musings

blueberry girl

I went blueberry picking with Kyth & Amy in New Hampshire this weekend. We managed to have lovely weather despite the ever-present summer storms, and we had a marvelous time. I’ve never been blueberry picking before. Apple picking many many times but never blueberries. It takes a lot longer to fill a bucket with blueberries than it does with apples.

I was glad that I’d brought my camera. Berries are fun to capture in their natural habitat. I was struck by how much blueberries look like itty bitty pomegranates in shape, and surprised that I’d never really noticed it before.

I now have about 3 pounds of blueberries. We have been snacking on them but have barely put a dent in the haul, so the rest have been relegated to the freezer. (We have a freezer that works now, thankfully.)

I have always loved frozen blueberries. I would eat them by the handful when I was little and my mom would freeze them, sneaking them out of the freezer and not always leaving a reasonable amount left for whatever baking purposes they had been intended for.

I will endeavor to be better with these. I am probably going to make blueberry cookies tomorrow, and possibly some sort of blueberry cake type something later in the week. Or scones, perhaps.

I like having the ability to take a day trip to pick berries on a farm as easily as we can take a day trip into Boston. And I like that we live in a sort of in-between place that’s not too urban and not too rural. I used to think I was a city girl but I never really was, though I am not much of a country girl either. I am something in between. Or maybe I am all kinds of girls, and I fit better in the places that leave me free to be all of them.

By erin, ago

this entry has no kittens

I was going to post pictures of kittens but they are being uncooperative. Likely because it is absurdly humid and they are absurdly fluffy and like to flop in difficult to photograph places.

I have been on internet hiatus this week, which usually involves me avoiding the internet save for important things like e-mail and whatnot. It is remarkably beneficial to my productivity level. During this particular hiatus I finished the sixes for the Phantomwise Tarot and drank a lot of wine and thought about the novel a lot. I have something of a timeline for getting things done and I’m going to make charts and maps and helpful tools that will be, well, helpful. I hope.

Tonight the Phantomwise Tarot Shinies go on sale at Wyrding Studios. I have spent a fair amount of the day promoting them in various places and playing e-mail tag with Kythryne. I’m excited about it, I haven’t even seen the finished product in person but I’m sure they’re even lovelier than the photos, since Kyth’s stuff usually is.

I am very much ready for it to cool down and be nicely autumnal already. I always feel out of my element in the summer, despite being a July baby. I want sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes and crispy air and kittens that are more easily photographable.

By erin, ago

bringing the randomness to the new blog

I am getting worse at making myself work, I think. Either that or I have always been this bad and I am just becoming more self-aware. I know that I work in fits and starts and I have lulls, but I seem to be lulling more often than not lately.

I have had a couple serendipitous encounters with things about fear of failure and fear of success, and I really don’t know which one I have. Maybe it’s both, in one big failure milkshake.

Mmm… milkshake.

A milkshake is a frappe up here. I didn’t know it was a weird regionalism until I went to college. Also in college I learned that it is not common knowledge that cranberries grow in bogs.

I sometimes think my problem is that I have the attention span of oh, look, a shiny thing!

I’ve bought a lot of jewelry lately. It is one of my consumer weaknesses, along with books, of course. I think it’s at least partially because I like things that are tangible, and things that last.

I am writing more, in a very general sense. I am blogging more and I have multiple journals (haven’t put anything in the pretty purple one yet, still pondering what belongs in it) and I’m just typing more so I suppose I am doing my mental yoga and that’s something.

One of my serendipitous fear of milkshakes things came from the very beginning of my shiny new Absolute Sandman Volume III. I’ve been trying to pace myself since I just got them all and flew through Volumes I & II fairly quickly. But something compelled me to pick up III the other day.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read all of Sandman and though I remember most of it I’d completely forgotten about “Fear of Falling.” It’s this tiny little bit of a story that is all about everything I’ve been worrying over lately, practically word for word. I should really just write “sometimes, when you fall, you fly” on my hand in Sharpie and quit my whining.

I should know by now to always listen to Neil.

By erin, ago

i used to be nocturnal

When I was in college I kept a rather interesting schedule that usually involved napping from midnight until 3am and then getting up to write papers and such. It was surprisingly successful, most of the time.

I have since developed more standard sleeping habits.

But I am finding that the occasional late night opens my brain up in interesting ways. It is definitely good for turning off my inner editor (especially when combined with a glass of wine or two) and ideas just seem to flow differently. I’ve always gotten ideas for stories and paintings and whatnot when I’m drifting off to sleep so maybe my nighttime brain is more creative than my daytime brain.

It’s quieter at night, which helps. No neighbors with loud dogs and motorcycles, not as many cars driving by the window. Pedestrians pass by once in awhile, which is rather disturbing since you can hear every word through the windows and it sounds like they’re actually in the room. But for the most part it is quiet, just me and my typing and my iTunes and my tea and my kittens which is really quite a lot of things but it still seems mellow in comparison.

I think it helps me better listen to my brain. My brain tends to be a non-linear mess of images and words and imaginings. I am still not entirely sure how it works. I have a very lousy memory. Seriously, I remember very little from those nocturnal college days and even less from days before that. If pressed, I could likely recount the events of last week but they might be highly fictionalized. I tend to live in the now and the five minutes from now and my grasp on anything else is tenuous at best.

I don’t really mind. I’ve never been particularly nostalgic and I tend to assume anything and everything could happen in the future so the only really reliable time is the now. I’m not even sure how I got on this tagent. See what I mean about the inner editor? She takes nights off, obviously. Or she gets sick of me after midnight and goes off to do whatever inner editors do on their nights off.

So that leaves me alone with all this stuff in my head and only my keyboard to take it out on (the kittens have given up on me and are asleep, Tessa is on the box of files to my left and Bucket is in the other room) and maybe that’s a good position to be in and maybe I should try doing it more often.

It is 1am. It is quiet outside and the air is still humid with the summer heat despite the thunderstorm that passed by earlier this evening. A car just drove by, the first one in awhile. I have a necklace made of keys around my neck that jingles when I move like chimes.

I suppose I should go unlock something.

By erin, ago