tough luck, mr. grayson

    Dear Harriet Walter,

"Following Haly's clues, he finds a mysterious Book of Names in the circus that holds his on the last page^[14] .[He's forced to fight a rhyming demon named Acheron when his clown Jimmy Clark is attacked by an ex-fiancee using black magic^[15] .]"

 from a plot summary on the wiki page of Dick Grayson.


    Oh my gosh comics are dumb.

oh golly i can't write anymore yay yay hurray

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    hurngh blurhghkl rarr

    rarrrrrr

    ararararr

    what am I doing with my life

pretty sure Rigby isn't actually supposed to be on the couch

    what i am doing is totally failing in the attempt to become a young adult

    and also watching a lot of batman movies

    (while eating unhealthy children's breakfast cereal)

    (in my pajamas)

    Back to college in two weeks. Sophomore time! (pronounced sop-ho-mor-ay)
    'Til then, I'm still housesitting - I had a week off but came back yesterday - and misusing the ability to access the internet at all hours (which I didn't have for most of the summer) by reading through Tumblr all the time. And by watching Batman movies.

     I can't really concentrate on anything right now or I might be able to explain why Tumblr is destroying my attention span and making me (with my super mimcky writer-voice) struggle with expressing myself and articulating actual ideas (especially without images and communal reactions)

    bewaaaaaaare

master of the beasts

Dear Harriet Walter,

    Well! Apparently it has been a while, she says as she sits on top of the back of a couch, kicking away at a dog's stuffed toy because the dog wants her to play fetch but she wants to write. (Dog toy is too gross to touch with my hands without washing said hands before returning them to the laptop.)

    Today is my fourth day of housesitting. The murder mastiff isn't here, as the people I'm working for actually found a really cool boarding place that specializes in working with large, aggressive dogs who have behavioral problems and since his owners were having several kinds of trouble with him anyway, they decided that that was a happier option and might do some long-term good.

    However, I still have to take care of one largeish, energetic, nervous, and easily bored young dog named Rigby, who is some kind of short-haired, lean, coyote-like thing. She needs lots of attention.

    And I also have to take care of five cats (two downstairs and three inside or adjacent to the barnish thing, one of whom is a Persian and needs his fur brushed and his eyes cleaned often), four chickens, and the young potbellied pig.

    The pig is, of course, the pig that I previously saw in a pet shop and wanted so badly to own. This is the family and home that he went to. (You might wonder how I can be sure. The pet shop does not often have pigs, the family bought him around the time I know he was there, I recognized him when I first saw him, and I have pictures on my phone from when I saw him for sale to compare to the pig I take care of.) Yep. I get to live with and take care of the pig I yearned for, for three weeks. His name is Papa. He takes blueberries from my fingers quite delicately.




    Housesitting is a very strange job. It requires very little of what we think of as work, instead calling for one to step into a person's or a family's shoes, inhabiting a broken-off piece of their life while they're gone. Taking care of their pets, sleeping in one of their beds, raiding their pantry, washing with their soap and so on, but with none of the family interaction of their lives, very little of the driving away to go places and buy things and work, no knowledge or history of their habits and hobbies in the lives they lead at home. I feel like another person's ghost, in a functional way.

    Sometimes I feel like I'm being paid to haul the pig's large rubber water bowl to and from the house to dump, rinse, and refill it, and clean out the cat litter, and groom the cat, and feed creatures several times a day, and take the dog out to potty, and walk the dog down the gravel roads, and be lonely and isolated from other humans all day (as I'm way out in the country)...and sometimes I feel like I'm being paid to sit on my butt and watch Batman TV shows.

    Speaking of whom, life lesson learned today:

    when tasked with brushing a floofy white cat, first make sure that you are not wearing a black Batman t-shirt.

books books sugar DEATH

    Dear Harriet Walter,

•     I have literally never in my life watched as much television as regularly and extensively as I have been doing these past few days because of the USA Olympics trials. Auntlet says that this is because I'm discovering something very new to me (I've never watched any Olympic things or athletic things before) and I'm having to figure it out. This is especially true for gymnastics, I think. Limbs, Harriet Walter. Limbs everywhere.

•      I read Dracula recently. Bram Stoker and such. I was hoping it would surprise me and be way cooler and more interesting than I expected, like Frankenstein was (you'll remember that Dr. Mac made us read that this spring as an illustration of the themes and cultural reactions of Romanticism).

            Nup.

•     If you have ever lain in bed at night, sleepless and haunted by the question, "I wonder what was up with the commerce, warfare, and intercultural relations between early Dutch settlers and Munsee Native Americans in the early colonial period of America's history," suffer no more. I can highly recommend The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley by Dr. Paul Otto, mainly because the dude himself gave me a copy earlier this summer and I read it because hey why not. It is actually a pretty interesting account! 

•  Speaking of history books, look at this book Dr. Mac has assigned for Comparative World History next fall (one of the four he's assigned so far). It is about sugar and history! Two of my favorite things! Oh my lands, I almost want to order it early and read it before the semester begins.

I hope I don't look back on this in the fall and be like "olawks can't believe i was excited to read that what a wretched heap of poo."

• I have gotten a job housesitting in late July and the first half of August for a couple living out in the country. This is a slightly unusual housesitting job, as the couple has to prep me for it for several weeks before I actually begin the job, and by "prep me" I mean "have me over to their house every few days so that their Tibetan Mastiff puppy can get used to having me around and stop being an antisocial guard dog about it all." And by "antisocial" I mean that my private name for him is "the murder mastiff."

This is an example of a full-grown Tibetan Mastiff. Yeppers.

boring academic update

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    We found out a few weeks ago that Tiny College is, indeed, going to keep existing, even though it hasn't quite met its fundraising goals yet. Just a few more hundred thousand dollars to go. (snortsnorthaw I just really wanted to write that last sentence ok)

    (I should mention that they're also restructuring the academic program so that instead of different majors, all the students will be Liberal Studies majors and we'll each choose two concentrations, which will be based on our former majors with a couple of additions. Sort of like a split-screen major, or a traditional double-major with a more reasonable workload. Liberal liberal arts. Eight concentrations to choose from. I was an undeclared major last year, so now I'm having to choose two concentrations instead of a major. I actually really like this setup.)

    Yesterday I registered for classes for next semester.

    Here is what they are, provided I don't freak out in the first two weeks and drop one of them and do something easy but solely elective like American Lit to 1865 or whatever.

• American Civilization I: Early Encounters to 1865
• Man what is up with 1865. Something significant probably happened then. (This is why I need an American history course.) Anyway this is more history, like the (worldwide) civilization 'n culture survey classes I took last year except American. I will be taking the continuation of this class in the spring, as well.

• Comparative World History
•  This is HIS 331-1, my first upper division history class. (Other history class is part of the core.) I'm taking it to help me decide if I for sure want to be a History major - no, not major, what do we call this instead? A history concentrator? That sounds dumb. 

• New Testament Studies I:  Gospels and Acts
• Did I mention that it's actually really unusual that my college requires as part of the core curriculum a full year of Old Testament and a full year of New? Because it is. Most Christian colleges require one semester per testament, which is like super lame.

• American Government and Politics
• I'm taking this to fulfill my Social Science requirement. It's a three-hour once-a-week class. It is going to be difficult.

•  Beginning Greek I
• Yeah. Yeah. Um. Greek. I have to take two semesters of foreign language in college because I didn't fulfill the requirement in high school. It was either Greek or Hebrew, Tiny College is tiny. And it's not modern Greek, by the way, it's would-have-been-modern-two-thousand-years-ago Greek.

    So that's that.

    And I'll be working a job in the academic support center.

    I know it's only fifteen credits but they will be hard won.

    Best part is that I have only two professors for these five classes. I had four last fall and three in the spring. NT and Greek will be with Professor Mine Enemy because he's kind of the only faculty we have right now for both the Biblical and Theological Studies concentration (our one BTS adjunct is moving away from Cali) and the Biblical Languages concentration (the man is unreal, he's teaching six classes this fall). The rest will be with history/humanities super-fab-man Dr. Mac. This is quite all right. These are two of my favorite dudes on the planet.

from commencement last month, photo by someone who wasn't me. Dr. Mac (on right) is actually much taller than PME (who is not a tall man), but he was standing on a slope.

starry nights with the robbers

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    As you know, I am living in a shed in someone’s backyard right now (albeit a shed that has been made into a perfect, serene little bedroom/sitting room/walk-in closet). Because it is in the backyard, and because I spend many evenings in the main house with the family and have to get ready for bed in the main house in any case, every night I have to walk a few feet from the back door to the door of my shed. Without any light, because I go to bed around when my Auntlet does and she turns off all the house lights when she goes to bed, as one does.

    I was never afraid of the dark as a child. I don’t know why I’ve started being so now, in my advanced age. I step out into that little space, those few short steps between doors, and a primal fear of the unknown comes and clutches at me like some sort of strangling, clutching thing that does not respect the personal space of my emotions.

    I’ve discovered a trick to calm myself, though.

    As soon as I begin to feel afraid of the darkness, I stand up straight and whisper this phrase into the night:

    “Go away, robbers and bad men.”

    Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t explain it. I am not in particular dread of burglars right now; this is not a rich neighborhood. I whisper the command as I enter into darkness, and I instantly feel safer and more in control. I then usually pause and stare up into the night sky and look at the stars, and I am made calm and deep, reminded of the vast and beautiful contexts I exist within.

    Then I make it to the shed, hurriedly switch on the lamps while whispering, “go away!” and turn around and close the door and whisper, “go away!” to the night behind me.

    I check for robbers and bad men inside the wardrobe while I put my clothes away, of course, but I don’t think I need to check under my fairly low-set bed before sleeping in it because frankly between my vintage suitcases and my violin there is not room to fit a robber of any substance under there.

not my photo.

the hut of happiness

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Hello!

    I haven't been posting much, and may not be posting much, because for the past week and for the rest of the summer I have been and will be living without the internet.

    I forget how much I've talked about this summer, but my parents are still over in Idaho, dinking around with nice summer projects, while a long time ago I chose to spend the summer in Oregon with my Auntlet and her husband.

    In a shed.

    I flew up from SoCal on Saturday the 5th of May, but Auntlet was horrendously busy and the shed wasn't ready for me yet, so I spent the first week of vacation with Best Friend and her family, my parents drove over to Oregon to visit friends and me, parents and I stayed with Mumsy's parents down the road for a few days, we all moved in with my dad's mother in her retirement home apartment, parents left after having been in town about a week, I stayed on a few more days there, then a week ago (Monday the 28th) I moved in with my Auntlet.

    So the thing about my Auntlet is that she is the full-time caretaker for her 95-year-old mother, who is very dependent in her old age. Auntlet lives with her mother in her mother's house in a little retirement community, and her husband Unclet occupies their house (which is very very old and in a long-term state of being renovated) on the other side of town, but comes and hangs out over at Auntlet's mother's house every day.

    There is a garden shed in the small back yard of A.'s mother's house. Auntlet and Unclet have renovated this shed and made it a Tiny Home for me to live in for the summer. (I have to go into the main house for the kitchen and restroom, as well as for human contact, but that is fine.) I've lived there a week now and I'll live there another two and a half months, until late August, when I will flap my wings and fly back south to Pasadena for my sophomore year of bein' eddicated.

    Right now I am looking for work, not finding work, hanging out with Best Friend, reading books, watching old movies, and sleeping as long as I want to.

    Would you like to see pictures of the shed? I know Mumsy wants to.

The outside, before renovation.

Inside, before. Shelves were veeeerrrry taaaalllll.

More before...

...aannndd...after! With my not-yet-unpacked junk on the floor.

Things that Auntlet put on the shelves.

There are actually two large skylights on either side of the ceiling.

After unpacking junk. You don't need to see inside the wardrobe.

 
    So the shed is magnificent and I'm completely happy with it. It has electricity and insulation and excellent natural lighting, and I will just have to continue biking to the nearest coffeeshop or to Best Friend's every day to access the internet.