Bob Hobart

I have a baby shower to attend next weekend, and as part of the offerings I'm bringing to lay on the altar of JRJR (my affectionate nickname for "Jeff Richey JR" even tho' I know that's not going to be his name) I started embroidering a bib today. Specifically I started embroidering it with a little hedgehog (or hedge-pig, if you're British). I must say, it's turning out to be quite adorable.

Wherefore the hedge-pig? (I'm not British, but it's more fun to say that way, isn't it?) Well, according to Nathan, his brother (that being JRSR) had a pet hedge-pig when he was younger, that went by the name of Hobart. Apparently Hobart was pretty much the worst pet ever- he didn't like to be touched, and he had the means to ensure that his preferences were respected. Furthermore, he ran all night long, which rarely does much to endear one to one's diurnal college student owner. Hobart was either given away or returned to the pet shop, but my brother-in-law retains a fondness for his species: hence the bib.

I, too, am rather fond of them. In fact, I've a track record with spiny creatures, myself. When I was in about the fifth grade my school had something called Writer's Workshop, a wonderful program which taught kids about the writing process (complete with brainstorming, first, second, and final drafts, as well as critiques of each). One of the stories my time in WW turned out was the story of Bob the Bashful Porcupine. Bob had the unfortunate habit of blushing bright red with the slightest provocation. I can't remember exactly what the plot was... although I know it ended happily: I believe with his marriage to Patricia the Porcupine, who thought his blushes to be exceptionally cute (there was even an ill-advised attempt at a sequel concerning their rainbow-hued offspring). In restrospect a blushing hedge-pig would probably be much more adorable than a porcupine, so maybe I ought to revisit the theme one of these days...

Oh, in case you're curious, here's my progress so far*:

(Quills to follow, naturally.)

*(and by so far I mean by 08/15, because that's when I had Nathan take this picture)

Dinner Guests

Tonight was an excellent night- we had our photographer friends Sam and Cory over for dinner (check out their blog here) and they brought delicious Thai basil rolls for appetizers. Nathan produced ginger fish packets for dinner, and I did my best to dazzle with pineapple ginger shakes for dessert (we got a blender yesterday and I was so excited to try it out- the last time we'd decided to buy a blender I ended up having to use the money on new tires, so this was a long time coming...)

It was so excellent to have people over for dinner, especially people we get along with so well. You probably know that I'm something of a social creature, and I really do love playing hostess- it's just that I haven't spent a lot of time living in apartments that work well as social venues. Even now we can't have more than like three (maybe four, if they don't mind wonky chairs) people over at any given time- and those people had better not be allergic to cats. The fact that we had my Mom and Dave over last week, and this week we got to have Sam and Cory... well. I'm feeling like quite the little socialite these days.

After they left Nathan and I did his night-time shot, which I think came out quite well:

By Candlelight

Swap

The willowy teenage girl crept into the house, praying that everyone else was asleep. Her alabaster skin glowed in the ambient streetlight filtering through the window, emphasizing the dark curtain of her hair.

"I. Cannot. Believe you let it happen! Tonight!" her short, freckle-faced sister hissed from the shadows. Crap. "Tonight of all nights! I cannot believe you, Zoe! How could you? How could you?!"

Zoe winced. No one did righteous indignation like Bianca. It was one of the many obvious differences in their temperaments.

"C'mon Bia, you know it's not like I make it happen,"

" 'It's not like I make it happen,' " Bianca mimicked, round face twisted into a sneer. "Well you could try a lot harder to keep it from happening! I mean, do you know what I was doing when you pulled me away?"

Zoe's fine-boned face immediately flushed.

"Um, yes. It was kind of hard for me not to notice that I was suddenly kissing Derek Wagner."

The temperature in the room immediately dropped by several degrees.

"What did you say?"

Crap. Apparently Derek had gone in for the kiss the moment Zoe's anxiety had triggered the Switch.

"Er, nothing," she backpedaled, but Bianca wasn't having it. She grabbed Zoe by the arm, short nails biting deep.

"Are you telling me," this through gritted teeth, "Are you telling me that you got my first kiss with Derek Wagner-all-star-quarterback while I was getting your dumb body down out of that tree?"

Zoe's heart-rate shot up, and they Switched. Suddenly it was her nails digging into Bianca's arm. Which technically had been the case all along, but now her consciousness was back in it's home body.

"I didn't know it was your first kiss!" she protested, immediately releasing her sister. "I thought you'd been kissing him for ages! Besides, the last time I stopped doing whatever you were doing when we Switched you got mad at me!"

"That's because you made me look like a totally spastic freak by running off the football field in the middle of halftime! Do you have any idea how long it took me to repair the damage that little stunt did to my reputation?" Bianca stomped over to a mirror to check her face. She always did this after they got their proper bodies back, as though afraid that Zoe had somehow marked it during her brief possession.

"But Bia, if I'd dodged Derek's kiss, he would have thought you didn't want him kissing you!" Zoe could hear the whine in her voice: she hated that whine. Hated that she was the timid younger sister of Bianca the Bold. Hated that it was always her fear that caused them to Switch, forever putting her sister into dangerous situations while she screwed up Bianca's life with her awkwardness. When they were little the Switching hadn't been such a big deal- sometimes it had even been fun- but now that Bianca was in high school it was getting more and more inconvenient. And Zoe just didn't know how to make it stop, short of removing her adrenal glands as Bianca had once joking suggested. At least, Zoe hoped it had been a joke.

Stairs to Nowheresville

She dreamed of musicians.

Not the sorts of musicians most girls her age dreamed of- those fey creatures covered in glittering grit, prowling upon stage, burning so brightly you could barely look at them before they burned out on toxins or tyranny or a bullet to the brain. They had their place, rock stars, but that place was not in her dreams.

No, she dreamed of a boy- a faceless boy, but a real boy- who might pluck at strings that would resonate with the vibrations in her soul. A boy whose ability on the guitar extended beyond a painful, stumbling butchery of Stairway to Heaven. A boy who played because he had to play, not because it might impress a girl.

A boy like that she could respect. A boy like that she could love. A boy like that would know that you can't buy your way out of this mundane life in this shit-hole town. A boy like that would know you have to play your way out, and keep playing, keep strumming, keep your head full of the music so that there wasn't room for anything else... but until he came she was a single note in need of some serious harmony. Until he came she couldn't progress, could only repeat her solitary cry, over and over. Until he came she wasn't music, she was just noise. And so she sat by the crumbling brick walls of her world and she fingered imaginary chords on green creeping vines, and she dreamed.


(Stairs to Nowhereseville)

A Brief Pause

Extended typing is proving to be painful in light of this whole clavicle thing (which turns out to be squooshed-nerve-related). I'm taking a hiatus on the blog for a few days to give it a rest, but don't worry- I'm long-handing stuff and will post it when typing for longer than 30 seconds no longer makes me whimper.

Engage Whine

This should have been a really good day- and I'm not saying it was a bad day, mind you, but there are definite changes I might have requested.

It started out with me going to the doctor with Elizabeth, for one of her "Dude I'm Totally Pregnant" checkups. That was neat and interesting, especially listening to the baby do what I'm pretty sure were spin-kicks in her uterus. Probably much more fun for me to listen to than for her to experience. Anyway while I was there with her my boss called to let me know not to come into work- the air conditioning had broken again and the coldest part of the office was like 90 degrees. Yech. But yay unanticipated three-day weekend! (I mentioned to Elizabeth that I had written just such a thing into my story the night before, and she told me I'd better start writing more! I suggested a lotto-winning scene, and said she thought that would do nicely...)

Faced with such freedom, Elizabeth and I elected to hit the Pig and pick up some cinnamon rolls (we are thrifty- we got five for the price of what one would cost at a specialty shop!), then came back over to my place to make it smell good. After that indulgence she headed back home, and I found myself overcome with tiredness... not to mention that my stupid clavicle started to flair up again.

It's been aching since about Thursday or so, but today the pain crept all the way up my neck to the back of my right ear, and all the way down my arm to my wrist, and all the way down my back to the bottom of my shoulder-blade. What's worse is that the pain was starting to come in waves accompanied by nausea, which is never pleasant. This combined with the sudden sleepiness resulted in me curling up in a pathetic ball on the couch while Nathan worked, and eventually crawling into bed to sleep for a few hours. (Nathan helpfully let the cats into the bedroom to give me a little fuzz therapy- they were very sweet.)

I got out of bed around four and realized that it would probably behoove me to get someone to cover my six o'clock BodyFlow class, since there was no way in hell I'd be able to do plank or any other weight-bearing exercise. I started putting out pleas, but unfortunately it was so last minute that everyone was already committed to something else. So I slapped on a pain patch (left over from the Great Foot Incident of 2009), popped more pain pills, firmly told my nausea to shut the hell up, and went to go teach my class.

Fortunately the pain lessened enough that I was able to teach, although it was low options for everyone! Fortunately I have a really great class of regulars- I explained what was going on with my shoulder region and they were very understanding. They even teased me about running to get a trash can or something if I looked like I was going to hurl. I reassured them that I have an Iron Jaw.

By the end of class the pain started to flare back up again (along with the really weird nausea), but I was so grateful it had stayed low for the majority of the hour that I almost didn't care. The thing is, at its worst the pain is what I would call maybe a seven, so the nausea is weird to me because normally nausea is something reserved for like a nine or ten. It's less like the pain is causing the nausea, and more like the nausea is just accompanying the pain, if that makes any sense.

Anyway I shouldn't whine so much, because at least I have a very sweet husband who has offered to massage it (he has theories regarding nerve pinching). And at least I didn't have to sit in a horrible hot office while dealing with it. And I got to hear my nephew's heart beat all crazy funky whoa, and had tasty cinnamon rolls with my sweet sister-in-law. So really it was a good day, and the pain can just suck it.

(...and now for a new pain patch...)

Blue Menagerie Pt XII

(Hey, remember these guys? Even tho it's been, like, two months? Sure you do! Nathan and I hung out with Tim and Meredith today, and Tim made sad noises about Blue Menagerie, so I sat down and forced myself to write until the block gave way. It's a little rough, but at least it's there, damn it. Hopefully it will continue to flow...)



“Okay, Zeb, here’s what’s up; we need to do some reconnaissance,” Zeb cocked his head to one side and let out a questioning chirp. Sallie reached over and rubbed the flat plane between his ears. “Sorry. It means we need to go back to the menagerie and do some spying, try to figure out the best way to steal that amulet from the Horrible Woman. As far as I can tell, she uses it to steal life force from kids with blue eyes- and that’s probably why she doesn’t age. Although why she keeps you in animal form to do it, I have no idea…” She gave her head a violent shake, as though to bring her mind back on track. “But that doesn’t matter! What matters is figuring out how to get the amulet and either use it or destroy it. So that probably means another late night for me.” She hesitated, and then continued. “It… might be best for you to stay here, Zebbie. I don’t want to give her a chance to get you back.”

Zeb let out a string of lemur epithets and flung himself onto his sister, wrapping his arms firmly around her neck. His tail tickled her nose and Sallie couldn’t help but grin into his fur.

“Well I didn’t think you’d take me up on it, but I thought I’d better offer. Now let go so I can breathe!” Zeb released his stranglehold, still grumbling. Rather than return to where he’s previously been sitting, however, he moved to sit on her stretched-out legs and glared at her as though daring her to leave him behind.

“Right. Well, we know that she stays with the menagerie at night- or was the night I rescued you an exception?” Zeb shook his head to the negative. “Good. At least we don’t have to worry about tracking her anywhere else. We just have to figure out whether or not she ever takes that amulet off. Did you ever see her without it?” Again the negative head-shake. “Rats. Well, maybe she takes it off to sleep. Or shower.”

Quick as a flash, Zeb darted forward, poked Sallie in the chest, and was out the windowsill and into the tree before she could react. He opened his mouth in a grin.

“Zebbie, what are you-” but again he darted forward, plucked at the front of her shirt, and darted away again. This time he shook his fist at her meaningfully. Sallie was utterly confused.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” She guessed. Zeb made and impatient noise, sprang forward, snatched the pen out of her hand, and sprang away- again, all before she could react.

“Why are you stealing my pen, you weird little- oh!” She suddenly felt very foolish. “You’re saying it doesn’t matter if she takes it off or not, aren’t you? You think you’re fast enough to steal it!” Zeb nodded his head vigorously, climbed down out of the tree and held her pen out to her. Sallie took it and stared at her lemur-brother while biting her lip.

“I don’t know, Zeb. That seems awful dangerous. If it’s so easy to steal from her, why didn’t you just do it before?” Zeb shrugged his shoulders, an awkward gesture in his current form, and began bathing his tail. “And anyway, didn’t she put you to sleep the night I rescued you from the menagerie? What’s to keep her from doing it again if she sees you?”

Zeb paused in his grooming, pointed at her chest and let out a noise that sounded like ee-aow!

“Me? You- what? You expect me to distract her while you grab the amulet or something?” Zeb nodded and gave a little chattering purr.

“Well how am I supposed to do that?” Zeb stared at her hard, then returned to his tail.

“Great,” muttered Sallie, “Just great. You’re the one with a plan, and I’m the one who doesn’t speak lemur.”

***

In all the excitement of finding Zeb again, Sallie forgot that it was a three-day weekend; she didn’t remember until Mommy happened to mention it at dinner that evening.

“Any big plans for your day off, sweetie?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t grunt, dear. I asked if you have anything special planned for tomorrow, since you don’t have to go to school.”

“Oh, um,” Sallie’s mind whirled. She had thought she’d have to wait until Friday to break back into the menagerie, but not having school in the morning meant that she could try again tonight! “Nothing really: thought I might go to the library for a while.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time there, lately,” Daddy said as he cut into his grilled portabella. “Working on a project? Or just found a new obsession?”

“Er- new obsession,” she said. “I’ve been reading about our town’s history in the newspaper archives. Today I found some articles from back in the 1800s!” She knew this would go over well with her father, an amateur history sleuth himself: plus it had the added benefit of being somewhat true.

“Excellent!” Daddy beamed. “That’s my girl.”

“Well don’t get so caught up in research that you neglect your homework,” Mommy said.

“Yes ma’am.” Sallie shoved a giant fork-full of potatoes into her mouth in an attempt to avoid further discussion. It worked, because Daddy turned to Mommy and asked if she was making any satisfying progress on her latest piece, which led into a long conversation between the two of them about the properties of red glass. Sallie spent the rest of the meal silently planning that night’s adventure.