What makes you a Wicked Girl?

And so are you.

I'm a Wicked Girl because I quit a stable (if awful) job to go and follow my passion.

I'm a Wicked Girl because, a few years before that, I got out of a marriage that didn't work any more, one that gave me a place to live, food to eat, and money to spend -- but was killing my soul --  and struck out on my own.

I'm a Wicked Girl because I've stopped doing work that doesn't feed my soul. Because I've rejected the stability and predictability of 9-5 for going to bed when I'm tired, getting up when I'm rested, and letting the money come when it will...because I'm doing what I love, and that's worth more than a million kagillion bucks.

I'm a Wicked Girl because, in a few months, I'm gonna leave behind the idea of even having a stable address or a home that stays in one place, and strike out in an RV, living on the road, travelling as I please.

What makes you a Wicked Girl?

When you buy from an independent artist...

[Image reads: When you buy from an independent artist you are buying more than just a painting or a novel or a song. You are buying hundreds of hours of experimentation and thousands of failures. You are buying days, weeks, months, years of frustration and moments of pure joy. You are buying nights of worry about paying the rent, having enough money to eat, having enough money to feed the children, the birds, the dog. You aren't just buying a thing, you are buying a piece of heart, part of a soul, a private moment in someone's life. Most importantly, you are buying that artist more time to do something they are truly passionate about; something that makes all of the above worth the fear and the doubt; something that puts the life into the living.]

Thank you.

Thank you for buying food that I can feed my cats, gas for my car, popcorn for my nightly snack. Thank you for paying to replace that belt that squeaked every time I started my car, for the medications for Emily's autoimmune disorder, for the special food Chocolate needs to eat. Thank you.

Thank you for paying me to play with scents, to layer oils until the texture is just right, to mix salts and test and mix salts and test and mix salts and test until the bath salts are PERFECT. Thank you for giving me ideas for soaps, and then buying them (by the truckload).

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make my money, and live my life, in the way that I want, rather than in working a soulless job for someone else, whiling away the hours until the weekend, until retirement, resenting every moment.

Thank you for helping me put the life into my living.

Thank you.

Taking the slow way home...

I've always been a fan of taking the back ways -- but one who almost never actually does so. Back in the mists of time, that was because I was involved with someone who always felt like he had to be in a hurry (and, as a result, was always late and/or forgetting something); more recently, out of habit, or guilt, or the (unfortunate) feeling of being in a hurry, myself.

The idea's stuck with me, though. It's one of the reasons I want to take to the road full-time as soon as I can manage it. I've taken a few spectacular side-trips (the one to the Grand Canyon was particularly memorable) but most of the time I find myself thinking 'I'll take that little side road...just as soon as I have the RV. But not yet.' And then hurrying along the main roads, taking the quickest way to wherever I'm going.

I broke out of that thinking a few days ago, though, on the way home from an event in western Maryland. I was taking the fastest way home -- I68 to 70 to 81 to 83 to the Turnpike -- and happened upon US 11. Which, as I know from other adventures, parallels I81 for nearly all of 81's length, but in a much more charming, roundabout fashion.

'But what about all the stuff you need to do when you get home?' asks my traitor mind. Except that, tired as I am after a weekend event, I know I won't do much more than pull the meltable stuff out of the car, stand under the shower until I'm clean-ish, and catch up on email.

'You're so tired...you've got to get home as quick as you can, before you fall asleep!' Only it's the highway that makes me drowsy, all the long featureless miles of it.

'You can't afford all the gas to go home the long way!' But avoiding the turnpike also avoids several dollars in tolls. And...aren't there things more important than a few bucks worth of gas, anyway?

Traitor mind vanquished, I proceeded up Route 11, and thence to Route 30, through Amish country, Gettysburg, and right past Dutch Wonderland, a real gem of backroads Pennsylvania kitch. I got home an hour later than I would have otherwise...and had a lovely time. I'll be doing this again.

How do you take a little time from your busy life, and take the slow way home? How could you add a little of this to your life?

Wicked Girls. Saving Ourselves.

I really haven't been doing new-product blog posts for a while now. I've had a couple of reasons...

1) When I post a new item it shows up on Facebook and Twitter and on the front page automatically anyways. And,

2) Nobody reads the damn things.

So now I'm doing a new-product post. Only this isn't just a regular 'check out the new thing' post, because I'm also talking about the song that saved my life.

"For we will be wicked and we will be fair
And they'll call us such names, and we really won't care,
So go, tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes,
There's a place they can go if they're tired of chains,
And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost,
But we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost --
We won't take our place on the shelves.
It's better to fly and it's better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves."
-- Seanan McGuire, Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves

Overly dramatic, you say? To that I reply: Whatever. This song has gotten me through a lot of ugly stuff, and for that, I'll love it forever.

You've probably seen me talking about Wicked Girls before. But what's a Wicked Girl? What am I on about, anyway?

We're wicked -- we don't follow The Rules just because they're The Rules. We don't blindly do what society says is right, just because They Said So. We do our thing -- which might be what society says to do, or it might not, but it's what we need to be doing, regardless of what anyone else says.

"Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free.
So do as you like -- we're determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves."

We're saving ourselves, instead of waiting for Prince Charming -- or that lottery ticket -- to save us. We're doing it all our damn selves. We're walking our own roads -- not those others have paved for us, confidently expecting that we'll tamely walk down them, tamely follow the rules they've taught us since we were little.

And the rules that we live by are simple and clear:
Be wicked and lovely and don't live in fear --

And from all of this has come...soap. Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves Soap, to be precise. Rose, myrrh, and cinnamon — bitter beauty, with a hint of spice.

Little altars everywhere.

Everyone has a place that's sacred to them, and every place there is, is sacred to someone.

Some people find the sacred in buildings set aside for it -- churches and cathedrals, mosques and synagogues, temples and shrines.

Others feel it in things of beauty, or of deep meaning to them -- a musician in the sound of a symphony, an artist in her paints.

Others still find it in nature -- the deep green woods, the sweeping plains, the heights of the mountains.

That's me, nature girl that I am. And when I really need to renew, refresh, re-start, I head outside. And I wanted to celebrate this.

I've been thinking a lot about altars recently -- go ahead and read those links, I'll still be here when you get back -- and the two ideas came together Wednesday, as I hiked the woods of Evansburg Park here in Worcester.

The path I walked is a mile loop, long enough to lose myself for a while. And when the mood took me, when it felt right, I stopped to build an altar.

I built them under trees and on stumps, on cut branches and logs and stones.

I used what I found within arms' reach or a few steps, chose what caught my eye and lingered in my hands. Moss and stones and nuts and feathers, twigs and leaves and the earth itself.

I was drawn especially to the logs and cut stumps -- wanting, perhaps, to heal the scars left in the earth.

I don't know if any of them are still there. I suspect that some, at least, have already been carried off by the wind, or by opportunistic squirrels.

It doesn't matter. They're not there for posterity. It was the making of them that was important, not their permanence or the lack of it.

Where do you find the sacred? And do you build altars?

Today they were helping with the photography...only not.

Helpful cats are helpful. (Emily's been sleeping in there daily. For weeks. The cat hair doesn't bear thinking about.)

(Also note the mess. That's been handled, at least. The cats, not so much.)

Note the cranktastic ears. Also the thoroughness with which she's embedded herself into the cables. I'm not even sure how she did that. (Or how she got out afterwards without bringing it all with her.)

YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE THE FLASHY THING. IN MY FACE. MOM. THIS IS UNCOOL.

Bless em. (or is that 'bless their hearts'?)

He's a big help. Just ask him.

And for once, I'm not talking about Loiosh.

Apparently I needed to sort my jars of herbs and infusions.

...or at least they all needed to be moved. Riley was very careful with each jar, and a good thing, too, because I was mostly laughing too hard to catch anything if he'd dropped it.

Note his sippy cup, placed carefully among my herbs.

He helped with the filing, too. (I guess the sippy cup is an important part of the whole 'helping' process.)

Wow, do I love that kid. Best Nephew Ever.

Samson, Redux

No great revelations here, and it's not a year yet since he passed, but I found some pictures of Samson that I wanted to share.

Buddy's Bar-B-Q, down in Knoxville, delivers their various meals in lovely boxes shaped like (and the perfect size for) kitty houses. Wade had at one of them with a box knife to add a door and some windows for my boys, and they all enjoyed it, but Samson? He loved the thing.

It was his hidey-hole, his Sekrit Lair. He'd lurk inside, burst out to ambush Loiosh or Chocolate. Or he'd just curl up inside and pretend the rest of the world (especially those humans) wasn't there. It was his safe place, and his favourite napping spot.

I miss my Samson. I wish Emily had gotten to meet him, too. I think he'd've loved her just as much as he loved Loiosh.

Project Log: Wrist Rest Cover

I have a wrist rest for my keyboard -- as do most folks who type a lot. It's the older style, without the gel, and they're difficult to find these days. I plan to keep this one forever.

But, alas, the plasticized 'fabric' it's covered with does a number on my skin if they touch. Which they do, see, because I use the thing.

So I had this solution. I took a scrap of linen and wrapped it around the wrist rest, and attached it neatly with rubber bands, and figured I'd come up with a more permanent solution later.

...that was probably five years ago. So it got to looking like this (fair warning: gratuitous cat picture):

I finally got sick of this last weekend, just before the trip to the mountains with my family, so I gathered my materials and laid my Plans.

I have an old, beat-up flannel shirt that once belonged to my dad. I wore it until its holes had holes, then kept it for sewing projects, because the fabric was so soft. I've already used part of it to cover my mouse pad, but I didn't think to take pictures of the project. Suffice to say it came out looking pretty good.

I used one sleeve for the wrist rest, since it was just the right length:

I knew if I simply wrapped the wrist rest in the flannel it'd slide all over my desk, so I had to leave the grippy part on the bottom uncovered. Instead of wrapping the fabric all the way 'round I folded it over and pinned it to the bottom edge of the wrist rest, and started whip-stitching it on, like so:

I didn't sew all the way to the end. I knew I was going to have to fold it over neatly somehow, and I wasn't sure how yet.

Instead of dealing with that, I turned it over, pulled the fabric tightly across the top, and pinned and sewed as before.

Eventually my fingers got tired -- it's hard to pull a needle through something as dense as a wrist rest -- and I experimented with the ends, finally coming up with this, which turned out pretty neat:

Over the weekend (and with plenty of breaks for another project, about which more later) I got the rest of it stitched up. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Here's a view of the bottom, with the grippy part still quite available to keep the thing in place on my desk.

And here it is back in use (cat optional). You can see my mouse pad, covered in the same fabric, to the upper right:

It's more comfortable for my wrists, I don't have to worry about the rubber bands breaking and flying across the room (which used to happen disturbingly regularly), and wow, does it look good.

Up to the Mountains

Not Colorado's mountains, alas. But the Appalachians are pretty, too, and even more importantly I got to spend the weekend with my family.

My Aunt Ann has an absolutely beautiful, luxurious cabin in the mountains, and she's generous enough to share with us from time to time. We went up there last weekend -- me, my mother, my sister, my nephew, and of course Loiosh -- and had a wonderful time.

Riley wanted to see his picture in the viewscreen of my camera, but he doesn't yet understand that I have to take his picture first, so there were some Unnecessary Closeups:

Riley and Mom spent a bunch of time playing with beads -- or, as I like to call it, 'sewing practice':

Mom made dinner Friday night (her wonderful lasagna), and I cooked on Saturday -- an African-inspired peanut stew that I really ought to post the recipe for sometime. We took a few walks in the (very, very cold) woods, got plenty of naps (my sister especially enjoyed hers), and spent some time in our favourite hobbies -- Mom and Aunt Ann doing crosswords, and I got in some sewing (about which more later).

And Loiosh spent most of the weekend (when not being chased around by Riley) napping atop the couch.

My sister got artistic with her iPhone -- I think this was Instagram? Or one of those? Either way, it's a beautiful portrait of my boy.

All in all, a lovely weekend, and a lovely break.

Gratitude

Remember that 'depression' thing?

Surprised by how long it took me to get around to that 'gratitude' thing?

...okay, so sometimes it takes me a little bit to catch on.

• So I've got this kitten. Who's almost a cat, these days. And oh, she loves me.


• I get to see my nephew ALL THE TIME.


• Free rent. And utilities. Also the fact that it's been almost two months and my mother and I still haven't killed each other.


• Did I mention the cats? I take Loiosh to my mom's store once a week to help keep an eye on Riley. And he puts up with it.


• There's a laundry room right in the house. No laundromats!


• I've gotten some truly awesome sewing projects done (about which more later).


• Getting back in touch with old friends. A lot of them. Like, zillions.


• Also, best nephew ever.


• My whole family is right the heck here. RIGHT HERE.


• Weekends at the cabin in the mountains.


• Sometimes my mom cooks, and I don't have to.


• Also, she really likes my cooking.

So yeah...it'll do. It'll do.