It's Only A Paper Rose

...In truth, I feel like I have to keep learning this over and over.  Hopefully I'm making progress as well.

Good morning! Chicago is currently cloudy, twenty-two degrees, and under a winter storm watch, with five to nine inches of snow expected...and I am luxuriating in a sunny bedroom in Bisbee, with a high of 68 degrees and a visit with several delightful friends expected throughout the day. Totally worth the two-hour delay for de-icing that our plane experienced on Sunday; Brian and I seem to have timed our escape just about perfectly.

What I've just finished reading

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. This one sort of fizzled out by the end, which saddens me somewhat; it had so much potential and I enjoyed a lot of its pointed satirization of various religions and philosophies. I think it suffered somewhat from the proscription of the ending; we know how the end of the story goes, and while Biff's desperate plan and eventual descent into grief and anger was understandable and even touching given his devotion to Joshua, there wasn't really much interesting there. What's especially frustrating is that there was some real potential here. There's a moment where he takes revenge against Judas that could've been a really chewy dramatic action-hero-gone-bad moment, but it's just related kind of matter-of-factly and without acknowledging any of the emotions that must've played into it. I can't tell if Moore was just running out of enthusiasm for the narrative, or if he was afraid that directly portraying Biff's very human and fallible emotions would drain the venom from the earlier, more removed, more satirical sections, but it was really a missed opportunity. As was the red herring of the paralytic poison (established early in the story) - Biff's desperate plan of dosing Joshua with the poison and 'burying' him only to bring him to life with the antidote would certainly have had some satirical bite, but it feels like Moore loses his nerve, instead allowing Joshua to follow the path we're all familiar with from Sunday school.

Also, in the afterword, I discovered partly why the Hindu section felt so Western-centric - Moore cites his primary research source as Joseph Campbell's writings about the Kali worshippers. Well...all right then. I get that the Thuggee death cults were a real thing, but it saddens me that so many American stories focus on them due to their sensationalistic aspects, and completely ignore the many, many other facets of a highly complex and fascinating religion.

What I'm currently reading

Provenance, by Ann Leckie. I'm listening to this as an audiobook, and I'm kind of thinking that in the future I should really stick to reading Leckie - not that her work doesn't stand up as an audiobook! But part of what I love about her work is how she's so masterful at the worldbuilding-in-passing; there's little to no infodumping, you're just expected to sort of pick things up from context (and she's extremely careful to provide just enough context). I hadn't realized it until I started listening to this story, but often in reading her Ancillary books I would stop for a moment when I stumbled across some new piece of information, both to admire the clever way she delivered it and to file it away in my mental index; with an audiobook, I find myself swimming in a stream of context I'm having to process much faster. I feel like I'm keeping afloat, though, and (at about halfway through) I'm entertained as heck to realize that this is basically a carefully-worldbuilt, space-opera version of Charley's Aunt. The identity-swap farce will never die!

Moscow But Dreaming, by Ekaterina Sedia. The title feels more and more appropriate the more of these stories I read; many of them feel like they function on dream-logic, either lacking a clear arc, or beginning or ending in odd-seeming places. But they're surprisingly effective on an emotional level; also much like dreams, they're clearly most interested in exploring the protagonists' desires, transmuted through prisms of culture and environment. It's a different sort of fiction, but makes for excellent bedtime reading.

What I plan to read next

I have The Master and Margarita on my Kindle!

I'm back from Alaska, and managed to meet my goal of making it through an entire visit with my mother without getting into a flaming row. Hooray for active listening!  Or perhaps we just got the row out of the way beforehand, heh.  On the less-good side, someone in my home state was kind enough to share a cold with me, which I'm still fighting off...and I have two classes to teach tonight. I suspect tonight's focus will be self-directed practice, heh.


What I've just finished reading

An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. What makes a long flight home with a cold bearable? Pseudoephedrine and a new KJ Charles romance. The former sort of tunnels my awareness, making me tend to hyper-focus on one thing rather than be aware of my surroundings, but in coach class that's not necessarily a bad thing (although I did almost miss the beverage cart a couple of times). And the story of Pen and Mark - a nonbinary Victorian era circus performer suddenly heir to an unwanted earldom, and a one-armed private investigator with a pragmatic outlook and catholic tastes - was a delightful thing to focus upon. The book also finishes the Sins of the Cities plot arc, which is pure Victorian serial melodrama, but elevated by Charles' usual excellent characterization, and given some interesting twists by Pen's nonstandard self-image. I also loved Pen's relationship with twin sister Greta; there are really too few supportive sibling relationships in the fiction I read.


What I'm currently reading

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. This book continues to be a fascinating refinement of my perceptions of fourteenth-century England. There haven't been many outright revelations - I've read a fair amount of fiction set in the period, beginning with Karen Cushman's work in elementary school (Catherine, Called Birdy was always a favorite). But there are some minor details I hadn't realized - for instance, while personal cleanliness is more difficult prospect than it is now and standards for cleanliness are somewhat different (a healthy body odor is thought to be a sign of virility, at least among the lower classes), people still wash their hands and face when they get up in the morning, and handwashing is mandatory before and after meals. Most personal washing is done in basins, and thus somewhat more sporadically than we'd consider ideal (especially in the freezing winters), but especially among the more prosperous tradesmen and the nobility, it's considered bad form to go around stinking up the place, so people make do. Household cleanliness is made difficult both by the lack of good detergents and of labor-saving devices, but that doesn't mean it's neglected; cleanliness (or the appearance thereof) is closely linked to purity of spirit, and is thus highly valued in religious medieval England. So perhaps my grousing about how everyone in Galavant looks a little too clean is somewhat misguided.

Another point brought up that I found interesting was that of ignorance vs. misinformation, specifically as regards the medical profession of the time. Physicians were not ignorant; medieval medical texts were chock-full of 'knowledge' on treating illness. Unfortunately, since much of that knowledge came from flawed sources (astrology, humoral theory, superstition, hearsay, a little practical experience with no scientific method applied), it tended to be less-than-helpful at best. It does give you an idea of why Enlightenment principles had something of an uphill battle before them; it's much harder to convince people to change their outlook when there's already an established worldview.

Also, I'm quoting this passage in full, because it made me laugh. From the end of chapter 8, on the perils of taking hospitality in monasteries:

There is an old traveling minstrels' trick which you might want to keep up your sleeve. How guests are treated in a monastery is the decision of the almoner {man in charge of distributing alms}. If he treats you badly, or serves you the most miserly portions of food, or if you get given "a vile and hard bed", go to the abbot and praise him to the skies for the generosity of his house, and emphasize the large amount of money which the almoner must have laid out on your behalf.

As an aside, one of the interesting things about learning Swedish has been the ways in which the construction sometimes resembles medieval speech - the verb is nearly always placed second in the sentence (Hur mår du i kväll?, translates most directly to "How fare you this evening?"); and certain words such as passande (which translates to "suitable" or "appropriate") were used in nearly the same form in medieval English (such as here, in "passing good", which to modern ears sounds like "mediocre" but in fact means "quite excellent").  The language tree is passing fascinating!


What I plan to read next

I need to finish The Hummingbird's Daughter, even though Cat Sebastian's Ruin of a Rake is beckoning me on my Kindle - reformed bad-boy enemies-to-lovers gay Regency romance that won numerous awards?  Did somebody say "catnip"?

Hello, book friends! As I posted on Facebook, coming back from vacation is almost as much work as getting ready to go. Since returning on Sunday I've dyed my hair blue, bought groceries, made a playlist, taught two classes (with two more upcoming), run numerous errands, sent a nastygram to Hertz over being charged half again what Expedia promised, hosted two private massage clients, had Dominika and her husband over for dinner, and (according to Strava) biked nearly 20 miles all over Chicago. Still to do: mail presents to my mum, finish unpacking, clean out the fridge and microwave (seriously, it's been like two years and they're getting disgusting), create a Facebook page/website to connect with more potential massage/yoga clients, prepare for teaching my first yin yoga class on Sunday, winnow out my clothing/shoes/movies/general possessions, catch up on spring cleaning that I missed because my massage bookings went through the roof in May...and that's not even half of it. Augh! One step at a time.

Still, I've managed to carve out some time for reading, albeit less than I'd like since returning from vacation...


What I've just finished reading

Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin. I finally gave up on finding the time to read the paper copy of this I'd bought, and listened to the rest of the audiobook. It's good stuff, and thought-provoking, but I really don't think the format was right for me for this work; I've always been a faster and more thorough reader than listener (much to the frustration of my schoolteachers, heh), and audiobooks are frustratingly ephemeral when it comes to volumes that traffic in ideas - it's hard to consider and write about related experiences when the person just keeps talking. I do hope to reread on paper and consider more thoroughly, but as an overview of the ideas discussed it was definitely a good introduction.


What I'm currently reading

Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. This continues to be one of the most fascinating and (to borrow a term from the tech sector) disruptive books I've read on the subject of sexuality. The framework Nagoski presents is far more sexuality-positive, and particularly female-sexuality-positive, than the overall cultural narrative we all grew up with; I've noticed that Nagoski shares my fascination with personal and cultural storytelling, how it assigns meaning to our world, and how that meaning can be either beneficial or harmful to our sense of well-being. For instance, the hymen, possibly one of the most frequently misunderstood parts of feminine physiology, came to that point of misunderstanding largely due to patriarchal concerns over paternity, which led to a cultural narrative of female "purity" being perceived as desirable - despite the fact that the organ itself has little to do with a woman's sexual state.

I also particularly enjoyed the chapter on arousal nonconcordance, describing exactly what's going on when someone's genital behavior demonstrates arousal even when their brain is not sexually aroused. I was particularly interested in the correlation statistics; unsurprisingly, it's higher for men than for women. But even in men, it's only a 50% correlation; contrary to our cultural narrative, it's perfectly normal and in fact common for men to sport an erection without actually desiring sex. (This seems particularly significant given how often female-on-male rape is culturally dismissed, and likely hugely underreported, due to the supposed impossibility of it.) In women, nonconcordance is even higher - only about 10% of the time does increased bloodflow and lubrication correlate with actual sexual desire. Newsflash: our genitals are excellent at indicating sexually relevant scenarios (those where we perceive or expect to perceive sexual stimuli), but our brains are much, much pickier in terms of what actually turn us on.

As with the best sociological research, all of this seems fairly obvious in retrospect; the fact that few of us could have articulated it speaks to the power of cultural narrative (and the power of research to create better, more accurate narratives to displace them).

The Wicked and the Divine vol. 5: Imperial Phase Part I, by Kieron Gillen. The initial conspiracy arc having been (bloodily) resolved, the question for our various god-teenagers appears to now be, "What's next?" And, in the tradition of humans realizing sudden apparently-limitless power, the answer appears to be disturbingly close to, "Anything we want." For those of us familiar with the way such arcs usually go, the shape of the rest of the story is starting to be indicated; the hard limits may have been removed, but that seems most likely to have sealed our characters' fate. It's not difficult to imagine a bunch of teenagers given godlike powers self-destructing spectacularly, and well within the dictated two years' deadline; Baal in specific seems determined to avert that outcome, but it remains to be seen how successful he is. (The title indicates a couple of possibilities, neither of which bode well for regular humans.)

This collection begins with an award-winning issue, written in the style of a gossip magazine, where the authors had real-world writers "interview" the various gods (via chat roleplay) and write articles on them. It's a neat trick, adding surprising verisimilitude; the illustrations are spot-on for a fashion/gossip rag, and the writers add their own voices and reactions in a truly impressive way. For all that Satan remains the best character, and her interview is entertaining to say the least, my favorite is almost certainly feminist writer Laurie Penny going up against racist sexist man-child and self-proclaimed "shithead god" Woden. "And here the self-pity. It all comes out in a slosh of self-justifying red-pill logic that you really don't need me to describe. The biggest issue of all is Woden's specific limitation: unlike the other gods, he can only make magic for other people, which must be a bummer for a misanthrope." Reader, I about died laughing.


What I plan to read next

Still working on the currently-reading pile, heh. Seven books is a bit much, even for someone with my voracious appetites...

When Brian and I went to Sweden to visit our dear friend Petra not long ago, we joked that we should go to IKEA and have meatballs just to be able to say we'd actually had Swedish meatballs in Sweden. Much to our surprise, Petra expressed almost violent disgust - "Those are fake meatballs!" So, of course, we asked her if she would share her family recipe for authentic Swedish meatballs, and she did us one better - she actually made them for us while we were there. So we did have real Swedish meatballs in Sweden! And it's turned out to be one of my favorite foods. (I do still have a soft spot for the IKEA ones, but having tasted the real thing, I can't help but agree - they're like the McDonalds version. Cheap and filling and not bad, but nowhere near as tasty.)

In the intervening year, Brian's made this recipe a number of times, and it's become one of my favorites - enough that my consumption of lingonberry jam has increased by a significant percentage this past year. Not only are they surprisingly simple and tasty, they also make a ton of leftovers that reheat very well! And given that I've had numerous people asking for the recipe on Facebook whenever I mention them, I thought I'd post it here.

Note that a lot of the proportions are approximate - feel free to experiment!


Köttbullar - Not IKEA style!

(Not vegan, gluten-free, or low-fat. Surprisingly low glycemic, though!)

1 yellow onion
Salt
White pepper
1 egg
2 lbs ground beef
2 lbs ground pork
1 cup milk or cream
1/2 cup flour
1 beef bouillon cube
Lingonberry jam

Chop up the onion into small pieces. (Note: I'm normally a fan of sweet onions, but the stronger flavor of a straight yellow onion works well here. So get out the goggles and start chopping!) Mix it in a large bowl with salt, white pepper, and an egg; add the minced meat and combine everything. Roll the mixture into balls.

Fry the balls on medium heat until they get a nice dark-brown crispy shell. Every time you fry a pan of meatballs, save the drippings.

When all the meatballs are fried, return drippings to the pan along with milk or cream, bouillon cube, salt, pepper, and enough flour for thickening. Whisk together and heat until it makes a nice thick gravy. Return the meatballs to the pan and simmer to reheat them and finish cooking them through.

For a delicious Swedish dinner, serve with red potatoes (boiled and quartered), salad, and lingonberry jam!

Not that I figure anyone really had any doubt; I've been plenty active on Facebook and even a bit on Twitter. But for a while I feel like I've had long-form writer's block; I have several blog posts full of Big Thoughts and Theories percolating in my head, but nothing's coming out. So instead of trying to write about Big Thoughts and Theories, I'm going to fall back on my usual blogging habits and relate some small things that are happening in my life right now.

--Things continue to go well in my work life. I've settled into the spa job, and found it to be both interesting and fairly lucrative. There's little opportunity to build repeat clientele, but I'm gaining all kinds of experience working with different body types, and the tips have been quite good on the whole. My private bookings have seen a real boost too, thanks to some good word of mouth, and I've acquired several regulars. For the past couple of months I've been averaging two to three bookings a week, which doesn't seem bad at all given that I'm working out of my home and don't advertise other than in person. And I've had a few of the yoga teachers at the studio specifically ask for feedback on their assists, which is gratifying.

--I'm gearing up for another Big Summer of Travel; upcoming is a trip to Alaska to help my mother move into her (giant, gorgeous) new house. (Related: if anyone's interested in traveling to Alaska in the future, hit me up - I know a great place we can stay.) Shortly thereafter is a trip to Washington, DC to visit peacefulleigh's family. Also, my fellow Arizona-dwelling PNW expatriate friend Niki is finally escaping the desert, moving not fifteen minutes away from Leigh's clan. (I may or may not catch her this trip - her tentative schedule has her arriving a couple of days after I leave - but still. Hurrah for good friends living close to each other! It's the next best thing to having them both live close to me.) Then in September, I have plans to take my friend Elyse to Anchorage to do touristy things, then hop down to Juneau to visit friends I haven't seen there in far too long. I'm looking forward to it.

--My Goodreads friends may have noticed, I've been on a real comics kick lately. After a good friend did a killer cosplay of Gwendolyn from Saga, I figured I should read the source material, and am enjoying it greatly - I love the contrast of the crazypants fever-dream worldbuilding with the so-shopworn-as-to-almost-be-mundane (but lovingly told) story. Also, courtesy of my local comics shop's Memorial Day sale, I picked up the first volume of Sunstone (already read on DeviantArt, but worth revisiting and supporting the author both) and a new-to-me series called Paper Girls. Hopefully that'll tide me over until the new Wicked and the Divine comes out.

--One of the long-form posts I've intended to write and never gotten around to has been a product review of Soylent, featuring some of the goofy labels Brian's written on the bottles as illustrations. Having built something of a backlog at this point, I've started a Twitter account to share them with non-Facebook-using friends. Feel free to follow or retweet!

--I feel like I'm barely skimming the surface here, but for whatever reason this is what my brain's coming up with at the moment. So I'll post this now, and maybe it'll help rekindle my more (semi-)regular writing habits. I can hope!

Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, where "fall" is basically a two-week period between "all the trees turn colors overnight" and "the first big windstorm comes along and sweeps all the leaves away", it's interesting to me how comparatively elongated the Midwest version is. Some trees are eager to be the first to show off their bright foliage; but even once they've shed their leaves and begun their winter rest, others are more demurely turning, a few leaves at a time. Even when the wind kicks up a few weeks later, only some of the trees are ready to undress, while others stubbornly cling to their coverage. "Fall" seems an inappropriately staccato word for the season; I think I've started to understand why some people prefer the term "autumn".

Getting home from Washington was a little odd, emotionally. I've been traveling so much of late - I think, of the past four months, I've spent five weeks out of town - that it didn't quite feel real, coming home to my bedroom and my bed and my home, and realizing I didn't have to have plans in place for my next trip. Frankly, my bed almost felt a little alien, like it wasn't really mine; that seems like a good indicator that it's time to let the rest of the world take care of itself, and not rush to fill my calendar with more trips, even though I have so many friends (and places!) I'd like to see.

Besides, now is when I need to be focusing on my career, on building clientele and finding continuing education and generally figuring out how to be the best massage therapist I can be. Immediate plans include getting training in pregnancy massage and finding a good opportunity to learn more in-depth myofascial work; future ideas include looking into that trauma-therapy class gows recommended, and keeping my eyes open for future opportunities to study physical therapy. (It seems an unlikely path at the moment, as I'd have to finish my bachelor's and then take a two-year course on top of that, none of which comes cheap time- or money-wise. But at one point I thought the same thing about massage school, and I found a way to make it work. So we'll see where my experiences take me.) Additionally, the school director has been talking to me about possibly taking over some of the science classes she's been teaching, which would be awesome experience and a nice way to earn extra money without wearing myself out physically. I can't wait to teach an anatomy class that consists entirely of having the students write a version of "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General" about the origins, insertions, and actions of muscles.

And frankly, I'm glad to have the time to enjoy my city; there's so much going on at any given time that I can't possibly make all of it (especially now that I have a schedule to work around), but I've managed to have some awesome experiences nonetheless. Last weekend gracewanderer and cyranocyrano came to stay, and we all went to see the closing weekend of the Chicago Shakespeare Company's The Tempest. Brian and I had already seen it at opening and were blown away, as much by the quality of the acting as by the costumes and sets (featuring a delightfully run-down Depression-era circus theme) and the music (which you could tell from basically the first chord was written by Tom Waits, and was sung and played amazingly well by a small band onstage). Plus the onstage magic sequences were just stunning (hardly surprising, as Teller co-directed). But the actors really carried the day; it was one of the few big-budget Shakespeare renditions I'd seen where you didn't awe at the big setpiece sequences...and then settle back to wait for the wordsy parts to be done so you could see the next big impressive thing. I've noticed folks are much pickier about standing ovations in Chicago than they are in the PNW, but these folks got one both times I saw them, and they well deserved it.

I think I'm going to make more of an effort to take in Chicago's amazing theatre and concert scene this winter. It can get tricky, what with working three evenings a week - I had to pass on Vanessa Carlton earlier this month, which made me sad. But I think it'll be good for me to get out of the house more as the months get colder. I'm already working on getting back to my three-plus-times-a-week yoga schedule (as my sore quadriceps attest) and the improvement in sleep quality and focus at work is pretty clear. So here's to being a little more settled -- but not sedentary! -- for the next year or so.

Sweden was, as expected, lovely. Petra really went out of her way to make us feel welcome. I admit, I was slightly concerned at the thought of the three of us squeezing into a small apartment for ten days, especially since she was sleeping on her couch in order to cede us her bed. Fortunately, her apartment was actually pretty good-sized, and (as I had reason to discover when I came down with the airport plague on the trip there) her couch was similarly generous in its proportions, as well as comfortable. So we all managed just fine.

What I didn't expect was precisely how similar Sweden's climate is to Alaska's. In retrospect, it's not exactly surprising - similar latitudes, similar climates, similar geological history with glaciers and whatnot from the Ice Age carving out the landscape - but it felt downright strange to be walking along a forested path, thinking about how pleasantly familiar everything looked/smelled, only to hear a bird call I didn't recognize or see an oak tree growing amongst the birches, and realize that I was halfway across the globe, after all. (There was also, I was amused to note, a similar variability in weather; from windy to pouring down rain to sunny, all within ten minutes.)

Given that we were in Europe, where the history comes from, we spent a goodly amount of time going out to old fortresses and houses. One of my favorites was Gunnebo House and Gardens, a country estate with a beautiful house commissioned by a merchant who had made it big during the start of the Industrial Revolution. (Luckily for us, we were the only people looking for a tour in our time slot, so the guide was happy to give us the tour in English.) The architect who designed it was something of a perfectionist, and it shows; the neoclassical lines and symmetry are just beautiful, if taken to occasional extremes (the guide pointed out numerous blind doors added purely for show, as well as hidden doors that looked like part of the wallpaper until you turned the key, which must have been entertaining for guests wandering around in the middle of the night). Unfortunately, the family fortune met a swift end due to both economic factors and the heir's unsuitability as a man of business; the house passed through several sets of hands over the decades, falling into greater and greater disrepair, until it was eventually purchased by the local government as a historic site; the restoration work so far has been piecemeal but high quality.

I found it especially interesting, after reading so many romances that take place during the late 18th and early 19th century; it was a good-sized house, but what really struck me was how small many of the rooms actually were. Even the large salon, where the hosts held dances, wasn't that much bigger than my living room. Admittedly, this wasn't exactly a manor house, just a country villa meant to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life; still, it was more than a little eye-opening.

Other highlights included taking the train to Stockholm to see the The Vasa, a 17th-century war galleon that was so poorly designed and overloaded with guns that it floundered and sank into freezing low-oxygen water on its maiden voyage...and, consequently, was extraordinarily well preserved for for three and a half centuries until the Swedes managed to fish it out and put it in a museum, when all its better-built contemporaries were destroyed. (Historical irony!) And we got to meet up with vatine and experience international karaoke; I was somewhat amused to discover that 80s music is just as popular a choice for karaoke in Sweden. My favorite non-American song that I heard was Björn Skifs' "Michelangelo"; it tickles me how incredibly 80s it manages to be, even though I didn't have the foggiest idea what it was about until Petra gave me a rough translation. (It's a dude singing about how gorgeous his girlfriend is and how Michelangelo should come paint her because "her smile will make the Mona Lisa ask to be taken down". So 80s.)

On a more personal note, I think I mentioned before that I had something of an irrational fear of international travel - where some people are afraid of spiders or heights, my fears all center around being lost in an unfamiliar place, being unable to understand those around me, and being unable to make myself understood. Obviously this was a pretty ideal trip with regards to those fears; almost everyone in Sweden speaks English, we had our friend to guide us and translate anything complicated, and between her presence and the existence of GPSs I wasn't in any danger of getting hopelessly lost. So I was able to make it through and enjoy myself without too much trouble. But...it was still stressful, not being able to read things. I could figure out some of it from pictures and symbols and the few words I do know, and after I'd been there for a few days (and had Petra translate a few things) it felt less like an incomprehensible jumble of syllables. But...man. Am I ever not used to being functionally illiterate. People tell me I seem so together; I don't think I'd realized how much of that was "I instinctively read everything around me, so I know stuff like where exits are and who's on the front page of the paper and what's being advertised". (And that's not even going into missing cultural context like "I know why that advertisement is problematic and who people think should be on the front page of the paper instead.") And...not having that together-ness is something of an emotional strain for me. I found myself retreating to the bathroom rather more often than I normally do, just so I could breathe deeply and touch up my lipstick and otherwise try to re-center myself and get my mental shields back in place.

Still, I only had one minor bout of homesickness midway through the trip, as compared to nearly every day the last time I traveled overseas (which was, admittedly, decades ago). So it's an improvement! I just wish I could be more comfortable going with the flow sometimes, I guess; I think I'd have a much better time if I could let go of that need to know as much as possible about any given situation. But since I apparently can't, at least I have Google and Duolingo and kind friends to fill in the gap.

The Summer of All The Travel continues. One week until we leave for Sweden! The flight is going to be...interesting; we're flying overnight into Heathrow, and then have a six hour layover before the flight to Gothenberg. Given how well I sleep on planes (read: I can't), I was thinking about booking a hotel room to catch some rest between flights, but then I looked at the prices for the Heathrow Hilton...and since the layover is during the day, we'd probably have to reserve two nights. Nope. Nope nope nope. I'm willing to be a little sleep deprived in order to save three hundred pounds, thanks. So, flying sleep-deprived into a foreign country...it'll be an adventure! Maybe I'll be too tired for my ambiguphobia to trigger? We'll see!

Travel plans for my Washington trip in October are coming together. I'm flying in to Seattle on the 21st and spending a couple of days there before taking the train out to Mt. Vernon (and Donna, and my goddaughter!) on the 24th. I have emails out to a couple of friends I'd like to stay with. I'm hoping to get my tattoo while I'm there, but I'm unsure if it's a piece that can be done in a single sitting; I've emailed the artist I'd like to work with, but haven't heard back yet. I'm hoping I didn't come off as a dilettante wasting her time; I mentioned that this was my first tattoo, and I'm sure my questions belied my relative inexperience, but I'm absolutely serious about wanting to get this done.

Obligatory Craigslist grumping: I'm trying to sell the massage table I used for school - it's a good table, and in great shape. I put up a Craigslist ad with pictures, and got a couple of hits overnight, but both of them were...shall we say, curt? Admittedly, both came through the iPhone app (and had "Sent from my iPhone" appended to them), but usually one of the ways I filter out the flakes/scammers is by looking for people who take the time to compose a proper message using full sentences and punctuation. Even on an iPhone, is the difference in time between "Still have table" (seriously, that was the entirety of the message) and "I'm interested in looking at this table, do you still have it for sale?" really that difficult? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Faith in humanity restoration: Humans of New York's campaign to help a Pakistani woman fight the horrible institution of bonded labor. HoNY is one of my favorite corners of the Internet, in no small part because the comments on their Facebook page have managed to stay one of the few uniformly-positive and hopeful communities I’ve ever encountered online. Seeing the pictures of this woman, reading her story, and seeing how quickly the numbers are ticking up on her donation page, just gives me the warmest feeling. I hope she gets closer to her goal than she ever thought possible.

I've been in Anchorage a few days now, and driving around quite a bit. It's still the town I grew up in, but it's also growing rapidly, even since I was here over Thanksgiving. I see more and more names I recognize from other places - Mens Wearhouse, Target, Massage Envy, Texas Roadhouse, Olive Garden, Sephora. Mid-tier chains and franchises that until now I've mostly associated with Tucson, or Phoenix, or Chicago. I even saw a sign for an outlet mall coming soon.

And yet, through it all, it's still Alaska. The Chugach range still sits to the east, watching in its timeless stoicism even as houses creep up along its foothills. Rather than groomed public parks with carefully-planted trees, most of the green is patches of wild overgrown birch and spruce forest left between even the newest housing developments. Wildlife wanders unafraid through people's yards, or visits the zoo of a morning.

Sometimes I feel like I can see the seams between the place I grew up and the place that's here now: the slightly brighter paint where such-and-such a section of the Dimond Center has been renovated to make way for a new anchor tenant, or the grocery store that now sits on the field where I used to braid daisy chains. Sometimes, if I tilt my head and unfocus my eyes a little, I can almost see them both there, in the same space at the same time, and I wonder if our nostalgic mourning for things lost is fundamentally shortsighted.

---

While colorful hair is not unknown here, it's somewhat rarer than it is in Chicago, and I thus get rather more comments when I'm out and about.  

The other day, I heard a little girl in a shopping cart squeal "She has pink hair!" I told her that where I live, there are people with pink hair and purple hair and green hair and blue hair and orange hair. Somewhat to my surprise, this didn't seem to shock her at all - in fact, she added with some certainty, "And violet!" I nodded and agreed, yes, violet hair was quite common.

I suspect that she already spends some time in a world where people have hair in every color of the rainbow. So I was merely confirming her knowledge that such a place had to exist in this world as well.

---

When I told my acquaintances that I was going to Alaska for a visit, I received numerous exhortations to post lots of pictures, mostly from my yoga friends.  I suspect they thought I was coming here to go hiking, or camping, or fishing, or any of the numerous (and wonderful!) outdoorsy opportunities, and would thus be posting pictures of Alaska's awe-inspiring landscape.

In truth, though I may wander out to Thunderbird Falls or a similarly-easy hike later, for now I'm pleased simply to spend time with my mother, who doesn't go many places other than home and work.  So here are some of my vacation pictures so far.



This is my mother's townhouse, which a local friend referred to recently as "the house at the edge of the world".  It's surprisingly apt - it's on top of the hill, overlooking the Seward Highway, an interstitial space if ever there was one.  In the summer it's a tree house, with the living room's large picture windows surrounded by birch trees in full leaf.  In the winter, it becomes a hilltop castle, overlooking mountains and rivers and even the ocean in the distance.



This is the view between two of the trees on the left in the previous photo.  Normally the Chugach range is visible here, but last night it went to bed early and pulled the cloud blanket up over its head.



This is my mother's very comfortable living room.  I like to sit here with a lap desk and read or write letters while she bustles about in the kitchen behind me, or does beadwork nearby.



This is a bike path that runs along my mother's subdivision.  Its destination (a business/shopping complex with a supermarket and a post office) is perhaps a bit prosaic, but it's surprisingly pretty along the way.  There's enough dense growth even in these cut-down little greenbelts to get whiffs of that proper mulchy forest smell, especially in autumn.  



Alaska, having long been ranked #50 out of 50 states when it comes to good restaurants, has been making great strides of late, especially in Anchorage.  Unfortunately, it's still got a ways to go, as this rather sad attempt at a "charcuterie board" at a passing-for-trendy local hotspot shows.  (Sharp-eyed readers may notice something missing.) Still, they're trying - they've got a nice mixture of relishes, here, and the presentation is nice.  And in all fairness, it was only half as expensive as a charcuterie board in Chicago.



Brian (by his own admission) has an Argo Tea problem, to the point where he will at times walk five extra blocks to get to an Argo Tea because "it's on the way".  I was entertained to find a rack of their pre-bottled tea at the Natural Pantry up here, and texted him this picture with the comment, "It's *always* on the way!"



Growing up, we nicknamed fireweed my "birthday flower", because it always first starts to bloom in mid-July.  It's one of the things I truly miss about Alaska, and more than once I've tried to dye my hair this color.



Something else I genuinely miss:  having drives like Turnagain Arm literally just south of town.  In Chicago, I almost never drive if I can avoid it - it's a chore, something you do to get from one place to another.  Out here, there are so many beautiful places only accessible by car.



My mother's balcony garden always seems to me to be the essence of the phrase "a riot of color". You can almost hear those firecracker begonias crackling and popping, the strident purple pansies demanding your attention while the miscellaneous hubbub of the violas fills the cracks.