(no subject)

Sooooo there is painting happening in my place of employment. Today (and yesterday when I wasn't there) it was down at Their End. I had to go down to Their End about eleven for a thing, spent maybe five minutes down there, and you would not believe the headache. It is twenty of one, I have been out of the building for forty minutes, and the headache has not quit or even lessened all that much.

They are supposed to be painting Our End tomorrow and Saturday. While I signed up for working Saturday, you don't know how tempted I am to go "fuck the rest of this work week, it's crochet time". I'm tempted to take bets on whether I get far enough into the building tomorrow to put my purse down on my desk. I mean, obviously I will, assuming I don't preemptively call off. And I really shouldn't preemptively call off. But if I walk past fresh paint on the way into the building, I am staying in the building exactly long enough to get my manager's okay to leave, to fill out my leave slip, and to email my manager's boss to say not working Saturday after all here's why.

At least my stomach has settled enough that deviled eggs are not a Hell No. Because deviled eggs are best, and there were ten when I got home. Now there are five. :-D

I really want to draw tarot cards tonight but my head. :(

(no subject)

You know, I've been seeing stuff around about Little Free Libraries, and it just now occurred to me to go see if there are any nearby.

Not a one in my county.

I wonder if I can fix that. :-D

(ten to one the homeowner's association won't let me, even if my parents are okay with the idea of a baby library in their front lawn, but it is worth inquiring!)

ETA: emailed Dad. "HOA will absolutely refuse. We are not legally allowed to run a business out of our home, and they will not approve buildings other than a specific shed in the back yard." Who said anything about a business? But them not approving the structure itself is certainly a problem. *sulk*

ETA2: tried to get HOA contact info to at least hear directly from them that no. but Dad said he doesn't care whether they allow it because he doesn't want any involvement with it, and of course I need permission from both parents to put the thing up because it's their property. :(

dear jukebox DJ

My AO3 name is EllieMurasaki, though please gift the gift to my pseud AlexSeanchai. I am requesting fanfiction for all of my requests, with the alternate possibility of art for "Q.U.E.E.N.", "How Much Salt", and "Shee An Gannon".

First, a bit about what I like: Ladies being awesome. Bechdel passing. People of color being awesome. Queer people being awesome. Nonbinary characters being awesome. Femslash, het, slash, poly, gen. Porn, pornless shippy fic, gen. (Obviously I am not asking you to provide all my likes at once.) Competence kink. Nonperfect people having nonperfect relationships (whether familial, platonic, romantic, or sexual) but all parties are good people trying to make the relationship work as best they know how. Ordinary people caught in extraordinary events. Worldbuilding! If you're leaning porny: bondage, body modification, endurance, nipple play (okay, really breast play, but kink_wiki doesn't have a tag for that), sensation play, temperature play, impact play with the emphasis on play, toys toys toys, soft sensuous things, and writing. And if you're leaning porny but not sure who to lean porny with, I like femslash best.

Things I dislike: Underage. Non-con. Anything sexy involving eating or excreting (though if you want to write food porn in the sense of conveying what a tasty meal the characters are having, go to town). Disrespectful treatment of [insert marginalized group here]. Cross-generational sexual and/or romantic relationships, though if an involved character does not, in my head, have an age, then it won't bother me as long as all the involved characters are clearly adult. I can't really explain any better than that; this makes about as much sense to me as it does to you. Sorry about that.

Specifics:

Abraham's Daughter — Arcade Fire
Just as he saw her
raised for the slaughter
Abraham's daughter raised her bow
"How darest you, child, defy your father?"
"You'd better let young Isaac go!"

The Akedah—however one interprets it—was pivotal in the development of the Abrahamic religions. How did that development change given that Abraham's nameless daughter (ffs what did her mother call her? what did she call herself?) intervened? Come to that, is the daughter Rule 63 Ishmael or is Ishmael a sibling of hers, and if the latter, who is her mother, Hagar or Sarah?

House of Stone and Light — Dartmouth Decibelles
Holy lady
Show me my soul
Tell me of that place
Where I must surely go
Old man waiting
At the gates for me
Give me the wisdom
Give me the key

I feel like there's potential for two powerful stories here. Flip sides of a coin, really. One is an American woman going to Tibet to find herself or healing or something, or perhaps literally her soul (I must go there to find my soul yeah), and one is a Tibetan woman who Does Not Appreciate the Western tourism appropriation no-work-all-results gimme-gimme-gimme deal.

Q.U.E.E.N. — Janelle Monáe feat. Erykah Badu
March to the streets 'cuz I'm willing and I'm able
Categorize me, I defy every label
And while you're selling dope, we're gonna keep selling hope
We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope
Will you be electric sheep?
Electric ladies, will you sleep?
Or will you preach?

TIME-TRAVELING REBELS. "Project Q.U.E.E.N., a musical weapons program of the twenty-first century". Tell me more about that. Feel free to bring in the rest of Monáe's body of work as background information. And I'm pretty sure Monáe's character in here is queer: Say is it weird to like the way she wear her tights?

How Much Salt — Seanan McGuire
How much salt to bind a man? Tell me, Mama, tell me
How much sea and how much land? Tell me, Mama, tell me
How much water, how much sand, how much salt to bind a man,
Bring him here at my command, tell me, Mama, tell me

This girl—a mermaid, I presume—has the strangest idea of mother-daughter bonding. And the mother has clearly already been through the same sort of thing that the daughter is wishing to do. Show me either of those stories, or how both stories twine together. (Consent issues ahoy! Step careful, though—dubious consent is okay, lack of consent is not.)

Fire in the Head — Sharon Knight
To win the kiss of the gifted ones
We risk our lives on the mountain front
There's some wake mad, and some wake dead
And some will rise with a fire in their head

There is never enough Cadair Idris legend.

Shee An Gannon — The CRAIC
Without a word myself I turned
The druids' land progressed
To seek the sword of purest light
And find the cloak of darkness
The stone of strength I sought as well
For strength I'll need for fighting
With these three I rode to the sea
I am the Shee An Gannon!
Hey!

This song sounds like a blend of the Shee An Gannon story from Joseph Jacobs and the Perseus and Andromeda story, with a good strong drum rhythm behind it. I want more of the story. What did the princess think of all this?

(no subject)

Made it through two hours of work today despite paint stink. Not working tomorrow, absolutely not, no way in hell. My head will probably still hurt tomorrow morning without the assistance of fresh paint fumes.

(no subject)

Oh! thought I an hour or so ago. I have all this free time tonight! I should bake something! Hmm, we have many muffin recipes... *flipflipflip* Is that a recipe for cheese danish muffins?

And behold, it was so.

Except we had about a quarter of an 8oz pack of cream cheese remaining in the fridge, when the twelve-muffin recipe called for one 4oz pack. And it is difficult to halve a recipe calling for a single egg. (I sort of managed by beating the egg and then dividing it between bowls.) And the cream cheese / lemon juice / sugar mix is supposed to be filling—fill each muffin thing in the tin halfway with batter, add a tablespoon of the cream cheese stuff, fill the rest of the way with batter—but I followed those instructions and I don't think any of my filling actually ended up filling anything. I'm pretty sure it all ended up burnt to the muffin tin. There certainly didn't seem to be any cream cheese in the one I ate. I also got muffin tops rather too brown, because I made the mistake of thinking the six-muffin tin would fit fine in the toaster oven.

And this, gentlefolks, is why I will never win Cupcake Wars.