C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 119
June 11, 2012
June 10, 2012
If you want to see how we travel—
Jane’s page Jane’s got a new Shu slide show up. 
They’re going to be a pair…
June 9, 2012
Cyteen audiobook link—for convenience.
let’s see if this works.
Ha! Yes. I’ve finally got WP to display. Audible is currently working on Foreigner and Chanur.
We are back!
As per usual we don’t advertise when we’re on the road—but we have been. We were down in Texas, and took the kittehs with us on their first multiday road trip. Pix will turn up on Jane’s site. More later when we quit vibrating. But the route was beautiful, we got many pix, and tornadoes chased us all the way–sometimes only a few hours behind us. We began to say perhaps we should call Spokane Civil Defense and advise them we were arriving and staying…
May 27, 2012
The Gardening Angels have departed…
…leaving the front yard defined in mounds of mulch (flowerbeds) and pathways. You are either a mulch-heap, or a pathway. Or a rocky streambed. There is no other choice in our front yard. We are weeded, and mulched, pathed, and we are both quite, quite tired—Jane most of all, because she was out there supervising and toting bales herself. I mostly went after things, like ice, and food; and a timer; and such.
Now the front yard looks as we designed it to look, except we need some basalt edging to rim the mulch-mounds. It’s sooooo much easier to weed when you have a good barrier of weedcloth and newspaper down, under mulch. Weeds that ordinarily sink a fierce taproot come up without a struggle.
May 26, 2012
The Methodists are coming!
The church across the way has for some reason taken us under its wing—they came to our rescue when Jane was sick last year, laying paths in the back yard, around the koi pond, helping with weeding, and such, and laying the very heavy boundary stones, moving our load of rock up onto the level of the lawn and putting it in place, and generally doing in one day things that would have taken us all summer.
They are coming back tomorrow to do their thing, move basalt chips, lay paths in front, and generally to help us get in shape for summer. They are, the next week, having a garage sale, and we have ton’ o’ stuff to offload, literally not the kitchen sink, but the bathroom one, and so on and so on. This was an offer we couldn’t refuse—or afford, if we had to hire them: we contribute cookies and sinks and they contribute labor, making it possible for us to get our whole lives sorted out.. We were supposed to be at Miscon, not as guests, but as attendees, and I’m going to miss my old corresponding buddy George RR Martin—and John Dalmas; but we just can’t turn this down. Our wheelbarrow finally broke down (one of those really tough Lowe’s best ones) and we got another. So we’ll have two wheelbarrows going and people with rakes and weedcloth and weedcloth pins, and it’s all going to be so good!
We’re not members. They’re just being nice. Maybe one year we can go across the way and help them gardenize their corner, which could be a great garden.
May 25, 2012
Augean Stables Day 3
I came to a philosophical decision when I decided I needed more room. I HAVE more room. I HAD more room. I just wasn’t using it. My personal problem? A family tendency to hang on to ‘heirlooms’ and ‘mementos.’ I later realized that in my mother’s case it was a few heirlooms and the fact she was just prioritizing and new furniture to replace the really old stuff just wasn’t in the cards.
I came to a great realization when I ended up the possessor of a 4-poster bed and matching suite, and a carpet and a set of silver and glassware—none of which is remotely ‘me.’ Yet—there it was. Heirlooms. Family duty.
Well, it’s still not me. I shed it toward another family member—I ended up sleeping on a mattress on the floor, eventually, (don’t feel sorry for me: that gave way to a very nice Sleep Number mattress I love—and a platform bed from Walmart: 79.00) —and at least I didn’t have to port that bed to Spokane. Or the rest of it.
And then I began to figure—I was living surrounded in ‘things’ that were mementos, a dozen of them, all to recall things—but one thing would do the job, and the rest could go. One tiny item can recall a whole period of your life—I have this stupid little green plastic star, for instance–mostly transparent, size of a dime, and I got it from a penny arcade machine on a band trip. That’s enough. With that little star I can remember that night, the park, the people, the rides, the things I liked, the contests, my whole band career. I don’t need anything else. I have this little memory box I started back when I was a kid, and treasures like that star go in there. Only happy memories go in that box—like the plaster cast of a raccoon’s print on a sandbank: beautiful day—I was early teens; it was the edge of autumn; it was one of my most favorite places to hike solo. Reminds me, too, of a period, the Wichita Mountains, the wildlife, and hikes, yes, along the artillery range fence—the day my brother decided he was old enough to go walkabout. It was a four hour search, in an area where, yes, sometimes there were shells from before they put the fences up, and it wasn’t a safe place—I walked that road as far as any kid his age possibly could; then I cut over to the housing development and searched there, and searched areas where I knew he had friends—finally reported in, to find out the rascal been home four, five hours ago, and by then my mother was worried about *me*. But it was funny, once I had had enough iced tea, and bandaged my blisters. That’s what the memory box is. One item. You pull up the rope from that well—and a whole world comes with it.
If an item recalls even part of something I’d as soon forget, say, anything from the second through fifth grade, out it goes. Don’t need the classroom part of those years. Sixth was better. But I only need one item. If it doesn’t fit in that box, I really have to ask why I need it.
So, yes, my own bedroom furniture is mostly Walmart or the equivalent. But I can change it when my mood changes. I have sitabouts, but they’re things that make me smile, not launch into maudlin memory. Amnesia, correctly applied, is a good thing. There’s nothing in my living space that represents anything rotten. And there’s nothing I hate-but-have-to-pass-on. I do my service to the generations by keeping track of people—genealogy—I don’t keep a bedroom suite that’s not my taste. I’m living my life, not somebody else’s.
Time for another ‘shed’ of stuff. This time it doesn’t need to be much, but it’s amazing how one item you don’t know what to do with becomes the nucleus around which ‘stuff’ gathers, until it’s like that great trash-collection in mid-Pacific. More flotsam keeps swirling in to join it until you not only have a table you don’t like, you have things you don’t need atop the table you don’t like.
It feels rather liberating to see that item out the door.
May 24, 2012
The Augean Stables revisited…
One of the things that is becoming quite clear…is that the accumulation of stuff we bought that we now know is not going to be useful, but it’s good stuff—is a problem.
The Methodists are having a garage sale. And looking at the small pile of stuff for that sale that is going to put roofs over the heads of nice people—y’know, that little pile was the nucleus of what had become a Rubik’s Cube problem of space in the office—you keep moving it, to get space, but it fills up another space, and it never gets better. Yank out that nucleus of utterly useless (but good!) ‘stuff’, and the entire office becomes manageable. I am going to apply this theory to the kitchen shelves and the basement. We agree we are NOT looking to move. We have moved 3 times in 7 years, and each time we acquired (and kept!) ‘stuff’ that was appropriate to our needs in the place we moved TO. And didn’t shed ‘stuff’ we didn’t need where we were going…that was the big mistake.
It’s time to shed some ‘stuff’ for a good cause and clear some storage shelves.
May 23, 2012
May 22, 2012
Today I…
1. cleaned the office. That was major. Ever heard of the Augean Stables?
2. I filed all the stack of papers, and did, filed, and paid the quarterly business taxes.
3. I designated some stuff for the upcoming garage sale among the Methodists (the people who helped us with our garden last year.)
4. I put the 2×3′ bag of sponge bits into the waterfall filter to increase filtration area: a careful check of filter media said we were short, so that will help, I think. OTOH, when I squished it down into the filter it flooded a green gunky mess into my nice clear pond, so I am back to hosing out filters more than once a day. This involved a broom handle, all my weight, and two heavy rocks to make that dry sponge go friggin’ DOWN so I could get the lid on! But hopefully it will do better at keeping the pond algae-free.
5. the weather is blowing and cold again. Feels like early March. Definite sweatshirt weather.
6. got Jane’s prescription picked up, got some fluorescent paint marker to designate paths, because the Methodists are coming back!!! They show up with 20 people with a willingness to do things like lay paths, and we are so happy! We have a lot of stuff to donate to their garage sale…they raise money to take a Habitat for Humanity type operation down to Mexico to help build snug houses for people who need the help. It’s a good cause.
7. and I got the car tires. I get to count the fact I called Jane and we went to Swinging Door for lunch, because it means dinner will just be a salad tonight and my cooking work is already handled for the day. so 7 1/2.
8…now I get to get down to regular writing. Cept my back is having small protests over the wrestling job with the sponge sack, and I ate a wee bit too much at SD. But I’ll live!
