beetiger

I just made a new batch of zukoh (body incense) to put in pretty little metal tins for Harvest Home Gathering next weekend. I tested it out on my palms and now my hands smell awesome.

When I stayed at my inlaws at Christmas last year, the first night I was there, I woke up with a horrible wheezingful shortness of breath. Sheets were changed, down comforters that don't really get washed were removed, and in a few hours everything weas fine and I was breathing okay.

Last night we stayed there again, in a different room. This morning I woke up short of breath again. Not enough to go to a doctor or anything, but uncomfortable and scary and kind of maybe I think like what some of you with asthma might experience. A whole day, and going home, and some hot showers later, and it really hasn't gone away. I'm distressed and uncomfotable and still kind of scared.

*whine*

Seriously considering going to Midwest Fur Fest this year. Any of you planning to be there?

Had a reasonably nice day with my family at Dia:Beacon. Lots of sparse conceptual art featuring mirrored surfaces, which makes me feel kind of fat and stupid as much as anything else. I like abstract art okay, but I'm not big on conceptual art. Strangely, Rhys more than once seems to have stumbled upon the concepts featured in the artists statements on the pockets on the walls when he asked things about the art, leading me to believe that he's much smarter than me. (R: Why those are all grey? It's like mixing black and white, but then it's not black or white. V: *stares at artist statement, which goes on about the "Neither/Nor" concept that the large greyish reflective panels anchored to a wall are supposed to express* *boggles*)

Have eaten way too much fat and sugar vs. everything else in the last week or so. Right now my head hurts and my back hurts and my ankles hurt.and I'm cranky and exhausted and can't figure out why. Very tempted to go to bed now and set an alarm to wake up when the BPAL update goes live around 3 am.

I'm thinking of adding a product to my "Roll Your Own Incense" kit line in time for the fall vending season/holiday shopping season. This would be similar to my Deluxe Kit, except instead of having 5 basic (single herb) scents, it would have five complex blends designed with magical purposes. The idea is that the formulation would already be keyed to the right purpose, but the magician/witch/whatever could add their specific intent to the incense as they rolled it. The blends would be herbal/all-natural, just like my other kits, so they'd be kind of different than most of the commercial magical incense out there.

So now I'm trying to decide which five purposes should be included in the kits. Would you do me the kindness of sharing your opinion?

[Poll #1044771]

projectmothra and I had a lovely afternoon with my old friend/girlfriend/bard_bloom's family friend Barbara this afternoon. She's just moved to the Boston area from DC to start graduate work at Tufts, and she's settling in to a lovely house in Medford, with a charming housemate and a cozy front yard, on a street that made my Prius' transmission cry. (Said Prius also hit 100,000 miles on the way there.)

Tonight (and for the next two nights), we're at bard_bloom's brother's house, and we're planning to spend the day tomorrow with projectmothra's cousins, before joining a random cool selection of people for dinner. (Want to join us too? Drop me a line.)

I'm trying not to stress out about the people we aren't managing to see, or any of the plans that have fallen through. It's pretty low-cost and low-effort to be here, and we're mostly here since there's no reason for us to be at home this week, so I need to remember that.

I seem not to be able to put myself to bed at 10:00, despite the rest of the household being fast asleep. So, hi there, internets! It's a little frustrating to be here in Boston and not out with some of you nightbirds, but again, not really the purpose of the visit.

A few things came together today. I was going to bake cookies with projectmothra today, since it was overcast and I was in a kitchen mood. Then I came across this recipe, and I realized that I'd never actually made anything yeasted with projectmothra before, and also that I had a can of red bean paste sitting in my pantry and beckoning to me.

So, we made steamed red bean buns. I talked projectmothra through a simple explanation of waking up yeast. I got a nontrivial upper body workout kneading dough for fifteen minutes until it was shiny and elastic. We played board games between rising steps.

They came out incredibly well, slightly off white and maybe a touch doughier than bakery/restaurant ones I've had, but otherwise more or less perfect. They were fluffy in the middle, with an elastic skin, and they didn't unfold in the steamer and leak filling.

Here's a picture of my buns:

Red Bean Steamed Buns

I'm strangely proud of myself. Also full of buns.

Okay, I'm having a declutter attack, so I'm slashing prices on the BPAL sale to near-giveaway levels. Please let me mail these to you in big handfuls. Cheap bottles, $3 LE imps, $1 GC imps. Also, I'm happy to accept trades for non-physical items. Poetry, nude pictures, usericons, stuff like that.

Please look!

...on a sensible project, or just a big waste of time, but I just went through the big box of BPAL stuff I hadn't tried for a quick bunch of sniff-the-vial triage, and I now have about 80 imps I'm ready to get rid of.

I'll post them in the usual places tomorrow, probably.

My nose is tired. Flomp now.

projectmothra and I went raspberry picking yesterday, and managed to collect two pounds of berries in the heat. I'm really enjoying Rhys' company these days; he's really becoming a little person, interesting to talk to, and someone I can interact with rather than just constantly worrying about. We were in a big field of bramblebushes, and it didn't matter that much if he wanted to be in a part of it where I couldn't quite see him.

A few weeks ago, he started all of a sudden with "why" questions. Some are the easy kind, science bits that I happen to know about. Some are the annoying preschooler kind, the kind that need to find rationales for house rules and circle on to themselves over and over, or the kind that find me constantly saying "Well, I made a mistake." "They made a mistake." "Probably just a mistake." It makes my world seem klutzy and careless, really. Some are complicated and interesting, and obviously showing that his little brain is doing a lot of synthesis, such as the first one he asked me in the car yesterday, on the way to berry picking. "Why if a cat is sick you take them to the veterinarian, but if a deer is sick then it is food for a wolf?"

In the last few days, he's moved into "how things work" questions. Luckily for me, a lot of them are about how various foods are made, which is a topic in which I have a decent amount of expertise. I did quite a bit of handwaving about how you build an airplane so it can fly. And we talked about doing research or experiments to find out the answer to things. And sure enough, I'm having the first round of the kind of questions about babies that make you have to listen carefully about exactly what the question is, so you don't overexplain. (In his case, he's mostly worried that since newborn babies don't really know how to do anything, how can they know how and when to get out of their mommy and be born?)

I'm willing to deal with the nightly round of "Why do little boys need more sleep than grownups?", balanced with the pleasure of watching his mind wake up.