The Varied Insanities of Melfina the Blue

( The Quibbler Report: Thursday, November 26, 2009 )

The Yule Balls fic is done and sent to beta.  That is something truly to be thankful for.

Turkey day actually went well.

 

The Parental units did not try to 'convert' the nephew to the hetero world. (Crosses fingers that Christmas will be just as peaceful).  The niece was home from college and wonder of wonders it was good for her.  She now seems to understand that the world does not revolve around her.

We had grilled turkey and roast veggies; sweet potatoe fries (baked in the oven) instead of casserole with marshmallows on top.  Essentially we had a relatively healthy Thanksgiving Dinner.  Even dessert: we forewent the fat laden pecan pie for pear tart and apple crisp.  No pumpkin pie either, pumpkin soup instead.  Not nearly as fattening.

And wine. very nice wine.  I am happy.

It's Friday morning here in Australia, and I'm reccing this essay:

http://randomneses.livejournal.com/479704.html

It's about the Snape/Lily pairing, and why there's so much Lily-bashing (apparently) that goes on in the Snapefen camp. I don't entirely agree with it, but it's thought-provoking,to say the least.

I look forward to hearing what other members think!

Alison

One Shots:
mailroomy: The invisible line - Severus/Remus; R
lemondropseven: In My Dreams - Severus/Harry; R *warnings* Underage sexuality (14-16)
aceia: Too Much Snarry - Severus/Lucuis; R *warnings*
countesszero: The Corset - Severus/Harry; NC-18 *warnings*
lesyeuxverts: Le Ténébreux - Severus, Lily; R *warnings*

Works In Progress:
lilyseyes: My Son - updated with part 8 - Severus, Harry; R

Drabbles:
alisanne: Gratifying - Severus/Harry; PG
alisanne: True Sincerity - Harry/Draco; PG
fancypantsdylan: San Diego Marriott Hotel - Severus/Harry; R
torina_archelda: Watching - Severus/Lucius; PG

Art:
bielol: Shrieking Shack - Severus/Harry; NC-17

Newsletters:
quibbler_report: Posted a new issue
dailysnitch: Posted a new issue
snapenews: Posted a new issue

If you have any links or tips for us, please let us know. Email us at potterprophet.ij@gmail.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all my dear friends celebrating Thanksgiving I hope you have a wonderful holiday!



"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you', that would suffice." ~Eckhart von Hochheim

First, the feast preparations are underway!

• The turkey, all 21 # of him, are brining happily in the cooler outside. It was so freshly... uh... processed it needed a thorough rinsing, then it's soaked overnight in salty ice water. In the morning, I'll push rosemary under the skin, and stuff it loosely with lemon rinds and onions just for flavour. The stuffing gets baked seperately, which makes it lighter. and the bird cooks faster and more evenly.
• For classic stuffing I use Pepperidge Farm brand and enhance it with sauted onion, celery, turkey stock, butter. Maybe mushrooms. And cracked green peppercorns.
• For a green veggie: Roasted brussel sprouts
• My Irish housemate makes divine mashed potatoes to go with my awesome gravy.
• Houseguest from NC is making baked Delicata squash, low-sugar apple pie and cranberry-apricot sauce.
• We also have pumpkin ice cream to embellish that pie.

And now, for some gratitude.
I am incredibly grateful for my warm and beautiful home, a place people want to be. I am blessed with wonderful friends, nearby and all over (**hugs you!**).  I have wonderful animal companions whom I adore. I am grateful for the time I have had away from work, to recover , to look ahead, to plan and prepare for much-needed change. Many blessings come to me from the amazing passion and creativity of my friends and colleagues. I love all the inspiration, entertainment, amusement, motivation, stimulation and challenge your art, writing, music and healing work brings into my life.I am grateful for my parents and grandparents, (all deceased) from whom I received so many gifts. I treasure the intellect, imagination, talent and passion you gave to me. I love the land I walk on, the food that grows in her, the river that waters us, the trees, flowers, vines, grasses, berries, briars, wild irises, underwater grasses that make this world so soft and green and beautiful. I cherish the animals I love with in these wild woods, the deer, possum, fox, racoons, chipmonks, squirrels, weasels, otters and mice. I am in awe of the birds, from the enormous bald eagles to the tiny hummingbirds, the herons, ducks, geese, cormorants, coots, grebes, grackles, crows, vultures, osprey, seagulls, warblers thrushes and wrens, I love you all. Even the crawly and flying things... for every nasty bloodsucking mosquito there is a Luna moth or swallowtail butterfly, an irridescent beetle, a colorful caterpiller, a dazzling dragonfly. Even the spiders are awesome.

May you all have a day filled with blessings.

Because I have been baking a lot lately (and am still baking for Thanksgiving, currently, as we speak), and have not had a lot of sleep, and have had a lot of caffeine, and need to come up with ways to amuse myself, such as creating silly polls

Because I have been baking a lot lately, and have been wondering about the ways in which other people bake, and thinking about food in general, because food is good

And because I am procrastinating on writing, because I cannot and will not manage to write anything coherent for NaNo or any other story, when I am this sleep-deprived:

( I present to you, dear flist, the following poll )

Criminal Minds

( spoilers )

***

Maybe I will try to write. I would like to post one more story this month, if possible, before I buckle down on yuletide and broken toys.

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/100016.html. people have commented there.

Title: Le Ténébreux
Author: lesyeuxverts
Characters: Severus Snape, Lily Evans
Rating: R
Warnings: character death
Themes/kinks chosen: symphorophilia
Word Count: 1,095
Summary: " Je suis le ténébreux,- le Veuf, - l'inconsolé, Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie: Ma seule étoile est morte, et mon luth constellé Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie."
Author's notes: Huge thanks to bewarethesmirk for the beta, and thanks to the folks at the slashretreat_dc for the brainstorming help! I was heavily inspired by Nerval's El Desdichado, and this work owes a great deal to that poem (although I was very nearly distracted by the fact that he kept a pet lobster … but I managed to finish this in spite of that, so all credit goes to Nerval!)

( Le Ténébreux )

One Shots:
snegurochka_lee: Light as Iron, Singed as Pearl - (Harry/Draco, NC-17, *warnings*)
fancypantsdylan: Playing with the Headmaster - (Severus/Harry, NC-17, *warnings*)
torina_archleda: Together - (Severus/Harry, PG, *warnings*)
whitecotton: Mistake Number Four - (Severus/Harry, NC-17, *warnings*)
atypicalsnowman: His Color - (Severus/Lucius, NC-17, *warnings*)
faeryqueen: Little Miss Potter - (Severs/Harry, R, *warnings*)

Drabbles:
alisanne: Wand of Pleasure - (Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, PG)
janus: Shame - (Severus, G)
thesewarmstars: Anything - (Severus/Dumbledore, PG-13, *warnings*)
[Unknown LJ tag]: Serenity by - (Severus/Lucius, PG-15, *warnings*)
torina_archelda: Jealousy by - (Severus/Harry, G)
ellid: Justifying the Wolf, III - (Severus/Remus, Unrated)
fancypantsdylan: Quidditch Predictions - (Severus/Harry, R)
alisanne: Always Hungry - (Harry/Ron, PG)

Art:
wallflowergirl: All for you - (Remus/Sirius, NC-17, *warnings*)

Community News:
snupin100: Challenge 235 - Teeth
lupin_snape: Snupin Santa Contest - Stuff the Stockings!
severus_sighs: Author and Artist Interviews 2009

Newsletters:
dailysnitch: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

If you have any links or tips for us, please let us know. Email us at potterprophet.ij@gmail.com.

I thought I'd share my recipe for sweet potatoes with everyone. They are always a favorite at our table.

( Apple Pecan Sweet Potatoes )

So I have this thing where I reverse numbers all the time, e.g., I usually have to redial new to me phone numbers two or three times because I switch the order of the numbers, etc.

NOTE TO SELF: NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE DYSLEXIC WITH ROMAN NUMERALS!


***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/99809.html. people have commented there.

Hmm. I'm not finding a couple of the blog posts I'd spotted yesterday, that aren't related to the adult privs checklist but were about child agency and the concept that kids, acting like kids, in public, is something the public should just deal with--kids are people, and age-appropriate behavior isn't something that should be kept out of sight of nonparents.

Some of these have fascinating comment threads. And by "fascinating," I mean "soaked in privilege and offensive as hell."

Related but not necessarily connected posts:
Nov 3, Noble Savage: On Child Hate and Feminism "Participating in child-bashing is participating in the oppression of a vulnerable group. … admitting that motherhood went from overrated to undervalued in 40 years flat isn’t something many of us want to acknowledge."

Oct 23, Look Left of the Pleiades: People who dance between tables "Having a need for age-specific support should not make anyone any less human."

Apr 23, Have A Lovely Time: I'm sorry, does my children's presence offend you? "HOW do you cope when your arrival leads to an immediate and sharp intake of breath from the other customers?"

Aug 8, Syracuse.com opinion blog: Discrimination against special needs is unacceptable "They had just as much a right to patronize that restaurant as anyone else. They deserved to be welcomed with respect and kindness. This was not the case." (Does not mention whether younger children without disabilities would be equally accepted.)

Adult Privilege Sound-off:
Nov 24, Dr. Helen: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin. "If a kid does not understand how to act in certain settings, teach him or her or don't put them in that setting until they are older. The world will be a better (and quieter) place."

Nov 24, Tim Cavanaugh at Reason: No Child's Left Behind "here is (very unscientific) evidence that spanking is poised for a comeback" (With special bonus racism in the comments!)

April 8, Guardian: There comes a time when you want to live without children "To buy a property in the village, you have to be 45-plus with no dependent family in tow, and you must sign a contract agreeing not to sell property on to those with children."

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284210.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

It's the day before Thanksgiving and I have some sort of stomach bug. I've been in and out of the bathroom ever since I woke up this morning. I have a borderline migraine to top it all off, and I still have to go to work. I've got a nine and a half hour shift to pull. I hope this day doesn't get any worse. I was up until midnight baking pies and making assorted side dishes to take to my mother in-law's tomorrow, because, as usual, I had to work yesterday. I didn't get home last night until almost 7:30 in the evening. I'm exhausted. I won't be online tomorrow until in the evening, after we get home.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I may or may not find time to make a coherent post about this anytime soon. This one's important to me; the way we treat children in this country ranges from atrocity to tragedy. But it's late; I have to be up in five and a half hours (because, heh, one of my kids does not mesh well with public school). As a placeholder, have some linkspam:

Nov 16 @ Shut Up, Sit Down: Adult Privilege Checklist

Reading a post by Elena Perez at California NOW made me think about privilege checklists (like the Male Privilege Checklist and the White Privilege Checklist, for example) and I came to the realisation that, as yet, nobody had written an adult privilege checklist. So with some help from my good friend Jenny, using some of Elena Perez’s ideas from the aforementioned post, I set about writing the Adult Privilege Checklist.

Background; older posts:
April 13, Mothers For Women's Lib: You’ll never truly be “child free”

Oct 22, Raising My Boychick: Dancing between the tables: on the personhood of children

Nov 11, California NOW: Feminist Parenting: The Larger Picture

Nov 4, Left of the Pleiades: Dear Kate Harding

Reactions:
naraht: Adult privilege

hl: The Opression of Chilhood. In which I try for emotionless and hard analysis (and fail)

sqbr: Intersections of youth and other aspects of the kyriarchy

Saraspeaking: Mind. Blown.

flourish: Adult Privilege

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284122.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far:

Title: All for you
Artist: wallflowergirl@IJ kath_ballantyne @LJ
Media: Photoshop
Characters: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: nudity
Themes/kinks chosen: clamps
Artist's notes: Sorry I missed my original posting. I contacted the mods and they said to post it today.


( All for you )

( The Quibbler Report: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 )

For tonight's bout of stress baking, I made blueberry boy bait (as recommended by devildoll), which came out well, I think (I am taking half to work and half to the parents), but I also think it needs more blueberries. Clearly I need to double the amount next time. And possibly make it in cupcake tins or my mini-loaf pan. Hmm...

Maybe one day I'll be like a real food blogger and remember to take pictures of stuff before I slice into it and wrap it up. Today was not that day.

On my ride home tonight (I was at work late again), I listened to Adam Raised a Cain a few times and vidded it in my head. I would be the most literal vidder ever. Anyway. I know I say this all the time, but where is the Sam Winchester vid to this song? WHERE IS IT? I think this season has provided more awesome footage for someone to do this.

( the lyrics, in case you missed them the first 100 times I mentioned this idea )

Seriously, if I had minions, I would make one of them vid this for me.

***

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/99442.html. people have commented there.