From my desk to yours …
Good morning from sunny, yet smoky, Southern Ontario. The fires in Northern Quebec and Northern Ontario have sent us the gift of very hazy skies, bad air quality and the scent of burning on the breeze. It’s a very strange feeling to wake up and sit in what is usually sunset coloured light with my first coffee of the day.
This last week hasn’t been too eventful, though we did take a small adventure mid-week to go back to my hometown to attempt to look at some options for new cars and to go to the big box hardware store so we could buy a roof vent.
The new car expedition did not go well, as most car lots just do not have stock on them. I’m going to have to do my online research and then decide what I want and make phone calls to find dealerships that have them so we can get one. Here’s hoping I can make this happen in a little over a month as that is when our current lease runs out.
The hardware store adventure was good though, and we did get a roof vent, which means we can finally install the hood over the stove in the kitchen. This will mean we’ll be able to use the wok, and sear things without immediately setting off the smoke alarm, and that I will finally have lighting over the stove, so I can see what I’m doing.
In addition to putting the hood up, a further kitchen project is to replace the current one and a half sink with an actual double sink. We were able to get a replacement sink for very little money, and the hood was also on super sale, so we’ve done alright on this from a budget perspective. Once those two items are done, we can move on to a couple of bigger projects including finishing the stair opening, and the paining I want to accomplish upstairs.
In garden news, my tomatoes are thriving. We have two that much further ahead than the others, so they’re already starting to put out blooms, which is very exciting, and of the herbs I planted the other week, one pot has seedlings now, though I can’t remember what they are. It’s likely the dill, but I won’t be sure until they get a bit bigger!
Also, I woke up to the thrill of my African violet having decided to set buds and bloom. I’ve had one before and it never bloomed, and then it gave up the ghost and so when I saw this one on a clearance rack, I had to have it, and I’ve been determined to get it to flower again, and it has!
I love the deep purple colour of them. My hibiscus out front is going nuts with blooms, I think the semi-tropical heat we had last week really drove it forward. It’s chilled off a bit this week, what with the smoke and also the shift in the air after Saturday.
I continue to pull a tarot card most days, and yesterday’s was the eight of cups. Typically, a card about leaving things behind, or growing out of something and moving on, I like to read it as the opportunity to climb a new mountain. The door closes behind you as you go through it to the next thing, but the cost of growth is sometimes giving up something you were previously comfortable in. I’m taking it as confirmation that the work I’m doing now is the work I am meant to be doing and that even though I can’t go back, and can only go forward, that’s not a bad thing.
What am I reading?
Happily, I’ve been reading! I finished What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher late last week, and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine came up off hold on libby yesterday, along with Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li, so now I just have to pick one to start. I imagine I will start with Portrait of a Thief, just because I think it will be a little less involved, worldbuilding-wise.
We’ve been plotting out how to make a spot in the back of the yard where I can put a couple of chairs and a little table so I can have a little reading spot that won’t be too buggy, which I am very keen on getting set up, because there’s nothing like reading in the evening under the big shade trees with a beverage and the sound of birds.
What am I watching?
Bob’s Burgers is the go-to dinner time sitcom at the moment. I love how funny and heartwarming this show is. It’s different than other family-based sitcoms, especially the adult animation ones, because the Belchers actually like each other, and support each other, even at their weirdest. Refreshing, to be perfectly honest. I find a lot of comedy really mean-spirited, so it’s nice to find comedy that isn’t that and is also still hilarious.
I’ve also been thinking about the queerness of it as a show, because it feels like a queer show in a way that sometimes even explicitly queer tv doesn’t. Sure, Bob’s bi, that’s accepted within the canon - see the episode with the turkey - but there’s so much of this show that I feel resonates as a celebration of various kinds of queer identities both explicitly and implicitly. I don’t know if there’s any scholarship or journalism about this subject, but I’d love to read some if there is so please send it my way.
Writing (or the lack thereof)
Got my anthology piece back! Many edits, all of which are excellent. I will be focusing on that this week, and working towards the completion of it.
Chatted with some friends yesterday about the way some of us subsume stuff we’re dealing or not dealing with, as the case may be, into our writing habits. When I am obsessively writing thousands and thousands of words of fanfic, I’m usually actively avoiding something else in my life, to my own detriment. Something I’ve noticed since getting medicated, is that I’m no longer compelled to disappear into a google document for hours and hours and hours. This means that my writing time is shorter, but thanks to the medication, it feels more productive because I can focus on the task at hand instead of getting distracted by every thing else happening around me.
During the conversation, a friend said something that really resonated with me as a distillation of part of the struggle I’m having with the way my writing habits have changed. She said; “I just need to figure out how to do it sustainably instead of as a symptom” and wow, yeah. Her particular struggle was with unmanaged anxiety, and mine was the thrilling combo of being unmedicated and undiagnosed with ADHD and the capital-D Depression that goes along with the feelings of being overwhelmed and out of control at all times.
I’m not sure what the answer is here, but I have built a routine for myself where I sit down every morning for an hour and I write, or I work on writing, and that is, at least, helping set me up for sustainability.
Jami Attenberg’s column this week asked some really good questions about why writers write, and I’m going to use them to do some self-reflection and hopefully help me figure out why I do this, outside of trying to hide from the real world. The questions are as follows:
Do you ever think about why you write? Why it’s good for you? How it benefits you? How it makes you feel? Why you are committed to this act in your life?
I would encourage us all, as writers, to grapple a little with these questions this week and see what we can come up with. Please feel free to answer them in the comments if you want to share!
I’ll come back next week with some further thoughts myself.
Miscellany
Ghost Files is going on tour and several dates are sold out, so if listening to two idiots talk about ghosts and laugh at each other, is your bag, I rec getting tickets to a show near you! I’m personally going to the Vancouver one in August, so that’ll be delightful.
So 1) this is a bananas image of the moon and the ISS, and 2) the thread underneath is a great discussion about how to engage with people who think space is fake.
May this Pride month be the most fuck this shit Pride any of my fellow LGBTQ+ fam has ever had. Do not let the assholes shut you up, or shut you down. We threw bricks at Stonewall, may we continue to throw bricks today.
Love this, and especially resonate with appreciate comedy that doesn't stoop to meanness and learning to do things sustainably instead of as a symptom!
I definitely feel like my writing gives me what I don't have irl: stability, assurance, comfort, relationship, resilience, acceptance, trustworthy support... Even when I write hurt/comfort or angsty scenes within an adventure or romance, it's for the dynamic of relationship and community that comes with weathering it. Or at least, the growth and confidence to overcome it. Definitely therapeutic and revealing as a writer haha