For a few years now I’ve been intending to dabble in the creation of youtube content to supplement the writings on my blog. Personally, I love reading blogs, and nothing can replace that experience of the written word for me, but I know that lots of folks enjoy their internet fodder in a more visually rich medium.
But also, let’s not pretend that I am doing this for “the people”. I do really like to hear myself chatter on. Which is funny and strange because I am not at all much of a conversationalist. But when it’s just me talking to myself or at an invisible audience who can’t respond, I have a blast. At any rate, here is my low production Youtube debut wherein you get to see my floating head atop a stack of books.
Like and subscribe! Har har.
If you have absolutely no interest in watching YouTube videos and want to cut right to the chase, hey, I respect that. Below is a list of the books mentioned in this video:
Presented entirely sans context (and I mean come on, do you need any:) Is Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up Day A Thing? In absence of a better thing today, I am declaring it A Thing.
“Hi, I’m Stevie Nicks. Do you like my band Fleetwood Mac? And do you like flautas, quesadillas, and other Tex Mex specialties? Then you’ll love my new restaurant in Sedona, Arizona: “Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Round-Up.
“Back in the 70s, I devoted myself to witchcraft, Lindsey Buckingham and cocaine. Now I devote myself to a Mexican dining experience you’ll never forget.”
[singing to the tune of Landslide] “You placed an order, I wrote it down. Beef enchilada, the best in town. Then I saw my reflection in a big pile of nachos. And the Landslide brought it down. Mmm-mmm.”
No idea what I am even talking about? Just know this: Lucy Lawless as Stevie Nicks on SNL in 1998 is maybe the most marvelous thing you will ever see. I’d love to embed the video right here on the blog, but it’s so hard to find, and I suspect that’s because of copyright baloney, and who needs that trouble. Anyway, go watch it, come back here and leave me a comment, and let’s bond over karaoke cosplay ideas and let’s hatch some schemes for Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up Day celebrations for next year!
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab released their annual smutty smorgasbord of Lupercalia and Shunga scents back in February, but no worries if you haven’t yet greedily grabbed a handful of this year’s shamelessly salacious scents! According to the folks at BPAL, “due to the current rippling of global infrastructure,” these prurient perfume oils, hedonistic hair glosses, bawdy bath oils, and amatory atmosphere sprays will remain live, indefinitely, on the site for purchase–as stock permits–instead of being taken down on the previously announced dates.
I have been taking my time with them, as you might imagine. I guess we’ve all got more time than we might have originally planned for right now. I try to keep busy. I stick to a routine and I do all of the things I normally do. I already work from home. I’m a homebody, even in the best of times. But that doesn’t stop the world from feeling off-kilter and scary to me, and to be honest, all of this pretending at normalcy has left me with the worst feeling, like making snow angels in my future chalk outline. Some days it’s paralyzing. I bet you feel the same on some of those days, too.
What has helped me, even for a few minutes every day, is a sniff of a smell. I have been doling out these Lupercalia scents one per morning, with five minutes where I just sit quietly and write about whatever I think I am smelling. No matter how maudlin or ridiculous, or trite or outlandish. No feelings or thoughts, or sensations are off-limits! Setting aside this sniff time over the past few weeks has provided me with a small but much-needed aromatic oasis in the midst of days that feel uncertain, uneasy, and unprecedented.
Green Lovebird (vanilla mint, spun sugar, and pistachio) This smells so familiar. The vanilla-mint combination contributes a sort of… shifty/shady 80s cartoon villainess-type vibe? I feel like if the Baroness, Evil-Lyn, and Pizzaz were at tea together, deviously munching sweetly iced petit-fours, this is the sly, scheming, miasma that would emanate from the cackling chambers of that tea-room.
Belgian Chocolate, Black Pepper, Whiskey, and Bourbon Vanilla is surprisingly wearable; and after the individual notes of creamy chocolate, peppery-floral heat and boozy whiskey-vanilla announce themselves, they blend seamlessly into a scent that somehow smells like none of the above, but rather just a mild, but wonderfully cozy perfumed-skin scent.
Elizabeth of Bohemia (the perfect rose oude) ROSE WITCH QUEEN. A rose that is both dark and bright and smells like a tragic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that has been illustrated by the unhinged black and white gorgeousness of Harry Clarke.
Spectral Lovers Entertaining the King of Hell Home & Linen Spray (lily of the valley, white gardenia, cherry blossoms, and black pepper) I am never certain what I am meant to be smelling when it comes to lily of the valley; to my nose, it is a soft, sorrowful, delicate sort of floral. As if you could milk jasmine of its tears for the purpose of keeping the pale, aromatic droplets at hand for some sort of doleful spellwork. Pairing it with the efflorescent piquancy of black pepper is a fair bit of genius and as a room spray, it’s a fragrance that’s pretty without being cloying and lively without being obnoxious.
Beach Scene (driftwood, white patchouli, sea salt, and kelp) I grew up living close to a beach, and while I truly love the sea, the trashy delights offered up by Daytona Beach (our new motto: WIDE OPEN FUN. Good lord.) do not contribute to my platonic ideal of The Beach. I want jagged cliffs and icy waves and widows walks and the ghost of a lighthouse keeper. I want wild gorse and heather and selkies. I want monstrous scarlet lobsters with googly eyes bobbing at the end of 12-inch stalks! I know I am probably confusing the geographical landscapes of Maine and Cornwall, and I also don’t have a clear grasp on lobster anatomy, but these are the beaches that have long haunted my imagination. Beach Scene smells like this eerie mash-up of chill winds, salt spray, migratory shorebirds, and vegetative cover like witchgrass and beach-pea… which have never seen, let alone smelled…but I could be right?
Michiyuki Koi No Futusao (green tea, oakmoss, and star anise) The sage and coral hues of the couple’s robes on the label’s artwork are mirrored in the dusty, honeyed citrus/earthy-green tropical-watery cucumberyness of the scent.
The Sun Is Rising (Tunisian amber, French beeswax, jasmine grandiflorum, golden peppercorn, myrrh smoke, and neroli) Beautiful and understated and utterly intoxicating all the same; jasmine, soothed and quieted, its piercing sweetness hypnotized by soft hands of beeswax and spectral smoke.
Alleviate the Frenzy Hair Gloss (heady peach musk aglow with sugared amber) (TW) Peaches, man. I don’t like to eat them and typically I don’t like to smell them and quite frankly I don’t even care to look at them– and we can blame this, I suppose, on the preponderance of slick, syrupy Del Monte canned peaches I was served for “dessert” as a plump youngster by a mother concerned about diets. Alleviate the Frenzy has presented me with a flummox of a peach, and it’s got me in quite a state. It’s a slightly sweet and toasted bit of warm, tilted at odd angles with a wonderful sour musk, and it recalls for me Letter 8 in a collection of bizarre correspondence by the hand of surrealist art-witch Remedios Varo. The author has sent a missive to an unidentified scientist with regard to dissolving the skin of a peach, but through the circumstance of a cat’s meow and the mishap of a stranger’s miscast shadow, she has instead dissolved a hole in the atmosphere. This peach presents a shifting cipher whose charms I would very much like to mail a stranger about.
Body, Remember (raw black coconut, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, champaca flower, and sugar cane) a trembling sigh of coconut on a brown-sugar lollipop breeze.
Ooyogari No Koe Home & Linen Spray (aloe, bamboo reeds, ti leaf, lemon peel, eucalyptus leaf, and sea salt) I really hate to use the word “fresh.” I hate the actual word “fresh” and all of the clean, minty, youthfulness that it implies. Give me stinky and skanky and musty and shabby, and old, any day. But I’ll say it: with its woody-green bamboo, lemony clean cotton vibe, Ooyogari No Koe does smell, well, kinda fresh. Overwhelmingly so. This is a potent scent that I can smell in a room 24 hours later. And I love it. This is perfect and beautiful and my ideal guest bedroom scent. Then again, I’d really love to festoon the walls of my guest room with Louis Wain art and Clive Barker quotes graffitied on the walls…so maybe you can’t trust my sense of home decor or hospitality.
Snake’s Kiss (Snake Oil with sugar, honeycomb, and thick vanilla cream) While I do love Snake Oil sugary vanilla resins with all my heart–it is, after all, the first BPAL scent that I fell in love with!–even I can admit, well, it’s …a lot. Snake Oil is intense; it’s as if you took your most favorite thing, dialed it up to awesome and then broke the knob off. You love it, but it’s a lot to handle all at once, let alone for a sustained length of time. Snake’s Kiss is as if you get to enjoy your favorite thing from …across the room, or even more apt, from across time. The memory of your favorite thing. Your favorite thing as seen (or sniffed) through rose-tinted glasses. Snake’s Kiss is Snake Oil on the collar of your cotton pajamas two days from now.
A Vision of the Courtesan (tobacco leaf, rice milk, and frankincense) This walks the line between a foody/oriental fragrance but it never quite seems to inch even a toe in either direction. Imagine a monastic incense of horchata and cherry tobacco; the hands of the monks who labor over its creation are spiced with its very essence and they sleep in tranquil clouds of the stuff as their skin exudes the scent during slumber.
Tengu Demon Using His Nose As A Phallus (red musk, black pepper, Mysore sandalwood, ambrette seed, and smoke) A sharp-toothed, fiendish breath of dry, peppery musks and creamy woods, shifting and whirling through smoke and ash.
Dark Chocolate & Dried Red Fruits An intensely chocolatey chocolate cookie, something with a bit of a crisp and a crunch and a crumble; that’s dry and not too sweet; it’s less wafery and more biscotti-y, and perfect for dunking in midnight coffee. Did I mention it is studded with chocolate-covered blueberries? Or maybe the coffee has hints of blueberry mocha notes. I don’t think I am actually getting any coffee from this scent, but now I want a big steaming mug of it.
Champagne and Maraschino Cherries This is a vivid scent, that, once applied, you can nearly see it. Lurid day-glow red, almondy/syrupy cherries floating in a bit of soda-type fizz…totally reminiscent of my favorite Shirley Temple drink at Red Lobster when I was a little girl. Except there’s something a bit spring floral about it, too. Instead of finding this drink in my small midwestern town’s only seafood restaurant, I stumbled into a fairy circle…and somehow still wasn’t allowed a grown-up drink… and I was offered a Shirley Temple Flower Maiden instead.
Wild Cherry Chypre and Smoky Patchouli Hair Gloss This is such a fun, earthy, rooty take on cherries! A pulpy, juicy, bitter-sweet cherry jam atop a mud pie, decorated with dried oak bark shavings and autumn leaves.
For national poetry month, I am once again sharing my forever favorite: “How To Greet Death,” by Gabriel Gadfly. I originally found this poem posted over on Tumblr in 2008 or so. Oh, Tumblr! I guess you weren’t all bad.
How To Greet Death
Greet death
with your hands in your pockets,
slouched back, cool,
collected, and confident.
Wear a hint of a grin
and a dash of cologne.
Say What took you so long?
Say You’re behind the times, man.
Say Dead is the new black.
Coffin is the new condo.
Pallor is the new tan. La vida muerta.
Greet death
with a fistful of black-eyed susans,
butterflies in your stomach,
and two tickets to tomorrow’s sunrise.
Wear your father’s cufflinks
and your mother’s wedding ring.
Say I brought these for you, babe.
Say Kiss me, kiss me.
Say But wait until the sun comes up.
Just until daybreak.
I want to show you something. Hasta la muerte, te amo.
Greet death
with a knife at your own neck,
chin up, throat bared,
cardiac in overdrive.
Wear nothing.
Wear nothing.
Say Bring it on motherfucker!
Say Only on my terms.
Say nothing
and open your throat.
and bleed to completion. El final, el final, el final.
Last week I shared on the Haute Macabre Instagram account ten of my favorite movies for watching while in self-isolation, but to be honest, these are just my favorite films, period. I thought I’d share them on my blog today, with links to where you can view them, if available.
I’d give you a pithy synopsis for each one, but man. I just haven’t got it in me right now. The world is going to shit in a strange and awful way and I am doing everything I can to keep it together at the moment. If you’re picking and choosing from this list, feel free to judge a book by its cover or, in this case, a movie by its inexplicably compelling film still.
First, though in no particular order is the trippy, surreal Belladonna of Sadness (above) and which can be found on Shudder right now.
You can purchase Valerie and Her Week of Wonders from Criterion, or you can watch it on YouTube.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is available through Amazon, or again, you can purchase at Criterion.
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural, well, I am not sure where you can stream it, but you can get the DVD at Amazon.
The Lair of the White Worm, a fantastic adaptation by Ken Russell of the Bram Stoker story, can be found on Shudder. If you’ve a mind to grab the book, please know that it’s completely deranged but it’s also got illustrations by Pamela Colman-Smith (of the Smith-Waite tarot!)
Jean Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl can be found on Amazon. I adore most of Jean Rollin’s pretty but mostly-plotless films, but this one is a definite favorite.
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death is probably the dumbest title in the world, but don’t let that dissuade you from giving it a watch! It can be found on Amazon.
The Fountain can be found on Amazon (though I think it’s actually through Cinemax) or Hulu. When you inevitably become obsessed with the gorgeous melodrama of Clint Mansell’s score for the film, give it a listen on Spotify.
After you’ve thoroughly sated your desires for beautiful films with marvelous costumes and breathtaking cinematography, there’s nothing left for you but Frankenhooker. Which if I actually was ranking these films, I might actually put this weird gem right at the top of the list! You can find it on Shudder.
Johann Georg Meyer, Young Woman Looking through a Window
Ok, so if we’re being honest, I’ve been self-isolating since the late 70s. And it must be noted that I wrote that sentence last night and in opening this draft again early this morning, I misread that as “…self-loathing since the late 70s”. Also true. But not why we’re here today.
It’s a scary, lonely, and possibly boring time for a lot of folks right now if you’re keeping your distance from others, working from home, and just hanging around your house, waiting for this madness to pass. No happy hours with co-workers, no bookclubs or yoga classes, possibly no trips to the library or the grocery store (if, like me, that’s about the extent of your social interaction right there.)
I know a lot of us think–hey, 24/7 home-times and zero amounts of human contact is basically my life, anyway! No biggie! But it’s one thing to want that for yourself…it’s something else entirely not to have any choice in the matter. What once felt safe and lovely in the cozy confines of your home may begin to feel like a sentence of stifling, smothering imprisonment. After all, no one wants to be told what to do! There’s nothing like being informed that you can’t do something, to flip that contrarian switch in your mind that makes you suddenly want to do that thing more than anything in the world. So I absolutely understand how frustrating it can, even for an introvert, not to be able to leave the house, let alone see the places and do the things and hang out with the people. Or just…you know, go to your place of work and put in the hours for a paycheck. Or maybe you are immunocompromised, or you deal with the daily experience of living with a chronic illness, and frequently must turn down invitations or reschedule appointments for things outside the house while you tend to your own health. During this strange time of isolation and quarantine it’s possible you may be feeling well enough to spend time with friends, but…you can’t. And let’s not forget our extroverted friends! I know that I personally feel drained from being around people and am happy to avoid it entirely, but I have plenty of friends who find interaction and conversation energizing and invigorating. The friends who are always moving, going, doing! I can think of any number of reasons we are worried and anxious and the possibility of stir craziness and cabin fever looms.
Me, well. As someone who already works at home and has for almost a decade; who has maybe only one local IRL friend; who is very much an introvert anyway…I believe I am doing OK. For now. I don’t think I am likely to get bored (in my childhood, someone once told us, “if you’re bored–you’re boring!” and that is a sentiment that has always stuck with me, and has instilled in me the idea that to be boring is maybe the worst personality flaw one can have.) My youngest sister explained our temperaments quite well when it comes to being okay with being home, and alone:
“My early years of being a socially-awkward, friendless little freak have served me well: I’m comfortable in my own company, and my internal landscape is rich and well-supplied with my own interests and curiosities.”
Wow, you can’t tell we’re related or anything.
I’m still working full time at my day job–not much has changed on the surface with regard to what I do for a living. But it’s an industry that will no doubt be affected by what’s happening now, and I have a feeling that these are effects that may be felt soon. So I’ll be grateful for my job while I have it! For this period of quarantine and captivity, things at work are no doubt going to be a little slow, so here are a few of the things I will be doing. Or thinking about doing. Or some ideas for you!
Clean and tidy and organize my environment. When you have to look at the same walls and shelves and surfaces for days on end, dust and scraps and piles of random things where they don’t belong can start to make your space feel annoying and gross–and this feeling can naturally affect your attitudes and motivations for doing other things.
Block out some time to make the bed, to vacuum, to put things back where they belong, at the very least. Catch up on some podcasts while you’re doing it! For me in particular, that means organizing the stacks of stuff that end up on top of the captain’s bed in my office, a spot which has become sort of a catch-all for everything that enters my home that I don’t have immediate plans for. And because I work in my office, I always see that mountain of yarn, or perfume samples or whatever, looming and mocking me from the corner of my eye. It’s distracting. I’m going to take some time to find homes for these things and bring my office back to a nice, functional space.
Read! Now is a great time to make a dent in those stacks. You know the ones. The library stacks. The purchased-from-amazon-for-summer-reading-in-2015 stacks. The Kindle Unlimited backlog digital stacks. The poetry-section-at-Powells-from-a-previous-trip-to Portland stacks. Have a nice beverage, kick up your feet and put on your funny socks so that when you look down you see your silly toes and it makes you laugh. Post a photo of that on Instagram. Or maybe listen to some free books! Right now I am finally reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, catching up on Monstress. What are you reading during these strange, unprecedented times?
Catch up on personal projects, hobbies, or creative activities–finish that knitted shawl, make that pelmeni that your friend gave you an excellent recipe for, KonMari your tee shirt drawer; redesign an awkward room, fix those wonky, squeaky, creaky things around the house, throw out all of your old crusty makeup, do your taxes. Tune that ukelele that your partner bought you for Christmas in 2014 and you’re afraid to even look at, update your resume/portfolio and refresh those skills that might give you a leg up on the job market, unsubscribe from all of the stuff clogging your mailbox, unfollow all those boring people on Instagram who never update anymore …though if you were close to them you may want to reach out and see if they’re ok, of course! Create a budget for yourself and make some plans to be more financially solvent. Do some end of life planning! (this is not morbid; this is practical.)
Learn something new! A yoga pose, a fancy nail design manicure, a Skillshare class on whatever, I don’t know, maybe one about being a social media guru or taking nice photos of your coffee in a hipster cafe. Listen to that one TED talk on empathy; learn to make a classic cocktail. Learn origami, watch some youtube tutorials for making cold process soap or wax candles, or herbal tinctures and decoctions. Read up on some eco-sustainable solutions for your home to begin implementing when you’re comfortable enough to think about things like that again. Look at some beautiful art for your eyeballs in a virtual museum tour. Finally begin reading up on the Tarot! Take your cue from The Hermit, and use this introspective, reflective time to learn about the things that excite your soul. Like crochet! The Hermit is totally crocheting some amigurumi dolls right now.
Are both you and your partner working at home? Take lunch together and do something absurd and ridiculous like rewrite the words to a popular song; I’ve started with the lyrics to the Eagle’s Desperado–my version is called Death Burrito. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I mean… I haven’t even learned to play the original on my ukelele.
Talk about something silly and fanciful. Plan that pie-in-the-sky-vacation you’ve been thinking about taking. Daydream together. My partner and I both work from home and have for years now, in our very different jobs. We have separate offices, luckily, and we’ve worked it out so that we don’t get in each other’s way, and we understand that we are at work between the hours of 8:30-5:30. But if that’s not your situation, this may be a good read right now: Surviving Quarantine Without Killing Your Partner.
Get outside if you can. Walk around the neighborhood, peek in your neighbor’s garages (why do so many people leave their garage doors open all day long? Guy with the confederate flag hanging over your mossy old sofa…do you really want people to see that?) Go to a park, I mean I know it’s only a quarter-mile walk around a craggy retention pond, but use your imagination. Hang out in your backyard and garden, plant some seeds, grow something. Have a little picnic on your back porch. Squat down and look at some bugs. Lean your head back and look at the sky.
If you’re able, do your best to move around and don’t turn into a fossil! Little micro-workouts, gentle stretches, strength training, learn a K-pop dance, dance with Debbie Allen!; hula hoop in your backyard, do one of those crazy VR games, use your treadmill or stationary bike, try yoga apps or youtube videos, use that zombie running app that you downloaded once and promptly forgot about. If any of my DDR PS2 games worked with our PS4 I’d be hardcore Dance Dance Revolutionizing right now. I am actually the worst at this, so if you’ve got any tips of things tried and true that work for you, please let me know!
Planner layout photo courtesy my baby sister, who suggested both #plandemic and #plandemonium as hashtags for current social media usage.
Plan and organize and make appointments and schedule things! I know it’s tough to book mammograms and hair colorings right now. Who knows when it will seem like a smart idea again to see our doctors for non-crucial issues and book appointments with the folks who make us look good? I don’t know! But if you’re suddenly working from home (or you’re at home because you’re suddenly not working) it’s understandable that you might be floundering and adrift because your regular routines have all gone out the window. Make a plan for yourself even if you’re just scheduling the stuff you do around the house. 6:30am wake up. Make bed. Drink water. Wash face. Do laundry. Email friends. I know these are just dumb daily things that you are going to do anyway, but when you don’t have anything else going on and your whole day boils down to these quotidian activities, it can feel like a big deal crossing small wins off your list.
Communicate with friends and loved ones. Keep up with your Facebook group chats, Skype with your sisters, text your best friend, send out emails to folks you haven’t heard from in a while. (If you’re me, don’t take/make any phone calls because why don’t people get that you are on the phone from sundown from sunup for your day job and you would rather throw yourself into a woodchipper than talk on the phone in your free time?) Play online games or apps with your cousins, watch movies with your coven over facetime, do book club discussions over coffee or cocktails together via Skype. Create a shared playlist with your buds on Spotify. Write some actual letters with that fancy stationery you never use, for pete’s sake
Cook! Experiment with a new recipe (make one of those technical challenges from the Great British Baking Show! Pretend that Paul Hollywood is going to give you that famous handshake if you get it right!), make a comforting classic; perfect one of your granny’s recipes, do some nice, relaxed, non-rushed meal-prep; see what kind of dreamy charcuterie board you can come up with what you’ve got on hand. If what you’ve got is string cheese, salmon jerky, and Cheez-Its, that’s a good try! The unattractive photo above is a barley and lentil soup I made with some dried goods that had been in my cupboard for maybe 5-6 years. I don’t know if it’s because I sauteed the veggies in bacon grease, but this was really an excellent-tasting soup for having used such humble ingredients.
Step away from the media that’s fueling your anxiety; draw yourself a bath and use some of those potions and lotions and oils and balms you have on the shelves in your bathroom– bath salts, bubble baths, fancy soaps, bath bombs, bath melts, etc, etc. Give yourself a manicure, a pedicure, a hand massage, a foot soak (or if you’re like me, you’re too lazy to draw a bath so instead you put all of those things I listed above into a tiny foot soak tub instead); do a facial, a mask, a peel; do some gua sha, light some candles, listen to some ASMR for tingles and relaxation. Lisa-Marie Basile has got some really wonderful rituals for troubling times such as this in her gorgeous book, Light Magic for Dark Times: More than 100 Spells, Rituals, and Practices for Coping in a Crisis, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is the perfect time to dive in.
Write it out! Do some journaling (keep a plague diary!) work on your essay, your article, your interview, your poetry, your great American novel; meditate on and document what is happening right now, scribble and ramble to work through your fears and your feelings during these chaotic times. It’s scary to sit with these worrying thoughts, but if you’re up to it, you may find it helpful.
Follow your heart and see what it wants to do…and if that’s exactly nothing, then go with that for a while, too. It is OK to be still. I think the idea of “keeping busy” and the hustle/grind/etc–these types of relentless toil have been glorified in our society, and listen, you don’t have anything to prove right now. We place unbelievably high standards on ourselves, and that pressure is untenable on any given day, let alone in circumstances such as these. Listen to that small voice within and to the messages your body, instincts, spirit give you. You don’t have to “think positively.” Be worried, be anxious, be scared. Lean into those feelings and let them have a voice. If that’s too much right now, and stillness doesn’t feel like something you can handle, to do those things that make you feel safe and cozy and let you tune out for a while: movies, puzzles, knitting, looking at pictures of corgi butts, napping, whatever.
If your heart is moved do something else, maybe consider donating to or buying a gift card from local businesses that you support; purchase a gift card or two from some of your favorite artists, or contribute to their Patreon, or buy them a Kofi. Support your local mutual aid network. If we’re at a point where you can still do this, run errands for someone who needs to stay indoors. I am sure there are lots of helpful and good things that I am not even thinking of, so please feel free to comment with ideas and practices of your own.
And I get it, we’re not all on vacation here. Some of us are still working– I know I am. (And there are some lovely, gentle work from home tips in this article at Luna Luna Mag!) It’s not like all of this magical free time just opened up for me! Some are not working and currently without income. Some of you have kids and can’t just take up crocheting or a new hobby or whatever. You’ve got diapers to change or kids out of school who need wrangling. Some of you live in apartments and maybe don’t have a park or a neighborhood to walk around. We’re not all in the same situation, and we don’t have access to the same things. The circumstances look different for all of us, and I wish I had more answers and ideas for everyone. But these are some things that I’d like to try to work into my schedule because now seems like a good time, I mean it’s got to be good for something, right?
Ghost hugs from exile, friends. Be well and stay safe.
Hello friends. As you probably know, because I have mentioned it several times over on several social media platforms–I am unloading some of my things over on Depop and Poshmark. There is nothing wrong with these things–some of them are, in fact, very very nice!–but they just don’t get any love and sit in a box or on a shelf, unused. It’s quite a waste, and I’d love them all to go to good homes, and if I can make a buck or two in the process and recoup some of my spendings, that would be grand.
A million years ago, I used to sell vintage clothes on eBay, and I had so much fun with it. Now, though, the thought of selling to strangers who are going to complain or criticize or attempt to scam me …it just feels too fraught. Even people asking me questions about what I am selling makes me very anxious. I just want to be done with it, and I want all of these extra things out of my house because I am tired of looking at them!
So, I thought I might show a few things here on the blog for folks who read my blog–I am way more comfortable with you guys. If you see anything you’d like to take off my hands, make me an offer* and let’s work something out! I would love to do this outside of Depop and avoid all the fees. I know that in general, that’s ill-advised because Depop and sites like it offer buyer protection, but I think we’re good here, right? So if you’ve got a PayPal account, and you’ve had your eye on something, please let me know, and let’s make it happen!
If you’re not sure what I mean by “make me an offer”, hopefully, this will help. I had that velvet Vampire’s Wife bag, featured above, listed for $325. When I originally purchased it, new, it was £350.00 ($449 USD). It is virtually unused, and yet someone on Poshmark offered me $100 for it. That’s…a little insulting, you know? Out of spite, I declined the offer and I unlisted the item. Ha! Take that! Anyway, I will entertain all REASONABLE offers, is what I am saying.
If you see anything below that you’d like to grab, shoot me an email with an offer and your address details to mlleghoul AT gmail dot com, and let’s talk! I have provided links to all of the listings should you want additional particulars and details, and be sure to take a peek around, because I didn’t post below everything that’s listed in the shop, and you don’t want to miss out! The earliest I will be able to ship out is Monday, March 9, and all items will be sent via priority mail with tracking.
If there’s anything you’ve had your eye on, now is definitely the time to scoop it up, because as of April 1st, I am taking all of my listings down. It’s just too much potential stress and I don’t want to worry about it anymore!
International friends–my apologies. Shipping elsewhere can be a little onerous and so this is post is intended for friends and readers in the US.
1. I used to think that little people lived in my stomach and their village would starve to death if I didn’t eat the Wheat Chex my mother served me every morning.
2. I still believe that the inner workings of cars and computers are powered by fairies and elves.
3. I don’t care for ice cream or cake or pie or candy or cookies. But I do like a lovely crème brûlée.
4. For the years of ten through eleven I slept with a photo of Indiana Jones that I’d torn from the TV Guide.
5. I am terrified of speaking in front of crowds, but you can’t shut me up when I get in front of a camera.
6. I love to sing. My voice is not great, but I don’t think it’s awful, either.
7. I don’t dance. Not even in the house, alone.
8. When I am dreaming, and I enter a darkened room and the light switch isn’t working, that’s how I know it’s about to become a nightmare.
9. My favorite number is two and odd numbers make me a little nervous.
10. I prefer curved shapes. Sharp angles make me anxious, and I often attribute aggressive personalities to them.
11. I would rather wear darker colors but I do love a nice bright, pumpkin-y orange.
12. My sisters and I used to mingle and fraternize our Barbie dolls and Star Wars action figures. Lando Calrissian went on a ski trip with Day to Night Barbie, and things went dark when he slid down a treacherous slope into our trash can (at least we thought that’s where he went) but we couldn’t find him afterward and he was never seen again.
13. I get very upset when I think about my sisters and I not recognizing each other in the next life.
14. My favorite scent is fresh marjoram.
15. My least favorite smell is bubblegum.
16. I can’t even be around people who are chewing gum, I have to leave the room.
17. I like it when older ladies call me honey or sweetheart or darling. I almost yearn for it. Probably because I miss my mother and my grandmother. Conversely, I hate it when men call me those things.
18. In order of things I like to do best: putter in the kitchen, knit, read, watch movies. I feel like if I never did anything but these four things, it would still be a pretty great life.
19. I have strong opinions about people who drizzle ketchup all over their french fries before they even start eating them. I actually have kind of strong opinions on ketchup, in general. On it’s own, it tastes like a mouthful of barf. It needs to be partnered with mustard.
20. I once told a group of people that when I die I would like my body to be expertly butchered and barbecued and served to those I loved most, with a variety of delicious dipping sauces. I can’t think of a more lovely way to be remembered. Dipping sauces are the best.
Some deathly reportings I have encountered in the past month or so– from somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have come across my radar with reference to matters of mortality.
I hate looking at my face in photos that other people have taken of me.
It’s hard to articulate why you think your best angles are your best angles, because quite frankly when we look at ourselves, I’m fairly certain that all we see are our flaws. (If you’ve evolved beyond this, I tip my hat to you.) My weak chin, massive forehead, my wonky tooth, my squinty, asymmetric eyes, my weird albino mole, and conversely, that dark splotchy sun-spot–I have been evaluating, assessing, and critiquing these problems with my gargoyle face in photos for …well. My entire life.
Our friends, however, aren’t as intimately familiar with how hideous we believe that we are; they don’t examine our repulsive facial topographies in the mirror every day (they’ve got their own faces to deal with, I imagine) and since they probably think we’re decent-enough looking humans, they are not as circumspect and calculated as we are in capturing our own portraits on film. I am certain that anyone who has ever been tagged in a friend’s Facebook photo looking like a chubby, inbred goblin is mortifyingly familiar with this oversight on the part of our friends, and this is why I think we need consent forms and NDAS and binding contracts promising that they will never ever ever tag us in a photo on Facebook unless we have pre-approved said photo. In my opinion, there is no betrayal quite so heinous as being marked as yourself by a “friend” in a particularly ugly photo.
Anyway, I had some author photos taken last weekend. I tried not to be too critical of them afterward; they were shot by my brother in law and I think he did a great job! He made me feel comfortable, and I knew I wasn’t going to wind up looking like anyone else other than me. (I am terrified of getting my makeup done, because, as part of the process, I may be given those terrible fuzzy caterpillar Instagram eyebrows; I am so scared of this that I wore exactly zero makeup in these photos except for some tinted moisturizer. My eyebrows may be non-existent, but at least they are not Eugene Levy-levels of lepidopteran larvae hovering above my eyeballs.) These photos came out looking exactly like me, for better or worse. But the one above is my absolute favorite. “Cackling into the void,” a friend of mine captioned it. And I don’t think anything captures me better than just laughing at how scared and ugly I feel all the time. It’s kinda hilarious. And sad. But mostly funny!
One thing that -mostly- never makes me feel sad or scared or ugly though, is spending time in the kitchen. (Just don’t ask me about the time I had the “brown rice risotto meltdown”! It was just last week. Too soon.)
Last year, thanks to the recipe and encouragement of dear Sonya, I tried my hand at making gravlax; this year, I thought…why not make the bagels and cream cheese to accompany it?
This time around I went with Brad Leone’s gravlax recipe from this episode of It’s Alive. I left out the turmeric because that just seemed…a little weird. The peppercorns and coriander seeds smelled so beautiful; sharp and fresh and floral and a bit citrusy, and I wish I could wear the glittering finery of this salt and sugar sprinkle half as well as this little slab of salmon!
Did I feel the slightest bit of trepidation contemplating the creation of homemade bagels? Maybe. But even bad bagels had the promise of being pretty freaking amazing, and please indulge me when I tell you that these were not bad bagels. Were they perfect? Lordy. No.
Were they a lot of work? Like maybe a thousand times the effort of going to Bagel King? Yes, they were. Were they probably twice as expensive? Yes, they probably were.
Were they absolutely worth the mess and the effort? Oh yes. And they were even more delicious knowing that I made the dough, I kneaded the dough, I shaped and boiled and I baked the dough, and I had a hand in nearly 100% of the processes that brought these wee bagel bebes into existence. I didn’t grow the grains and grind them into flour. And that was a pre-packaged everything bagel seasoning (it needs more salt!) But other than that…I did it. And that feels pretty amazing.
The bagel recipe is from Joshua Weissman, and I chose it because he wasn’t adding extra ingredients like malt extract and vital wheat gluten. Those might have made the end product tastier, but I didn’t feel like futzing around with them. The cream cheese is really more of a “cream cheese-like spread” and the recipe is from Chef John of Foodwishes. I really dig how he compares the cheesecloth marks on the spread to the pattern that fishnet stockings make on the flesh of someone’s leg. I think the world needs some erotic foody fanfiction from Chef John, but maybe that’s just me, hee hee.
Since we are on the topic of food (and if we’re not, let me bring it back to what’s really important here) I’d like to tell you about this soup.
We were low on stores and I didn’t want to do any extra shopping. I had a really excellent chicken stock I’d made from the remnants of this chicken recipe, a handful of old vegetables, and two half-full bags of dried baby lima beans. I am not sure why I had two bags, and why there was an equal amount of beans missing from both, but I suppose that shall remain a kitchen mystery. I soaked the beans in some cold water for a few hours, and then I chopped and sauteed two celery stalks and two carrots with three cloves of garlic, minced, in a splodge of olive oil. I would have added onions, but I had none, so subbed in a hefty tablespoon of onion powder, along with some salt and pepper. I added the soaked beans and stirred them around with the veggies for a few minutes or until everything looks friendly with each other and smells lovely and then I added several cups of broth and a bay leaf or two. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the beans are as tender as you like and the soup starts to thicken up a bit.
I used to hate bean soup as a kid, but I think this one is better than the one my grandmother used to make me eat. It was actually quite delicious. Sorry Mawga!
RE: my Stephen King project (here’s a link to a spreadsheet if you are interested! It’s…a bad spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are not my thing.)
So far in 2019 I have read The Institute,The Dead Zone, and The Outsider; I have watched Pet Sematary (2019), IT Chapter Two, In The Tall Grass, Doctor Sleep. I am currently watching The Outsider television series, listening to The Dark Half, and reading The Gunslinger.
Of course, I am reading other things, too, alongside this Stephen King madness, but still…I think I am making progress!
