Category Archives: Ideas (blog)

bug babble.

Sunday sleep

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Just spent a huge part of the night wandering Windsor castle looking for a pencil sharpener so I could write the queen a note that I had accidentally left something there when I was working there and now that I was going to be working in China’s government could she please send it over when she found it.

Then she showed up and found it and we all had Christmas dinner together – me and my husband and the queen and Prince Phillip and two princesses and their husbands who took care of the kids mostly and honestly it was like having a girls night out with people that you barely knew and at the same time you felt like you always knew.

I hope I visit the queen in my dreams again.

What I wrote in 2016

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It has been pointed out to me by numerous smart people that authors who post what they wrote have a better chance of seeing them picked up for awards lists. Also known as: yes, I should write an eligibility post.

So this is me, setting that precedent, so I have to stick with it later in the future when I’m actually writing and getting published more prodigiously.

Short stories published in 2016

The Death of Chaos, published by Unlikely Story in The Journal of Unlikely Observances. This anthology was a collection of stories about April Fool’s Day, and The Death of Chaos is a creation story.

Sunny’s months were tranquil and calm. Plants grew, plants were harvested. Sheep lambed, lambs grew, sheep were slaughtered. Summer was rhythmic progress.

Seth’s madness was predictable in its unpredictability. Two years before, it rained green-bellied newts for a whole week. Four years prior, the clouds belched flowers, but only on the women. No one will talk about the Year of the Canned Beans. In the winters, anything could, and did, happen, and there was no question of why.

Unlikely Story’s on hiatus in 2017, but I look forward to their return, because their publications have lots of great work.

Other stuff

If you’re more of the User Experience or Design wonk, you may be interested in:

Out of network

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This morning an acquaintance and I were discussing a medical issue and she suggested, “You should probably go see a geneticist.”

And my brain (being my brain) replied, “No, see, I can’t, because she’s dead.”

And that’s how three years on grief still occasionally kicks you in the teeth.

It turns out there are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who have medical degrees and specialities in genetics who could answer questions about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), all of which drift right on the edge of being good explanations for some of the wackier hijinks I’ve gotten into… but none of them are Aunt Ginny.

That specific combination of DNA genes and chromosomes, nature and nurture, experience and reasoning that I identified as Dr. Virginia Proud is not currently available to advise me on matters of heredity. I will have to suffice with some other MD and geneticist who, while not my aunt, can fill in the gaps of my knowledge, and who — I hope — is loved as fiercely and would be missed as long as the geneticist I would prefer.

She’s not really gone. She’s just moved out of network. Some day I pray my insurance will be upgraded, and I’ll see her again.

Two tales

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Once upon a time, I wandered too close to the edge and almost fell. People who loved me caught me, dusted me off, and put me back on my feet. The end.

Once upon a time, later, some folks began to nudge me toward the edge, little by little. They didn’t want me to fall per se – but the closer I get to the edge, the better things are for them, so hey as long as I don’t actually fall no harm no foul, right?

Today people who love me — a lot of people who love me a lot more than I can even process — surrounded me, picked me up, and carried me away from the edge. They dusted me off and put me back on my feet.

My legs are a bit wobbly let and that other group with the nudging habits aren’t necessarily rendered harmless. Still, even a day on solid ground means something.

I love you all.

I will do what I can to repay in love and kindness what you’ve given me.

Thank you for watching out for me.

The end.

To fertilize lawn…

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Reading the instructions on the lawn fertilizer. Let’s sum up:

  • Do not mow for two days.
  • Apply to dry lawn.
  • Allow 24 hours before mowing again.
  • Make sure the product has been watered in.
  • Do not water for at least 24 hours after the application.

It is spring in Pennsylvania, which is a shorthand way of saying it torrentially rains every 3 days, and in between the grass grows two feet an hour.

I’m pretty confident I can never actually use this product to its specifications unless I move my entire house and property to another state.

I am a bag of meat

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I am a bag of meat.

I am a collection of bones and water in a protein and fat based cover.

I keep my true self in my brain box up on top of a ladder of unreliable sensors.

It can’t be extracted.

It can’t be pointed to on a scan.

I’m not confident it really exists.

 

I spent nine months in a meat incubator

Then eighteen years in meat apprenticeship

To learn how to interpret what my bag of meat tells me

My fingers tell me about hot and cold

My nose identifies honeysuckle pollen

My mouth reports fried chicken.

Piece of cake.

My eyes and ears report the body language of another bag of meat,

Report the sounds and gestures,

Send messages to my brain box using both electrical and chemical signals

Pass the interpretations through a sea of mind-altering hormones and steroids who are busy just running the shop

My grey matter receives all of it

Compares it to past memories, degrading them

Tries to fit it into a framework

Increases or decreases other chemicals as a reaction

And then somehow instantly and interminably I “understand”

Sending new messages from the brain box to other systems to reply

 

It’s a wonder we get anything done

 

Every system has cells, every cell has memory.

My thighs remember things.

How to stand

How to run

My fingers remember complicated sequences.

Take away their memories and my brain box’s orders can’t be completed.

Is my true self in my fingers?

I guess so.

I don’t feel like me when I’m re-learning how to something my injured hand forgot.

I host an ecosystem.

Eyebrow mites.

Probiotic bacteria.

Mitochondria.

Germs.

Viruses.

Possibly even a parasite or two.

I like to think my true self is independent of my meat farm

But studies of toxoplasmosis say “probably not”

 

I am in a totally different meat bag than I was seven years ago

Every part of my meat bag is under construction every minute of the day

I am the city that never sleeps

It takes seven years to swap out the oldest parts

So at best I change a little each day

At worst, the meat bag’s intricate systems fight to keep me alive

I prefer the slow change, to be honest

 

We are all bags of meat.

We are each a collection of bones and water in a protein and fat based cover.

We are all changing ecologies of life

We are all trapped in cells

Trapped by cells

At

The

Whims

Of

Chemicals

We

Produce

 

“How are you today?”

 

Damned if I know.

Let me check with the meat and get back to you.

Historical nightmares are new. 

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Things I saw in my dream last night:

  • The remains of a 12th century highway overpass, which was standing over a 12th century cottage, both made of medieval plywood. 
  • An ancient frying pan which was glazed in a salmon pink coating with my great great great great grandfather’s initials (in fancy script) molded into the bottom. 
  • A set of kitchen canisters and salt and pepper grinders made of glass and pewter that stacked around each other like  matryoshka dolls from the 16th century. The far-flung relative of mine who was showing them to us on the family estate wanted to have recreations made so we could have some too. 
  • Scenes from said relative explaining our (totally dreamed up) family history including the doctor who cared for a now-poor family from the aristocracy. 
  • An ancient microscope hooked up to a 15th century touchscreen that allowed said kids to discover and draw extremely small details of natural things, and somehow also the whole town, but with extremely small lines. Sorry Antonie van Leeuwenhoek but we got there first, with better tech. 
  • The beginning of a plague that made people vomit extremely large volumes of something that looked like pepto  bismol 

I am relatively confident that during my next trip to England (whenever that is) my cousin and I will not be able  to locate any of these family heirlooms.