#contemplatingchicken

[kawuli]

6, 10!

6: Biggest adult decision ever:

Oh jeez that depends when you start counting “adult”?

Probably deciding to do my PhD in the Netherlands/Mali, for the obvious “moving to new continents for extended periods” thing but also because it also meant “breaking up with the asshole ex boyfriend” which I was pretty sad about at the time but turned out to be an excellent and important decision

10. here

bonus round, I also enjoy fixing shit and repurposing shit in useful/clever ways

[seldnei]

meeeme: 16, 21, 25?

16. Favorite place in your home?

Probably my office. It was originally going to be MIL’s room, but because of Miss Snoots’ kennel, it was just a really awkward space. I hadn’t set up in the middle bedroom yet, so we switched them around and it worked out really well.

It’s a long room with two big windows facing the back yard. I have a nice reading chair that everyone likes to use in front of the windows, and my desk and printer stand are in the back corner. (I have SO MUCH DESK SPACE now, it is amazing.) I also have a really cool shelf that looks like it was made from plumbing pipes and scrap wood, for my contributor’s copies and work by my friends. The corner near the door is three bookshelves, and there’s a gray rug on the floor, throw rugs all over. I also have all the art I’ve collected over the years on the walls. Everywhere I look, there is something I really like.

21. What aggravates you most about teenagers these days?

Oh, those darn kids with their hula hoops and their rock and roll music, wearing skirts above the knee and dungarees like hooligans and delinquents!

I dunno, there’s no specifically “teen” thing that bugs me, I don’t think? The things I find annoying about people are present and annoying across all age groups. I like the youth. I especially like the youth that teach me their slang so I can make my not-quite-a teenager cringe.

25. What’s changed the most since 5 years ago?

Since 2015 ... hmmm ....

Well, ignoring the trash fire that is the larger world, in my smaller world my job has changed, quite a lot. Different house, MIL moved in with us, also the dog. Mr Seldnei has a beard, now.

I’ll be honest, the thing that changes the most every year is the boy. The change from seven to twelve has been absolutely mind-boggling: physically (he’s taller than everyone but his father at this point); mentally (whoops, the kid gets dirty jokes now, eek!); emotionally (he’s matured in a lot of different areas). He’s still sweet, thoughtful, funny, and a giant nerd, but he’s also becoming his own person. It’s very cool, a little scary, and it makes me feel super proud and also really melancholy. But that’s parenting in a nutshell, so.

[obstinatecondolement]

contemplatingchicken replied to your post: I finished the granny square slippers. Spent...

yep, require ADORATION when creative task is completed!!! otherwise it is all terrible and I failed.

See, you get it!

[elodieunderglass]

For the get to know your writer thingy -- 2 and 23!

(from this meme)

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

oh literally ALL of it. there’s some stuff I should be ashamed of and certainly am, but I am also painfully ashamed of stuff that is probably actually okay

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

oh literally ALL of them, and ditto

these things are probably related. there are some words of mine out there that makes my shoulderblades itch and my stomach drop when I think about them being read. there are some hideous backwater experiences that I’ve had that give me the same feeling, but they turned into manure and the manure grew something.

I think that’s the barometer for whether I can keep going and not just. constantly want to throw myself off a cliff.

“Yes I fucked up and yes I have fucked up and yes I WILL fuck up and no I will never be okay or feel okay. yes, people will hate me sometimes. No, no one will help me. But the point is: it becomes manure. It all becomes manure and the manure might grow something and that might feed someone, somewhere. so even if I’m wrong, the manure might grow something.”

[finnglas]

contemplatingchicken replied to your post: hm 

How do you usually run your giveaways?

i haven’t really done one before now so idk

(except that i owe @kalenel a scarf lol but uh I have yet to FINISH any knitting project so)

[enchantedengland]

Bath, England (@alixelay)

[peppylilspitfuck]

contemplatingchicken replied to your photoset: MEET RED, THE PUPPY I JUST GOT APPROVED FOR! ...

Rufus! Still Red, just Latin.

I considered that, but it’d be weird cause my brother already has a dog named Rufus. 

[naamahdarling]

contemplatingchicken replied to your post “smdh”

I'm glad that you don't seem too bothered, but it really sucks that you have to get that kind of crap in your inbox.

It’s pretty rare?  I get it maybe every couple three weeks depending on how much yelling I’ve been doing.  I get WAY more random positive messages.

It’s just . . . I’ve only been properly diagnosed and medicated for like 10 years now, so that’s 30 years of unfettered mental fuckery my own brain was able to perpetrate upon me unopposed, and if some whey-faced, chickenshit anon thinks coming at me with literally the weakest shit imaginable is going to rattle me even a little after dealing with that, well, that’s real fucking sad.

And then to not even indicate why they’re so upset.  It’s just . . . nobody is getting anything satisfying out of this interaction.

So unfortunate.

[respectingromance]

I'm sure you've answered this before, but you mentioned liking Beauty and the Beast stories and virgin hero stories. Could you recommend some books in each of those categories?

Sure!

Now, for Beauty and the Beast, I’m strict. I don’t like to include books where the hero is just kinda rude. The hero needs to be 1) seriously impacted by a physical, mental or psychological impairment and 2) a recluse. 

So that punts out books like Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase. That book is on both Goodreads lists that I found and come on! Lord Dain gallivants around Paris, happy as a syphilitic clam! Just because he’s a jerk doesn’t make him a Beast. Boo to that. Beauty and the Blacksmith by Tessa Dare is also not a BatB story, despite the title. Being a blacksmith doesn’t make you a Beast.

Anyway, my favorite Beauty and the Beast stories are:

Beauty by Robin McKinley. Not a romance novel but satisfying in a similar way. So magical. (Historical/fantasy)

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James. The hero is based on Dr. House, as in the television show. A really smart retelling. (Historical)

The Bride and the Beast by Teresa Medeiros. A village in Scotland believes a virgin has to be sacrificed to a dragon in a castle. They pick Gwendolyn and suddenly the “dragon” is presented with the tricky problem of how to handle the woman in his home who he can’t let go or let see his face. (Historical)

Demon from the Dark by Kresley Cole. Malkom thinks he’s a literal monster and he hides out in a cave on a hellish world. Carrow is a beautiful witch sent against her will to seduce him. This book is deep into a paranormal romance series (Immortals After Dark) so if it’s read out of order, some of the details might be confusing.

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale. Christian starts out a brilliant duke. Then he has a stroke. He’s trapped in an institution and Maddy Timms, a Quaker, might be the only one who can help him. An absolute effing classic and pretty much the only book I think every romance reader should read. (Historical)

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley. This is a little strange because people consider this a BatB but not Flowers from the Storm, even though the two books are compared to each other? Anyway, Lord Ian would probably be diagnosed with Asperger syndrome if he was alive today, but he’s trapped in a historical romance novel, so instead he’s just dismissed and shunned as mad. Then he decides he wants Beth Ackerley, a widow, and it’s just... all kinds of good.

I haven’t read it yet, but another popular rec for this trope is To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt. There’s also Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare, but I personally find it far too light-hearted to qualify for Beauty and the Beast. Where’s the angst?!

As for virgin heroes... man, that’s like finding a... well, a male virgin in a genre where men are still weirdly judged by their number of sexual conquests. I have far fewer recommendations.

There’s Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, obviously. Jamie is kinda the gold standard in virgin heroes. (Historical)

There’s a few virgins in the Immortals After Dark series I mentioned earlier, including Malkom from Demon from the Dark, but also Conrad from Dark Needs at Night’s Edge. 

I’m probably just forgetting others but that’s all I can think of right now. 

[kawuli]

contemplatingchicken mentioned you on a post “Ask me my "TOP 5/TOP 10" anything!”

@kawuli​ : TOP FIVE GRAINS, TOP FIVE SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL BOOKS, TOP FIVE DESSERTS, TOP FIVE BIZARRE TRAVEL STORIES

Top 5 grains:

(in no particular order)

Wheat:

excellent staple carbohydrate, relatively high in protein, -10 points for that protein being Actual Poison for some people. Can be made into SO MANY TASTY THINGS: bread, pasta, tortillas, various kinds of dough-with-stuff-in, couscous, etc. Drought-tolerant, lots of different varieties suited for a wide range of climates, one of the First Ever Crop Plants

Quinoa - LOOK I KNOW there were a couple articles a few years ago about how rich food snobs are RUINING EVERYTHING BECAUSE QUINOA IS EXPENSIVE NOW but actually it’s much more complicated than that, because having a high-value marketable crop is the only way farmers have ever been able to make a decent living! Evidence suggests it’s probably a net good thing. I will argue this point only if people bring references.

Also, it’s good for you and it’s tasty and the plant is really pretty (src)

Maize (aka Corn aka Zea mays):

Look, ancient Mexican crop breeders were fucking geniuses, I read recently that indigenous people in the Mississippi river basin were starting to domesticate certain grains, but basically maize showed up while they were still fucking around with “how do we get erect knotweed to quit shattering at maturity” and they very logically went “fuck it, this maize stuff is already domesticated and super efficient, we’ll just use that.”

Similar processes have happened everywhere maize is introduced, which is why it’s a staple grain in East Africa despite being unknown there 500 years ago.

This is also why Zea mays is my Problematic Fave: it keeps shoving out other crops by being very efficient, but then it’s not particularly nutritious, especially if you don’t also import the indigenous American (North and South) food preparation methods that unlock the hidden amino acids. Not quite as bad as the British, as colonizers go, but still: problematic.

Fonio

Objectively, it’s kind of a terrible grain, because it’s low yielding, has seeds that look like grains of sand, is a bitch to thresh by hand (and afaik there aren’t threshers for it because see: tiny ass sand-grain seeds), and really is only mostly domesticated. Also I lost count of how many times I went to park a motorbike on some grass only to have someone tell me “no, that’s fonio.” \

But! It is super drought tolerant, very nutritious (so I hear), and is super tasty, especially when you cook it by putting a bunch of it inside a sheep, closing the sheep up, and then slow-roasting the whole thing. Granted, literal sand would probably be good cooked that way, but fonio is especially tasty. Also now if it becomes the next “superfood” I have evidence that I Liked It Before It Was Cool.

Rice

It’s like half the world’s staple carbohydrate, so it kind of has to go here. You can grow it in a wacky polyculture system with fish and ducks, which is neat. Most varieties are easy to thresh, there’s not a lot of post-harvest processing required, and it gets pretty good yields for anything that’s not maize. It’s an excellent substrate for putting sauce on and it cooks quickly. I can eat it daily and not get sick of it.

NOTE I JUST THOUGHT OF: I am only considering grains-as-in-grasses (and Quinoa, which is a pseudograin, but WHATEVER). Grain legumes are a different thing.

(aaaaand that’s long enough for one post I think)

[seldnei]

@contemplatingchicken‘s reading was AWESOME!

(my MIL really dug the poem, btw.)

[obstinatecondolement]

contemplatingchicken replied to your post “Not to be that guy, but technically they were crocheting elephant...”

oh yes granny squares! my mom made SO MANY OF HER OWN CLOTHES in granny squares.

Granny squares are the business! 

[reallyawesomecostumes]

Two truths and a lie, tagged by @zehstern

1) I bike to work every day

2) I have seen wild muskoxen in person

3) I play the accordion

(It totally didn’t take me a day an a half to work up the courage to talk about myself! - my second lie.)

@contemplatingchicken @cinemaocd @semielliptical @pitcherplant

[glorious-spoon]

contemplatingchicken replied to your post:

I feel like adulting would be a lot easier if I...

This feel, I know it. And when you (I) HAVE made a few of those job/relationship-ending fuckups, it’s hard to relax about what might be small stuff.

y e p

That’s honestly most of it, because I know my calibration is faulty; I’ve lost jobs and friends over things that I didn’t think twice about when I did them, so every potentially minor mistake is like ‘OH GOD WHAT IF THIS IS WHAT MAKES IT ALL COME CRASHING DOWN’.

...and then the thing that actually does it is always something that it never even occurred to me to worry about

[finnglas]

How are you holding out against the tide of resolution-making? Happy to make resolutions? Overwhelmed/in denial (me)? Good plans for 2018 or nah?

I never really make resolutions? I find that making a resolution is the surest way to NOT do something, lmao. 

I need to finish rewriting the werewolves (I was SUPPOSED to have that done before Christmas but...uh...) and we’re moving 12 hours away in March-ish, so those are my two immediate goals for now.  And yeah, those are enough to overwhelm me on their own, lol

I’m excited, though, to be on the OTHER side of the move. I just. Really hate transitions. I’m a water sign. Transitions aren’t my Thing.

[curlicuecal]

Yeah, I was thinking about with those excellent bug gifs I just added on some commentary to. (They're mine now. I licked them.) tbh I hardly ever notice usernames, which is why I no doubt have hordes of pornbots in my followers. (but I love them all equally.) when I do occasionally scan through a list I am mostly just blown away by how clever some of y'all get with your names. like I have seriously contemplated starting some kind of weekly roundup of excellent tumblr usernames I have stumbled across. shout out to @peaceofmindoverpieceofass @contemplatingchicken and @the-itchy-bitchy-spider