I always weigh myself while brushing my teeth. Toothbrushes weigh a conveniently varying amount.
Babies don’t appreciate naps as much as they should, the unappreciative leeches.
About once a week my cat plays Gage and recreates that scene from Pet Cemetery if I walk past his empty food bowl one to many times. Ow, my god damn achilles tendon, cat!
I’d so much rather have indoor spiders than whatever bugs it is they’re surviving off of.
I’m late to the Star Wars the Force Awakens party. Considering I had my youngest 3 days after it’s release I think you’ll see why I hadn’t watched it before this point even though I love me some Star Wars. So we finally watched it on Saturday. I thought it was good- I liked the concept and visuals of all the war detritus a lot. What wasn’t okay? The death of my favorite character in a series I dearly loved and with whom I idolized as a kid. Teenager. And adult. Does Han Solo explain my undying love of vests? I’m almost positive. I never wanted to see that character change from the one I remembered and identified with.
There is comfort in a character’s stasis. According to Genetics, Paleontology, and Macroevolution by Jeffrey S. Levinson “Character stasis is simply where for a given morphological character, no temporal change occurs.” To extrapolate that out to fictional characters means to me that they should exist forever going out on top. And I know I’m not alone in getting comfort from that unchanging state of our beloved characters in their moments of glory. Or getting thrown off when it doesn’t happen like that.
When a character has an end… when the bracket is closed or the sentence is punctuated with something other than a dot, dot, dot it makes it hard to enjoy the good times when you know that bitter end is coming. Aramis leaves the other Musketeers to become a priest. Damn- that kinda changes everything when you read the book again from the beginning, you know? Robin Hood dies by being bled to death by an evil monk. Did not need to know that. I actually don’t want to see Harry Potter as a middle aged dad on the platform sending his sons off to Hogwarts. Or know that Captain America gets shot and killed by his girlfriend. (Seriously- someone get Stan Lee on the phone. He has some ‘splaining to do!) And I sure as hell didn’t want to ever see the death of Han Solo. That just is NOT okay.
How do I explain this… some characters…they’re like the seed jar. And yes, that is a weird reference, but it stems from a Radiolab episode that I highly recommend… and will explain my thinking on the concept of character stasis. Maybe. It was a correlation I thought of immediately after we watched the movie. Below is the link to the podcast episode:
There is comfort is something, even just our perception of a character, unchanging- weathering all the storms and centuries and slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that I enjoy. The fact that life isn’t always pretty and that bad things can happen to even the best or most heroic people? I promise that isn’t lost on me, writers. In fact- it’s nice to escape that reality sometimes and say, watch a movie. OH WAIT.
We live in an old farmhouse… in the middle of our town. It’s great- I have a clawfoot tub and am just around the corner from a grocery store- best of both worlds! Except for the clawfoot tub part. Look, I love it, and since it’s original to the house we’ll never get rid of it. And I DO occasionally wonder how many babies have been born in it or old folks died in it. (Neither of which bother me. I do wonder though.) No, the part that does bother me is… WHO THE HELL WANTS TO MOP UNDER THEIR TUB? Gah! And how many square feet of spidery, cobwebby, dusty tile does that add for me to try to ignore and avoid cleaning on a weekly basis? The struggle is real.
And the tub? It wasn’t really the point of this post. What was the point (kinda? I’m the Grand Duchess of Digressions) are the windows. We have the original windows still so it’s hot in the summer. And SO cold in the winter. (I live in Texas. Whatever, it’s still cold.) And most of that is due to the gaps in the windows. They rattle. They separate. I could get an iPhone through a couple, I swear. And that means not only does cold/hot air get in… but also bugs. I’ve almost been hit in the head by a stinkbug in my own house… twice. Moths. Beetles. A bee one time that I very carefully caught and let go outside. A hoard of ladybugs when the weather gets cold. And yeah… that means the occasional roach too. ugh. But it also means that 4 or 5 times I’ve woken up in the night to see a firefly in our bedroom. And I know that means our house is as tight as a colander, but the sight of a firefly flitting around 16 foot tall ceilings at 2 am… it’s lovely in an amazingly romantic way. The MOST romantic “bugs getting in the house” story ever? Maybe.
New windows are making their way inexoribly our way though. They will happen out of shear necessity- the heat, the bugs… they play a role in the decision. But mostly it is the lead paint dust risk that is the deciding factor. Plus the bugs. Well, most of them at least. The fireflies? I sure will miss the fireflies.
the something garden 