lydamorehouse: (Default)
 I had a very Minnesotan experience at the coffee shop today that I thought I'd share.

For those of you who don't know me very well, let me paint you a picture. I'm the sort of person who keeps up a running monologue, out loud, all the time. Mostly, people around me deal with this in one of two ways: they choose to engage or they choose to ignore me. I do this mostly intentionally. Like, most of the time, I realize I'm just sort of talking to myself out loud. But, I live in Minnesota, the land of the stony silences and "mind your own damn business." (<--Which Governor Waltz tried to sell as a plus, but which is actually, in practice kind of 50/50 a Good Thing. Some people call this "Minnesota Nice," others of us call it "Minnesota Ice.") 

So, there I am at the coffee shop. I have just had a lovely little "how was your New Year's eve" chat with my barista Frankie, and I'm sort of drifting over towards the pick-up line continuing my thoughts on New Year's out loud. I happen to see that the question in the little notebook they keep at the counter says something like, "What's your New Year's resolution?" At this point, I happen to look up and see someone staring at me, and I have a sudden awareness that I've narrated this out loud. So, thinking that his person has, in fact, chosen to engage by making eye contact (an extrovert signal to each other), I say, intentionally, to her, "Do you do New Year's resolutions?"

She seems weirdly taken aback for someone who has been openly staring at me, but says that, no, she doens't do that kind of thing.  

Again, I think to myself, ah I have accidentally engaged an introvert, but here we are, so I will just continue some pleasatries, like one does. So, I generally agree that there are just some resolutions not worth making, since you're only going to break them, and then say, "Even so, I like to set myself little themes for the year, so this year I'm hoping to make one new friend."

She says in the MOST Minnesota Ice tone possible, (people from the South, please imagine this sprinkled with lots of "Oh, hon!" and "Bless your heart"s.)  "Well. Just keep talking to strangers, I'm sure it will work out for you."

For non-Minnesotans: this was a full-out smackdown. Translated to New York, "Well, you fucking weirdo, if you keep on like this, you might luck out and find another asshole just like yourself!"

But, it's 2025, and my personal theme is Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down.  So, beneath my mask I gave her a dark sneer and then LEANED INTO TO PRETENDING I THOUGHT SHE WAS BEING KIND. I looked her in the eye and I basically said, "You think so, really? That so nice of you to say. You know, I'm not From Around Here and where I'm from people are friendly and kind and we all talk to each other to say hello and what not. Have you ever left your neighborhood? Or had more than your three childhood friends? No, I didn't think so, so anyway, New Years is such a lovely time of year, isn't it...."

I mean, I wasn't quite so blatant, but, Lady, here's a pro tip. If you don't want the weirdo talking to you, you're supposed to AVERT YOUR EYES. You would, in fact, know this if you had ever traveled say, to any city larger than St. Paul east of here. It's also clear you've never been west of here because people in California are actually a lot like me... and why I LOVED visiting there. (Which is, incidentally where I was born, though it should not have made the impression on me that it clearly did, as I only spent the first 6 months of my life under the Californian sun.)
lydamorehouse: (Default)
I've been thinking that one of the ways I want to live my life is as if I were in a slice-of-life manga. You know, something like Laid-Back Camp or Super Cub.

But, because I am also like this, I actually started drawing it. I am, because I am a weirdo, drawing it as if you should read it right to left. I started on the last page of a book that I was already using for doodling and other art projects. Because I'm pretending this is a manga, I'm also including translator's notes, as though you are stumbling across this on some pirate site.

Because I'm not sure if this will be a one-shot or a full volume, there is no cover or title yet. I may continue in full-color, though I should really, if I want to be manga-like only have a few opening color splash pages and then move into black and white.

I kind of like coloring, though.

So perhaps this is an imaginary collected webtoon or manhua.


Cartoon image of my actual kitchen.
Image: a rendition of my actual kitchen in most of its actual colors and me (a little skinnier than I really am) doing the dishes, while looking out the window.

The narration starts, as manga often do, with the main's full name, age and occupation. So the first panel of this this reads: "I'm Lyda Morehouse, 56, a not very successful self-employed writer." Now before you yell at me for not talking up my successes (and I do actually think I'm VERY successful, thank you very much!), this often the type of main character you find in slice-of-life. They're doing OKAY. They're usually not on the fast-track at their job. Sometimes they're not-very-popular high schoolers, FREETs (someone who is content to live off a parttime salary,) or other people who are mildly out of step with the larger, fast-paced society. Not always? Like, I read a very delightful slice-of-life called Sweetness & Lightning that is about a single working dad trying to find the time and energy to make meals for himself and his only daughter.

The lower panel reads, "One day, I decided to imagine what it might be like if I lived my life as if I was in a slice-of-life manga."

Very self-referential so far! Very meta!

The next page looks like this:

Second page of the manga - lots of outdoors, no people
Image: second page of the manga -- lots of outdoor images, no people.

So, remember, you're reading this top, right panel, then left. This page's narration says: "Outside of the kitchen window, the black-eyed susans and golden glows were a riot of color against the grey siding of our neighbor's house. All of my gardens are like this. Wild, out of control." Then you see the cicada who has a very Japanese cameo here, signaling not only that it is summer, but that today is VERY hot. The next panels read, "The weather forecast said there would be a be a heat index of 100 degrees.* We could tell. The cicadas were singing at 10 am. I hoped to harvest some chives before it got too hot." The bottom dialogue box is from the supposed translator and it reads, "T/N: America uses Fahrenheit. To most of the rest of us, this is 37."

I'm pretty impressed with my cicada:


A close-up of a cicada
Image: cicada hanging on a tree. She sings: "Bzzzt! Bzzzt!"

So, yeah, this is what I do in my copious free time when I should really be starting on the next novel. I mean, to be fair this did not actually take all that much time. I probably spend more time playing Solitaire, so, I mean, look forward to that chapter! ;-)

I started this in part, in response to a conversation I had with [personal profile] pegkerr over Zoom about what other people find boring. She's been doing a weekly visual journal and has been feeling like her life is boring, as if no one would care about the little things she gets up to every day. First of all, please!  I will point the gentle reader to the above. There is an entire deeply successful manga genre devoted to people reading about people's boring lives. 

Also, I have long resisted the idea that life is EVER truly boring. I mean, part of what I love about slice-of-life manga is that they often call to the reader to slow down, look outside their window, and revel in the fact that eating good food nourishes the soul. This is literally the stuff of life. Hear the cicadas. Feel the heat. Consider the wildness of the flowers outside your kitchen window. Do the dishes. Tidy up. These are all GOOD and valuable things!

So we got into a bit and so I have now dedicated my life to being as f*cking mundane as possible it and drawing beautiful images about my utterly plain life to prove that dullness is in the eye of the beholder. 

Maybe you wouldn't read 57 volumes of this, but maybe I can give you an interesting peek into my day-to-day life. 
lydamorehouse: (ichigo being adorbs)
Sometime I amaze even myself with my extroversion.

Today, right?  I'm at the laundromat washing some of our rag rugs.  These aren't ones we've finished, but ones that we got over the years from my mother and, before her, my grandmother.  Some have just gotten grungy.  Others, Inky decided to pee on (before he started taking Prozac to solve that issue.)  The laundromat is the one place that has sturdy enough washing machines to handle these heavy rugs.  I can put in four or more at a time.  It costs $4.50 a load, but it's worth it, because these machines have three rinse cycles, too, so ALL that grimy grit actually gets pushed out of the rugs.

Like you do, I brought along my computer and tried to write. To be fair, I didn't just try.  I actually managed it. I added another chapter of UnJust Cause up on Wattpad.*  But, with three rinse cycles, the rugs take a long time. I bought a candy bar... and a guy helped me find a quarter that the machine rejected so forcefully that it skidded onto the floor.  I thanked this stranger and... happened to notice he was reading Ann Leckie.

"Aha!" My mind went into full POUNCE mode, "A science fiction fan!"

So, I asked him how he was enjoying the book. I noted that I'd read both Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword.  He thought the book was okay. I confessed that I found the gendering thing a bit distancing, like I never really connected to the characters because I couldn't imagine them, physically, in my head.  We bonded over this.  He said he'd been recommended the book by Greg at Dreamhaven.  "Ah," I smiled, "So you're one of my people.  Do you go to science fiction conventions?"

He blinked. "I didn't even know there WERE conventions"

Oh, my friend. I have Good News for you.

This reminds me of the fact that Naomi Kritzer and I have long *wished* there was some geek version of a 'chick track' that you could pull out and hand people like this. Seriously, it would say, "Geek! Have you heard the Good News!" and then go on to explain that you don't have to be alone (especially not in this town), Fandom is waiting to welcome you home.  For all that it would mimic a religious track, it would be full of useful geek info, like a list of some of the conventions in town with websites, the bookstores, resources, etc.  

I, of course, ended up telling him that I'm a science fiction writer and gave him my business card. Which reminds me, I have to put more in my wallet.  Because, yes, I actually hand them out CONSTANTLY. (Too bad this only works to boost my local reputation.  When I volunteered for WorldCON programming this year, I got the, 'uh, we're not sure who you are exactly and while you *might* be cool enough to be on paneling, we can't guarantee anything, but go ahead and fill out our survey anyway' version of the programming letter.  Which is fine, actually, because last WorldCON I went to was Chicago, and I suffered a massive attack of impostor syndrome and didn't really have a good time.  This WorldCON, I'm hoping to avoid all that by hanging out with my friends Eleanor and Naomi and generally just being a fan.)

Anyway, I just thought it was both a really funny exchange, and also REALLY TYPICAL of me.

---
*I'm actually starting to think I might be closing in on an ending to this story.  If I do get to an end, I'm probably going to pull down copies of all the chapters and rework the thing into an e-book that I'll self-publish.  Fingers crossed.  It's going to be a lot of work, because a huge section in the middle kind of makes no sense and was entirely ramblely, but it'd be nice to have an e-book out there.  I still occasionally hear from fans of Precinct 13, so that's cool.


lydamorehouse: (more renji art)
When my nephew Jonathan was younger he tried to convince us that Canada didn't exist. It as a running gag for him forever--the kind where occasionally, I'd be, like, "Are you joking?" and he'd continue his serious rant about how it's all a government plot.

I, however, now have photo documentation that Canada exists.

Because, seriously, who would doctor a photo to make it seem like the highway signs all wear crowns.

IMG_9150

Honestly, Shawn and I were actually unaccountably charmed by the royal highway signs and spent a significant part of our trip to Thunder Bay cooing over them. I also pointed out to her that if I robbed her, I was pretty sure that would make me a highwayman (well, highwaywoman, but the Roaches never sang about that.)

I also apparently am the worst at answering border patrol questions. I've been long schooled by the thought (something I saw on some cop show or other a zillion years ago) that if someone asks you if you have a watch, you look at your wrist and answer the question actually asked, i.e., "Yes/No, I [don't] own a watch," full stop, despite the inclination of most people to offer the time.

Shawn says that makes me sound suspicious. And it probably does. But, the border patrol let us through, anyhow, since I'm both suspicious and silly. Where did you come from?" "St. Paul." "Where are you headed?" "Thunder Bay." "How long will you be there?" "Overnight." "You came all the way from St. Paul to visit Thunder Bay for one day?" (he asked incredulously.) Shawn said at this point she was attempted to lie and point out that we felt there was a SIGN telling us to go (because OMG the Thunder Bay attraction billboards on 35 before Duluth were LEGION, though we do have them to thank for remembering to go back for our passports,) but I ended up mentioning that we just kind of wanted to go to Canada, a foreign country, as part of our honeymoon. This, of course, made the border guard shake his head like we were insane. I kind of wished I'd added, "Because, you know, we can't afford Paris. So Thunder Bay seemed like a good alternative."

Because he would have laughed.

I have to admit that we enjoyed the trip up to Thunder Bay more than the town itself. We ended up going to a Tim Robbins for breakfast on the day we left. I'd been hoping to go back to the Starbucks we spotted on the way in, but Shawn saw the Tim Robbins and told me she'd always wanted to go to one after reading about them in a Canadian murder mystery series. I can't deny a request like that, can I? The coffee was awful, but the donuts were fantastic.

We spent much of our time in Canada being ugly Americans. I was also inordinately charmed by the money. I'd gotten a 20 Canadian dollar bill at the bank before we left for Bearskin, and we broke that at the hotel's front desk so we could buy a bunch of Canadian candies in the vending machine. Having loonies in my pocket always amuses me far more than it should.

I also chatted up our hotel waiter about the World Cup. He, of course, was far more of a hockey fan, and didn't actually know if Canada was playing in the Cup (they're not.) But I kept telling Shawn that the way we knew we were in a foreign country was that people actually had the World Cup on the big screen TV in the main lounge. This would never happen in the US. It'd be Fox News or something awful.

We also saw Canadian Canada Geese, which also tickled me unaccountably.

Yes, I really am this easy.

On the way up, we stopped at Pigeon Falls/Grand Portage to look at the waterfall:

IMG_9147

It was drizzling this day so the path to the waterfall was a little treacherous because they'd built a wheelchair accessible one that had nice wooden bridges and such... but they got really slippery in the light rain. At any rate, it was amazing.

The trip back home was also drizzly and Lake Superior put on quite the show for us with crashing waves and white caps. I tied to get a picture of its majesty, but this doesn't do the lake justice:

IMG_9155
lydamorehouse: (more renji art)
I had a kind of deep thought about Tumblr today.  Tumblr is, for me, like Pinterest, but with all things fannish.  Shawn can lose a day just re-pinning pretty, useful, interesting, curious things she finds on Pinterest.  Me, I can do the same on Tumblr, because it's, like, all the things *I* love.

Yep.  That's it.  That's kind of all I've got.

Brilliant, right?

If you can't tell, it's a bad allergy day for me.  Here's a stinker: somewhere around 40, I developed pretty intense allergies.  Spring seems to be all about my eyes itching and running and my nose dripping.  If it has a season, I'm probably allergic to it.  Snow mold?  *achoo!*  Tree pollen?  *ATCH-hoo!*  etc., etc., etc.

Oh, and it's St. Patrick's Day.  I woke Mason up with the story of Irish history, as told by me.  "Once upon a time, there was an island so green, it was call the Emerald Isle...." and it went from there to the Pale to 1916 to the Partition to how grandpa once met Martin McGuinness and didn't even know it.  So, maybe you can see the slant.  I will say I tried to color in many of the shades of gray as possible, despite my obvious leanings.  And it was a short story, so it's not like he got the complete indoctrination... ;-)

Then, just because I was on a roll, I dug out one of my old cassette tapes (because our car still has a cassette player) and I regaled my poor family with a lot of loud Irish rebel music on the way to work and school.  Afterwards, Mason told me he had vague memories of me singing some of these song to him (which I did) when he was really little.  He asked, "Isn't there one that goes, 'duh-da-something of the I.R.A.!"  And I sang for him, "The broad, black brimmer of the I.R.A."

Probably you think I was brain-washing my infant, but the truth of the matter is [a) I probably was, don't we all?] and b) to be fair, infant-Mason loved the sound of voices, so we sang to him a LOT.  The only songs I knew all the words to happened to be Irish rebel songs. Shawn made me hum the more violent bits of "Sean South," but otherwise there was a lot of 'for our native land!' etc., for Mason.

Which, of course, is also only strange because I have not a drop of Irish blood in me--at least so far as my family knows.  We're German, Czech and Polish for the most part (though our surnames never seem to quite match the countries we're from Wieland from Poland, Klein from Bohemia, Morehouse from Germany, etc.)

Mason's donor, C105, (as we call him, since it was his catalogue number), listed his ethnicity as 100% Irish, so Mason is at least half and a bit more from Shawn's side.

But my interest in Irish politics has always been kind of baffling.  It's one of the few things in my life that I look at and I honestly wonder: past life?  Because I remember, very clearly, some time in the 1980s getting a copy of some political newspaper, it might even have been called "Arise!" and reading articles about South Africa and all sorts of injustice all over the whole world, but the one bit that I read over and over with mounting fury?  A story about Bobby Sands and the Hunger Strikers.  After that, even the tiniest AP articles reprinted in our LaCrosse newspaper about this land I've no connection to nor have ever visited, would get me furious... or hopeful... but whatever the feeling, it was always INTENSE.

At one point in the late 1990s, I had an on-line subscription to An Phoblacht.  I read all of it, cover to cover, but the thing I lingered on?  The notices about death anniversaries.  There'd be this little section in the back with one or two lines, "For my brother Bryce, who died on the streets of Derry...." or whatever.

So, I can't explain it, but I can sing you a rousing chorus of "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" on a moment's notice!

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123 4 5 67
8 9 1011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 06:56 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios