I'm still DOING NaNoWriMo, i'm just way behind schedule. Hey, there's an extra weekend in November just because of the way the calendar fell this year. That's plenty of time to do this. I just gotta find some time. I may be able to catch up tomorrow, if nothing insane comes up.

Here, to inspire y'all, or make you run screaming, I'm going to post an excerpt of my novel-in-progress. This one of the new bits, not the polished bits, so it's not edited or anything, and might have some typos. But there it is. A new novel in the making.
Er, this is kind of as far as I got, too. But I know what's supposed to happen next. I just have to... write it. Which is the hard part.


The weather turned miserable in the afternoon, and we stopped to set up camp, rigging as weatherproof a shelter as we could manage and pulling the blankets, packs, and tack off the horses to keep it all dry. Their coats, unencumbered, would shed water well enough in the steady drenching rain.
I seized my opportunity to test Feliks's leadership, which was part of my mission on this particular patrol: he was to be groomed to replace me in these southward territories, and free me to return to the capital, my martial training complete, to become my brother's Protector, as he in turn was groomed to take our father's place as King. It would not be long now until Galjis grew old enough to turn over the more active pursuits of kingship to his heir, and in these more active pursuits Talus would need a god-touched bodyguard, ready to make that final blood sacrifice. I had not been born yet when my precedessor, my paternal uncle, had spilled his heart's blood in a great fountain down the steps of the king's feasting hall, and with his dying breath had put a knife in the eye of his brother's would-be assassin. Three years older than I was now, and my father a new-crowned king.
So I put Feliks in charge of the evening's sentry rota, and put myself on the afternoon watch of the southward road. I rigged myself a nice windbreak of pine boughs and had settled in for a nice meditative reflection, only to have the wind shift and the skies open, drenching me thoroughly. By the time I managed to re-rig the windbreak, I had been soaked through my second-best cloak, and had cause to thoroughly regret not retrieving my best one from Callonia.
My relief arrived at dark, just as I had given up on ever feeling my toes again, and I gratefully limped back toward the encampment. They had made a lean-to and were all squeezed under it, with a good fire going at the opening of the shelter. The wagon stood off a little ways, serving as a wind-break for the horses, who huddled together with their heads down, unconcerned but not contented either.
Feliks met me before I passed the wagon, and the look on his face was grim. "You an idiot," he said, the dialect so thick in his speech I could barely understand him. This was always a bad sign.
"Well?" I said, exasperated. It was nothing I hadn't already called myself, and worse. "What's to be done about it?"
"Don't be such an idiot," he suggested.
"I can't exactly help it," I snapped, and went to move past him.
He grabbed my arm. "You could make an attempt," he said.
"I am what I am," I said. He'd always been on my side, in any previous altercation, so I didn't know what to make of this.
"You don't have to be rude about it," he said. "You've got her all ashamed like, she don't know if what she done is really wrong, and thinks maybe you think she dirty."
"I never said that," I protested.
"You ain't said nothing," Feliks said darkly, and let go of my arm to stalk away. But he stopped short, his demeanor changing, and with my neck prickling I turned to look at what he had fixed his gaze upon so blankly.
There was a man standing there, a tall yellow-haired man, taller than I was, and thinner, his narrow shoulders held in an awkward position that suggested perhaps he was injured. He wasn't looking at us. The rain wasn't wetting him. His lips moved urgently; I couldn't understand him. I had seen him before. He had spoken words I didn't hear, had touched my face with bloody fingers in my sleep.
"You see that," Feliks whispered to me.
"Liv," I whispered. A ghost.
"Not just any Liv," Feliks whispered. I started to turn my head to look at him, but then I saw the second ghost.
It was my red-haired woman, the one who haunted my dreams every morning. She wasn't injured, she was holding out her arms as though there were an infant or small child in them, hip tilted to support the weight, but there was nothing visible there. She was speaking to him, looking distraught. He shook his head, answered her; his face was stern and grim.
She looked stricken. He leaned forward, touching her face, kissed her efficiently and pulled back as if to go, but paused. He was looking at her arms, where the child should be. Feliks's hand found my arm again, gripping tightly just above my elbow, as if he thought I would turn away. The man put his hand to the empty place in her arms, his expression softer, but then he turned away. I stared fixedly at that empty space; there had been blood on his hand.
I couldn't look away. The woman pulled her cloak up, covering the empty space, and vanished. I stood staring at the space where she had been, where the child she had moved too convincingly to pantomime should have been. Feliks did not let go of my arm for some minutes, and when he did, he shook my shoulder.
"Captain," he said.
"What," I whispered, staring at the same space. A smear of blood, I thought, on my face.
"You saw all that," Feliks said.
"Did you see a child?" I asked.
"What?"
"A child," I said. "Was there a child in her arms, or not?"
"Yes," Feliks said hesitantly. "A little one. Yellow hair."
"I couldn't see it," I said. "She was holding nothing-- but like there was something there." I still couldn't take my eyes off the spot. "What does that mean?" I demanded, shaking my head and tearing myself away to stare at Feliks. I was unnerved, and that made me angry, a strange little panicky anger fluttering in my gut. "What does that mean?"
Feliks's eyebrows were raised, his face much too calm. "I don't think I can answer that," he said.

So. NaNoWriMo is not going so good.
The first day (I started on the 2nd) I wrote like 275 words.
The second day I added another 850 or so to the total. OK.
The third day, I racked up a pretty decent 3000 words or so.
And then I haven't touched the document since. I've been busy as hell. Too much shit to do. And then I got stricken into this awful funk of depression for no reason. (Anyone who says you just got to snap out of it can go snap themselves, man. Sometimes it just hits.) I have depressive tendencies, but they don't last long enough or actually stop me from really functioning, so I haven't needed to seek therapy or pharmaceuticals. I know how bad it could get, and so I'm grateful that in my case it never gets any worse. Family members have had worse problems-- an uncle on one side, the grandma on the other-- but neither needed treatment until later in life, so I know to watch out for that, and to be careful not to become dependent on alcohol because that's also been an extended-family pattern. (Thank God no one in my immediate family has suffered like that.)
Anyway.
So I'm just not getting much done. Gotta clean the house today, have a busy weekend ahead. But I know me. I can do 10,000 words in two days, if I'm in the right mood. So I just need to wait for the mood, and free time, to coincide.

Anyway. And now, for something completely different.
My older sister, the one who was in the Army, is the one who has the baby, who just had heart surgery and is doing very well now thank you.
Her husband is a Good Ol' Boy from Natchez, Mississippi. In the past, he and I have Had Our Differences over politics.
I was sort of looking forward to and sort of dreading Thanksgiving, because I know my father was dead set against Obama, and I knew the brother-in-law has his own set of Differences. I like a good argument, but it can get heated.
So I was totally bowled over when my sister sent this photo, of her husband and child.






HOW CUTE IS THAT.
Baby has decided he wants his momma, hence the face and the gesture, but to me it looks like a gang sign. Like, he's in some secret babies-for-Obama gang and he's throwing the sign. I like my theory better.

edit: Agh! Why isn't it working? Wait, now it is!
OK, let me know if it isn't.

This is from the blog of an author whose books I don't read, but whose blog is the kind of haunting, poignant beautiful kick-in-the-gut stuff that make me believe in the Internet again.

"An American novelist who won the Prix de Rome and is spending the year at the American Academy in Rome sent this report of American election night, Italian style:

"We stayed up all night. The first returns weren't due until one in the morning, but no one could sleep, or some people slept for an hour or two and woke around midnight and came downstairs where some other fellows had set up a party in the high-ceilinged Salone. Popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, chianti, olives, vodka, beer. The TV was set to CNN. People wandered down in their pajamas; others wore suits. Pennsylvania was called around two in the morning and the room broke into cautious cheers. A few of us drank café correto (espresso with grappa) to stay awake; others played pool to pass the still-nervous hours. The president of the academy came in--Carmela Franklin lives next door--wearing slippers and pajamas. The sky was just turning light outside when Obama came on the stage in Chicago. We ran upstairs and woke up the kitchen's executive chef. Everyone in the salone sat glued to the TV. A lot of us were crying. Outside seagulls were flying over Gianicolo in the dawn. It was a beautiful morning, marbled blue skies. The Tiber a grey ribbon. Even the armed guards across the street who protect the US embassy to the Holy See said, buon giorno, and then added an enthusiastic "Obama!""

So what happened is that the Yes on 8 campaign sent out a mailer featuring Sen. Obama's photo, implying that Obama endorses it. This pissed off Obama's campaign something fierce. The mailer was targeted toward undecided African-American voters.

"The mailer, from the Proposition 8 campaign, twists Sen. Obama's comments about marriage to suggest support for the unfair initiative -- when just the opposite is true. In a June 29 letter to the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, Sen. Obama wrote that he opposes the "divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution." "

Obama's letter, exerpted:
"As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law...And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states. For too long, issues of LGBT rights have been exploited by those seeking to divide us. It's time to move beyond polarization and live up to our founding promise of equality by treating all our citizens with dignity and respect. This is no less than a core issue about who we are as Democrats and as Americans."

The campaign then released a statement:
"Senators Obama and Biden have made clear their commitment to fighting for equal rights for all Americans whether it's by granting LGBT Americans all the civil rights and benefits available to heterosexual couples, or repealing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell," said a statement issued by campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. "Senator Obama has already announced that the Obama-Biden ticket opposes Proposition 8 and similar discriminatory constitutional amendments that could roll back the civil rights he and Senator Biden strongly believe should be afforded to all Americans."
________________________
This was on Oct 31st.


So. Maybe Prop 8 passed in CA, and similar measures in FL and AZ, but at LEAST the President-elect was goaded into making a definitive statement.

As we all know, a president's legislative actions have little to do with what he actually believes, and everything to do with the political climate. Clinton voted yes on the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" bullshit because he knew that he could not afford to take a stand on it, as it would severely lessen his chances in the upcoming election. Obama seems, at the moment, to have a very strong footing, and a sturdy platform upon which to stand. He has a lot of principles and has made a lot of statements.
Some of them are going to get thrown under a bus.
Which will get thrown under a bus strongly depends on how things go in the lead-up to his actually taking over the Presidency.

Homosexual rights have been one of the issues most likely to get thrown under the bus by politicians for decades now, because they remain so controversial-- either you have a firm grasp of both logic and biology, or you don't.
But here's hoping that we've reached the tipping point. Here's hoping we've reached the time when, finally, homosexual rights are too important, and understood as such by enough people, that they won't be the thing that gets chucked in to make room for whatever thing it is that the Democrats really need support for.

Because just as feminism benefits men, because all humans suffer in a patriarchy (both oppressors and oppressed are cheapened by the system!), so homosexual rights benefit heterosexuals as well. Demystifying marriage, and removing the artificial privelege associated with heterosexual marriages, will only serve to strengthen the actual institution of marriage. If it is no longer the default, then it becomes a much more meaningful choice.

Also it's totally retarded to insist that you don't believe in sex discrimination or racism but faggots are just wrong. Come the fuck on-- if you're a bigot, you're a bigot.

New usersound: "We Shall Not Be Moved", by Sweet Honey on the Rock.
Someone on my Livejournal friends-of-friends list uploaded that song and "Eyes On The Prize" in honor of today's election, which made me cry.
Keep your eyes on the prize
hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on
Keep your eyes on the prize
hold on.
("Eyes" is a prettier song but it was 6 mb and I can only upload up to 5 here.)

To put things in perspective, here are the other things that made me cry today. I cry easily, especially today for some reason.

• My friend Kat, a reporter in Schenectady, posting an essay about what it's like to vote when you're a journalist. 364 days a year, she says, we are not allowed an opinion, and must put our feelings into a little box and leave it on the shelf, and write objectively with no opinions, about politics, about everything. For one perfect moment, behind that curtain, I get to have a say. I get to have an opinion. And it gets to count.

http://kkatowll.livejournal.com/540090.html?mode=reply

• This article in the Christian Science Monitor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081103/cm_csm/ycurley
My Wife Made Me Canvass For Obama. A man who voted for G.H.W. Bush twice and G.W.B. once gets dragged out by his wife, and learns something. I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten.

• This poem by Seigfried Sassoon:

Reconciliation
When you are standing at your hero's grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done;
And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find
The mothers of the men who killed your son.

--Siegfried Sassoon
November 1918

• The sound of the lever-action voting machines, resounding in the elementary school gymnasium with a sudden swooshing clack as a vote was literally cast with a sweeping gesture of the voter's arm, finalizing those little choices each lever signified. It's such a profound noise. I didn't know I cared about it. I didn't know I'd recognize it. But I could hear it from down the hall, and it made me cry a little.

• This photo, referred to by Colin Powell when he criticized McCain's responses to Obama being a Muslim.

Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.
Is he less of a patriot than you, Senator McCain, because he died of his wounds and you did not???? He was twenty fucking years old, and had been waiting since 9/11 to be old enough to join the Army so he could help.

I would have voted for you in 2000, Senator McCain, but you have squandered and squandered and squandered everything I believed in that you stood for since then. You make me sick now, you disingenous and sick, sick old man.

I admit. I was not a huge fan of Obama. I have known about him since '04, have had friends predicting his eventual ascendancy, and I looked into him a bit. I found him smug. I find many of his followers smug and virtually intolerable.
He is literally African-American, and has something that most of the so-called African-Americans in this country don't have: he got to go to Africa and see his father and grandfather's graves. Most black Americans have been here so long, many through decades of slavery, and most black American politicans rose up through the Civil Rights movement of the '60s. Obama didn't live in the US yet when MLK was shot. (My father was in the 1st Armored Division, which suppressed the riots in Chicago after this event. For whatever perspective that gives.)

I do find Obama to be occasionally smug. That crack about Hillary where he implied she was on the rag: I could have strangled him.

But I think it is important not to underestimate this. Most of the presidents we've had have come from a very select group. Most of them have been members of the same small denomination of Christians. I've always been cynical about the idea that "anyone could be President".
So the idea that the biracial son of a teenage mom and an actual from-Africa African, who has eaten government cheese and worn out the soles of his shoes campaigning-- it's compelling. No matter how much of an insider he really is, how much a product of his party's machine, at least he's something different. Even if it's an illusion of difference-- how much does that mean??
The very fact that the final rundown for the Democratic nominee was between a woman-- a woman!! and a biracial man-- no matter how much the fact remains that they were both products of the same machine that has fed us the same homogenized pabulum of priveleged elite politicians-- the very illusion of difference has meant so much, to so many people.
It's not smugness, to most of us.
It means that the thing that makes us different, that makes us not white men, that very thing can no longer, by itself, be viewed as a legitimate obstacle. It should no longer mean that we don't try. It will still mean that we're less likely to succeed. But it should no longer be believed, on its own, that this thing, this difference, is in itself an insurmountable obstacle.
(Should I here admit that, as a Roman Catholic, I'm actually a tiny bit excited about Biden, just from a demographic point of view? He's the first and only since JFK, who basically had to forswear his Catholicism in order to be a serious candidate.)

Aside: I don't find Palin particularly empowering. She is the kind of exemplar that makes you embarrassed to be remotely identifiable with her, the worst sort of hypocrite-- so pregnancies are only a private family matter if it's your daughter, and not if it's me?-- but that's a rant for another time. At least the GOP took Hillary seriously enough to offer us a marionette in her place? I guess?

The President him- or herself does not make or break the nation. We survived Buchanan (at the cost of 600,000 American soldiers ) , we'll probably survive Bush. We'll undoubtedly survive whoever we get this next time.

So, though I don't agree with all his policies, and can't promise I won't gnash my teeth repeatedly over the next four years (knock on wood; I'd rather gnash my teeth at him than at That Other One) I do find him a much-lesser of two evils. He probably won't make it illegal for me to make decisions about my body. He might make it possible for me to actually get timely healthcare in a reasonably affordable fashion. He probably won't make outright outlaws of my gay friends who want to own property and raise children together. (Maybe. He may not help them either, but at least it's unlikely he'll try to fuck things up worse for them.)

And what's more: he doesn't fill my European friends and relatives with creeping crawling horror and revulsion. I lost friends over Bush, even when I cried that I hadn't voted for him: he just disgusted them so much.
Maybe I can go abroad again without pretending to be Canadian.
I know it's vain. But a world that thinks our President is kind of cool is a lot less likely to launch more terrorist attacks against us than a world that thinks our President is a second-generation imperialist pigdog asshole dictator wannabe.

It would just be nice, for a change, to have someone who didn't routinely feast upon his own feet during public discourse. Is that so wrong?

Last night I sat down and finally started in on NaNoWriMo. I'm revisiting an old novel, which is contrary to NaNo's rules, but I need a new plot-hole-full hastily-written shitty first draft to add to my considerable portfolio of them approximately like I need a new ventilation hole in my cranium, so I say screw the rules. I'm adhering to the spirit of the law, anyway: I have been writing everything in a document creatively called "new draft", but last night, the first time I had written since November began, I split off and started a new document called, creatively, "NaNo2k8", and am writing everything new in there so I can easily count the words written just in November. I am going to have some trouble at some point when I fold in previously-written stuff, but I'll just have to track that somehow-- probably by putting in a marker in the NaNo2k8 document and leaving out the reused stuff.
I'm doing all I can not to cheat.

And on that note, it is the 3rd and I have written precisely:

274 words.

Dear Red States
I posted about this on LJ but thought that y'all here would enjoy it too.

Someone sent my sister this forward and she read it to me today, and I just about pissed myself laughing.

""""""""""""""""""""""
Dear Red States:
If you manage to steal this election too we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You
get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red
states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.
You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you won't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

--Blue States
""""""""""""""
It's complete fantasy, sadly. Not the statistics-- those are, as far as I can tell, perfectly accurate. But the idea that you can actually split red states and blue states apart along neat and tidy state lines.
Palin bought into this complete fabrication when she made the asinine blunder of referring to certain states as more American than others. Bitch, please. Not only does my state have 171 years of seniority over yours as a part of this Union of states, but for your information as recently as the 2006 Senate races no less than three of the counties went completely red. Yes. New York.
Lookie.



This is the 2006 version of that famous Purple America map: pure red is 100% Republican, pure blue is 100% Democrat, and in between it is proportionally hued in more or less-blue or red shades of purple according to the percentage of Democrat or Republican vote results.
There are no 100% red states. Nor are there 100% blue states. Some of them are pretty deep-hued one way or the other, but none are completely monolithically pure.

The idea that there is a "great silent majority" is complete horse shit.
As is the idea, sadly, that we could have another mass secession. We can't do any more than joke about it. And if you're that enamored of the idea... maybe you should be voting libertarian. Not that you want to hear it from me, but really. State's rights, baby!!
(Incidentally, that's actually what the Civil War was ostensibly about.)

I am so excited to party tonight! So excited! Yay!
I have to finish my costume. I have to make (e:zobar)'s costume, because he was going to do it today but got called in to a bunch of meetings. I have to do a lot of laundry and pull down the storm windows. I was going to re-caulk windows too but I don't think I'll have time. It's supposed to be back up in the 60s next week-- Tues and Wed-- so I'll postpone most of my winterization and gardening stuff until then, I guess.
But costume! Costume costume. Eek! Still so much to do.
I'm really excited about it all. Did I mention.

Is it actually snowing? I'm seeing little snowflakes here, but they went away. Funny, I learn about the weather after the fact from this website.

I was going to blog about the country-fried steak, but I'd have to find the cable for my camera, and I just can't face it right now. I'll blog about it when I get the pictures off and I'll be all like "Oh wow I forgot about that yeah that was awesome!"
I like to leave myself little surprises, y'see.

But. Today's blog: Winterization. What do y'all do to winterize your house?

So far, I have done nothing except close the windows. (Yes, it was not until today that I realized that the double-hung window in the guest bedroom had slipped about a quarter inch down when someone had closed the lower half of the sash, so cold air was pouring in. Am I a genius? Perhaps, but consider (e:Zobar), who sits at the desk up against this window almost every day, and seems not to have noticed the wind, er, draft, though he did complain that it was cold in that room.)

But. It is supposed to be warm on Friday, so I will seize the opportunity to embark upon several projects. A partial to-do list (not all on Friday!)

1) Close the storm windows. If any are damaged, either repair them, or do the ghetto thing and stick them down with weatherseal plastic tape.
2) Remove the screens from the doors, and replace them with the Plexiglass storm door panels.
3) Wash the windows and re-caulk the edges with silicone. Z did the living room and bedroom when we repainted them.
4) Put plastic sheeting over the windows. The large one in the dinette leaks air badly, and the north window in our bedroom is a close second. I will probably also do the one in the kitchen, which is damaged. If there's plastic left, I'll do the one in Fi's bedroom. I am debating doing the picture window in the living room-- it's just so huge, and the plastic is just so expensive. Oh yeah, I am going to have to beg the loan of a hair dryer from somewhere-- maybe Fi has one, since she's coming to visit. Speaking of which, brb-- I'm going to email her and ask. (No, i don't own a hair dryer.)
Yes, I just emailed her, for real. Multitasking!
5) Put up insulated curtains. This is ambitious. I haven't finished making them. But I am a much better seamstress than I was when I started, so I have faith that I can actually finish them. Insulated curtains are easy to make, though not inexpensive-- curtains aren't cheap unless you really luck out on material. I did OK-- picked out about $500 worth of fabric at FWS only to discover that everything was 50% off in the decorator area that day only. Awesome!!!
6) Make draft stoppers. I'm looking for a good pattern for these, but I've noticed how much cold air comes under the doors-- the door from the sunporch, the front door, and the door leading to the uninsulated attic in particular. I will look into weatherstripping for the outdoor-facing doors, but for the lower-traffic, indoor ones, I'm going to stuff wadded-up old clothing into tubes made of curtain remnants, and wedge them firmly against the cracks at the bottoms of these doors. For the attic door, I may even make an insulated curtain to cover it.
7) I'm seriously considering making insulated tapestries to hang on my walls, since I have no insulation in my plaster walls in this old house. What do y'all think-- funky, or creepy? It's just a thought for now. I've really wanted to do up (and this is Z's idea, lest he get snarky for plagiarism) Where the Wild Things Are in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. Would that be hot or what? I'll get my needles.

Bonus*) This isn't even winter-necessary, in my house, but put insulation on your hot water pipes. If your basement isn't heated, put insulation on both hot and cold, but if it is-- pipe insulation will keep your hot water from cooling off in the pipes, so you don't have to wait so long for hot water to come out when you turn on the hot tap. It also is supposed to be beneficial to put insulation over your hot water tank, but mine is not warm to the touch, so perhaps it's already insulated and I just can't tell. I'll look into it. Anything to save a bit on the gas bill, which is likely to be crippling in this uninsulated little shoebox of a house.

I wish I could afford solar panels. My parents installed solar panels in 1980. They used them to heat our water and to give a little bit of forced-air heating to a few of the rooms of the house. They also put in a huge sliding glass door that faces directly south, and every sunny day, it raises the temperature in the living room by 5-10 degrees. They heat the house partly with oil, and partly with wood they harvest themselves from their 50-acre property. The furnace is dual-fuel, alternating between oil and wood; there is also a woodstove. They don't have a gas line, because they're too far out. They have propane in big tanks to power the stove and the dryer. They rarely use the clothes dryer, but hang clothing out whenever the temperature is above freezing.
And they've always lived like this, since before I was born.
I don't think of living like that as a sacrifice, I think of it as normal. When (e:zobar) makes fun of my Amish ways, he's just being a dick. We're not Amish. We were just both poor and educated.

Anyway. We'll see how well I winterize. What do y'all do? Have I missed anything? It's comforting, to line your nest and prepare.

So I got home from practice and was really stinky. Stinky stinky gross. And a bit sore-- I'm breaking in new skates and they gave me some blisters on my instep. And we did a lot of hitting so I have a lot of sore places that will probably not come up in bruises because my skin doesn't bruise easily so I always look like a slacker compared to my teammates. (I did have one really satisfying moment where I planted my shoulder in a girl a hundred pounds lighter than me, then threw her with my hip. But I digress.)

Anyway. I got home all stinky, and took a shower. And I got out of the shower, and sat in bed for a while, decompressing. I had a Reese's peanut butter cup when I got home, and a big thing of water, but I was still unsatisified.

I mentioned this to (e:zobar), who said, "I had a sandwich, a little while ago. There's enough left for half of another sandwich. Roast beef and some cheese."
"Oo!" I said. "That sounds really... no, I don't need it." I still sometimes fall into these I-don't-deserve-food things. Not seriously enough to get eating-disordered, but enough that I still get confused and can't tell if I'm actually hungry or just want to be "rewarded"-- which is fucked-up, if you consider it. It's like saying, "I'm going to breathe extra today, because I deserve it!" That doesn't help; you don't need to breathe extra. So you don't need to eat extra. It's dumb. But it's even more stupid, and dangerous, and ridiculous, to breathe less, to deny yourself air that your body needs to oxygenate your tissues, because you've arbitrarily decided you don't "deserve" it. How stupid is that? It's completely stupid.
Food's pretty much the same way, only we're more aware of the pleasure of ingesting tasty food than we are of breathing clean air. And "tasty" is not always as simply good as "clean" is. (Though when you think of chemical "air fresheners" that simply mask possibly-toxic scents with actually-toxic ones, perhaps the comparison is easier.)
Anyway.
I pondered the sandwich for a moment, trying to decide whether I was really hungry or just wanted a "treat", and then said, "Could you make it for me?"
"You know how to make a damn sandwich," Z said.
"But you make them better than me, and it would be more special if you made it." It's true-- he really does. He just takes more care over sandwiches. When I was a kid I hated sandwiches because they were always cheap pepperoni or peanut butter and jelly, and my Mom almost always bought weird bread, and I just always preferred other foods. But (e:zobar) does things like... spreads the mayo, then grinds a little black pepper on it... sometimes shakes a little oregano on the cheese... aligns the meat just so, so it's even all the way around... folds the cheese neatly...
It's just way more special when he makes them.

Also, I've done all the cooking and fed him twice, sometimes three times, a day for the last month or so, while he's been busy and I haven't been so much. I haven't minded, though I've let the dishes pile up a bit. (Whoops.) (I do mind doing all the grocery shopping, a bit. I asked him what kind of olives he likes and he gave me a half-hour treatise on their relative merits. I know I'll just blank out next time I'm at the shop, and just dump some of each in there like I always do. Oh well.)

So I had this perfect sandwich in my mind, made by this perfect sandwich master. Really. Seriously. He makes a good sandwich.

But he wouldn't make it for me, and wouldn't acknowledge that it is more special to have food prepared for you by someone special than to just make it your damn self.

But am I crazy? Am I just being the typical controlling-whiny-bitch female here, to think that it would have been way more special that way?

I made myself the sandwich because I decided that I don't care about my fat ass or my new stretchmarks, and I hadn't had much protein today (actually, I was vegetarian all day up to that point! Well, meat's expensive, lately, so we don't eat as much as we used to), so I was going to have the damn sandwich. Also there wasn't enough to have for lunch tomorrow or anything like that. (I don't know what I'll make. I was going to finish up the leftover curry but Z said he didn't want it a third day in a row, so I'll have to think of something else. Boo, I don't want to go shopping.)

And I ate it. And it was okay. And I did feel better once I ate it, and hadn't realized I didn't feel great, so obviously my body did want it after all.

But it would've been way more special if he'd made it. I swear I'm not being crazy.
Am I being crazy? Is food more special when someone else makes it?