, which took us out to Newgrange.

Ireland ROCKS!  HAH!

I was a giant fan of this tour guide, as well- her name was Lisa and her Irish accent was so thick I wanted to spread it on soda bread and eat it.  She did not have time for shenanigans, but was good natured about it, and we joked about the little kids playing fiddles (poorly) for tips down by the bus (“I believe they are relying more on their red hair and freckles than any natural talent,” I observed, to which she replied, “It’s shair tohrture!  Ye go down fer yer break an’ t’air t’ey are, screechin’ away!  We need t’get reid o’ t’em!”) (I’ve noticed many Irish seem to eschew the “th” noise.)

The tour was larger this time around (damn late-comers), which meant a rather improbable number of us squeezed our way down into the passage tomb (which is how I learned I am comfortably Neolithic-sized) and got quite cozy as they turned out the lights to do a demonstration of what happens at winter solstice (I squeezed Nathan’s fingers in the blackness and tried not to think about how many tons of earth were above my head).  And then the light came and all was well again- which, when you think about it, is not a bad experience at all if one is wanting to get a handle on Neolithic life patterns…

And then it was back once more to the info center, where we did a leisurely stroll through the exhibit before taking off in our car again, this time bound for Kells.

I’ll admit, I was excepting Kells to be just sort of a little historical site in the mud- but as it turns out it’s a little city, and a pleasant one at that.  We stopped for lunch and ran into the same problem of pubs-that-only-serve-alcohol, but the bartender at the Blackwater kindly pointed us towards the Keltic, which he assured us would have good food.

He was right.  The service was exceptionally slow, but it was friendly and the grub was tasty.  Also, as we sat there, a hurling match came on (a rather important one, if I read the spectators correctly) and I was introduced to that quintessential Irish sport.  It was fascinating, and I wished we’d been able to stay and watch a full match- or at least long enough for me to figure out what the heck was going on.  I was deeply shocked that I’d never really heard of the sport- it seemed to me that the Irish take it even more seriously than football, so how is it possible it’s escaped my notice for so many years?  I just don’t know… but it did suddenly make a certain scene from the O’Brianbooks a hell of a lot more funny (Stephen shows up to play cricket with his English shipmates, except he’s playing it like a hurling match and scaring the bejeezus out of the lot of them).

After that we walked towards some promising-looking church towers, and discovered a very pleasant little churchyard, complete with high crosses and a round tower (which I recognized from the movie).  And then it suddenly became apparent that something I’d eaten had had sneak-gluten in it, and I had to dash back to the restaurant.  Which was excellent proof that the Glutenflam I’ve been taking has not just been placebo.

From Kells it is about a two-and-a-half hour drive to Sligo, except it was a great deal longer for us because a) I made Nathan stop and take a half-hour nap and b) once he was refreshed he started pulling over for more photos.  That’s my man…

The little bed and breakfast we’re staying at here in Strandhill (just 8km west of Sligo!) is absolutely wonderful.  In fact, everything about this place is wonderful.  I’m pretty sure I’m in love.  Or possibly that’s the shot of Jameson I just took in memory of my grandmother, Jimmie, who would surely approve of my rambling ways.