Doing some Spring Cleaning.

If you think I've accidentally unfriended you, please let me know.

This is our container garden at the moment:



To the far left, you will see our basil. It's obscuring our lemon grass - a neighbor gave Ed a single stalk for his birthday, to transplant. It didn't look good for a little while there, but it is growing well now.

Next, we have roma tomatoes, two in a large container. There are growing like gangbusters. We need cages - we just need to build them.

Continuing to the right, we have yellow cherry tomatoes. These are a bit scraggly looking still - they didn't take well to being transplanted. They have a lot of new growth, however, so they might make it yet.

The tub with the trellis has two grape tomato plants. Just in case the cherry tomatoes don't survive. grin They are already growing around the trellis.

The other tub is cucumbers. They will get some sort of framework as well. I love how that plant smells.

Obviously, we like tomatoes.

The seeds will be started this weekend. Most if what I ordered is bed to have a fairly quick growing time, suited to fall planting in this area. I am realky excited about the peas, of course. But the chile pepper is another thing u am super stoked to grow.

We have enough seeds that I am tempted to start some in the ground as well, just to see what happens. I didn't want to deal with raised beds our an in-ground garden if we are going to move in a year - but it doesn't seem like such a waste if it is just a small experiment.

( More pics and descriptive text and so onCollapse )

Again, this is an unlocked post. Point people at it if you think they'd be interested, please! And thank you.

I was actually later to work (though still a little early) than I intended this morning. Why?

Because I started grooming my eyebrows and just couldn’t stop.

Once upon a time, a friend took me to get my eyebrows waxed. It was kind of a disaster -they were lopsided and I had a funny little patch with no hair that meant they waxed them unevenly. My friend sat me down in her bathroom and plucked them into some semblance of order. I was 19. I’ve had a pair of tweezers clutched in my stressed-out fingers ever since.

Eyebrow plucking is one of those things people, predominantly women, are EXPECTED to do. Though you’ll get more natural brows on some famous people (Madonna in the 80s), the trend more and more has become a very precisely groomed arch.

My arch is, according to the rules, too far to the outside of my brows. In theory, the most pleasing arch is formed in a direct line that starts at the corner of your nose and then goes through your pupil. I could not make this shit up if I tried. Well, maybe if I tried. But that’d be a waste of time.

“I don’t pluck my eyebrows or anything” is one of those defensive statements I hear time and again -as though people who don’t pluck their eyebrows are not allowed to wear eyeshadow. As though people who don’t pluck their eyebrows are somehow in such violation of the base requirements that they don’t get to play with anything involving eyemakeup.

Eyebrow plucking is one of those pernicious things -once you’ve started, it’s really hard to stop. Once you’ve started, your eyebrow is shaped a little differently. And regrowth is an awkward, messy process. Once you start ripping hairs out by the roots, too, it changes how they grow back -one interesting side effect of eyebrow plucking is that, as people get older, the hairs stop growing back. So if you’ve overplucked the outer part of your arch, those hairs might just disappear -and you’ll then be drawing on the outer part of your eyebrow for the rest of your conforming-to-eyebrow-expectations life.

I’m not knocking eyebrow grooming. I love eyebrows of all sorts of shapes and in all sorts of natural conditions. But it’s frustrating that even something so small as an eyebrow is such a persistent part of our obsessive beauty routines.

There was, in the later half of the 18th century, a brief moment in fashion history where the styles of the day caused women to shave off their natural eyebrows completely and replace them (positioned differently) with fake eyebrows made from mouse pelts. Yes. The fur of dead mice. Which, on the one hand, is kind of freaking fascinating. On the other hand, the rich and fashionable shaved off their eyebrows and stuck the skin of dead plague-carrying mice to their faces. So, you know. That’s interesting. And remarkably indicative of how we’ve been twisting ourselves into knots in the pursuit of conformity with fashion for years and years and years.

Y'all, I need the closet space, for reals. I'm trying to do this in small batches, to make it more manageable. For me. Because photographing clothes is not amazing. If there are no takers here, I'll post them in a sales community - but I'd much rather send them off to people I know!

ALSO: This is an unlocked post. If you know someone in this size, send them over. :D

Also, also, I loled when I realized 5/7 of these dresses are black. Yeah, I have a preference. And the other two are pink.

ALSO ALSO ALSO: I am happy to ship internationally, but I'll have to figure out the cost.

( 2 remaining dresses in search of good homes.Collapse )

Sold!

In the back of my closet, while thinking about clothes I need to get rid of, I found this pair of poor unfortunate Converse:



They've been worn all of once - they are 6-10 years old. Alas, they're too narrow in the toe for me. Which is a problem with Converse and I don't know why I keep falling for their siren song.



They're a US 7, a UK 5, and a Euro 37.5, as clearly marked. I'd say they fit true to that (hence my toe area issues).

I am dedicated to cleaning out some stuff - I usually drop it at the Goodwill but since I'm aiming to buy myself an iPad2, I thought I'd see if anyone was interested in taking these off my hands. I'll put them up in a sale community if I have to.

$25 plus shipping - but we can always negotiate!



These are too awesome to not be worn. Which, really, I realized the other day that ALL of my pieces are statement pieces. *laugh*

SOLD!



These boots are vintag - I got them in high school which makes them early-mid 90s. At the time, they cost what felt like a million of my babysitting dollars - I got them at Junkman's Daughter in the ATL. I've worn them a fair number of times over the years - maybe twenty times.

And now they need a new home.

They aren't marked for size - I'd say they're a small 8 or a wide 7.5. They are in great condition. The platform is high enough that they are super comfy, especially with an insole.

I'll offer them up on a sales community if I have to but I wanted to give my friends list first shot at them: I'd like to get $40 + shipping but that's negotiable because what I really want is for them to wind up in someone else's closet instead of taking up space in mine.

Do YOU need a pair of furry pink leopard platform ankle boots? I bet you do! *grin*

I updated my etsy shop again! It's like I'm productive!

Okay, one more post and then I'm probably done for a little while. Oh, this reminds me of the early days of the LJ, when people were posting five or six times a day! I use Tumblr for that sort of thing now. Anyway.



Click to make it bigger!

This was a bit of a rush job - I really only spent 10 or 15 minutes on it. So I'm not totally happy with how some of the little comments are hard to read - sorry about that! But my coworkers seem to think these whiteboard grammar lessons are a hoot.

I wonder how hard it is to paint on velvet....

This is the same coworker who keeps asking me questions. I think now she just wants me to do ridiculous things on my whiteboard.

I only have two markers.

ETA: Yes, Wookiee has two Es. It was apparently "Wookie" in the old pubs, which is probably where I picked that up. Someone noted it on Tumblr, so I changed it on my whiteboard but didn't think it was necessary to change the photo.

Painted my nails this weekend. Fancy Fuschia, which is really just a very bright easter eggy pink. One of the toll workers who I see almost every morning complimented me on it, which was nice.

In other news, I think part of my problem with writing is that I've hit the point where I know what's going to happen next.

This is kidn of deadly for my motivation since most of my fiction writing is 100% discovery writing. Like, I write because *I* want to know what happens. And once I know...

I'm working through that, though, by writing with friends. Basically, we get together in a group chat, revena sets a timer, and we all write for an hour (or whatever our designated time is). It makes for a really empty chat. *laugh* But knowing we're there together is somehow helpful. Like, I feel compelled to be focused because otherwise I am not really participating in the right spirit.

The whole writing process is so personalized - I kind of love talking to other writers about their methods. Part of it is that I keep searching for something that will work for me BETTER, but mostly I just think it's fascinating how many different approaches there are. I had an ex-boyfriend who was super disapproving that I didn't really regard writing as work. He took it very seriously. Meanwhile, I just kind of sat down and played with it. I think if I took it too seriously, it would lose its joy and I wouldn't want to do it anymore.

It's also probably true that blogging has spoiled me for feedback. I've worked on this novel for a year now, and there are three or four people who have read most of it. Their feedback keeps me motivated but it's kind of excruciating to not be able to show people stuff! Even though I'd be totally freaked out about showing people stuff. *laugh* The pacing is off, and there's some stuff that I need to frontload. I can't worry about any of that, though, until I have a completed draft so I can see how the whole shape hangs together.

So, I have a lot of writers on my friends list. *grin* What's your process?

Tell me something you think I should do. Could be an activity I've never tried before, could be a topic you think I should write upon, could be some wrong you think I should correct. I'm open to all possibilities.

(An animation still of Hank Hill from King of the Hill altered to look like Green Lantern; the caption reads: In brightest day, in blackest night, I tell you what, that boy ain't right, let those who worship charcoal's might, beware my power, propane's light!)

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1294312.html.

OMFG I AM HOME THANK GOODNESS.

Tomorrow will be another long day but right now I have taken off my shoes and I am on the couch with the dog and it is BEAUTIFUL.

I even managed to list my jellyfish brooch on Etsy. It's been long enough that I can let it go, I think. And I signed up again for pottery so I can make another. Really, I can.

Ed's out and about and so it's just me and Freya and the cats. It's kind of nice.

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1292796.html.

Anyone have any recommendations when it comes to freelance writing/editorial websites? I'm not looking to go into freelance hot and heavy but I could stand to pick up a small job or two a month (Ed's schedule and hours were changed at work to accommodate his classes and it's going to hurt us a bit).

Any advice?

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1292450.html.

Well, poop. I was going to order some Knit Picks yarn for the sweater I want to knit... but you can't split a payment on two cards. I have a Visa gift card I want to use up and then I wanted to put the rest on my regular card. Alas, they cannot do this for some reason.

Milli, the customer service rep with whom I spoke, said, "Oh, well, you can just put the full amount on your regular card!" Except, yeah, no. Perhaps I will not knit this sweater after all.

In the meantime, I am working late. And tomorrow is, I suspect, going to suck a lot.

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1291699.html.

I found myself, via Twitter, giving writing advice to someone I admire the other night. It was appropriate, in context. I mean, I wasn't just forcing my writerly opinion on random people or anything. But it, as sometimes happens, made me think about the practical methodology of teaching writing.

About a year ago, I read Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer. It served, in many ways, to remind me of just how much time I used to spend reading. That would be: all of it. Now I work and I make things and I socialize but, as a kid, I was far more interested in reading books than in participating in any sort of human connection.

Books saved my life. I've said it many times before and I'm reasonably sure I'll say it many times in the future as well.

Ed jokes that if there are words on a thing, I will read them. It's not a conscious decision - it's what my eyes automatically do. We were out at a restuarant and the bread plate had words on it and before I could pass it to Ed, I had to read it. I read cereal boxes and road signs and labels; if the text is in another language, I try to read it anyway, sounding out phonetics I'm not familiar with just because that is what one does with words.

I don't remember a time before reading.

College was kind of an adventure and I tried many several majors before I came back, settled into the comfortable routine of the English major. I actually graduated, to be quite specific, with a degree in English - Creative Writing. UCF had three tracks (Literature, Creative Writing, and Technical Writing) at that time and while I had a ton of Lit credits...

My first actual creative writing class was in the 9th grade. It was an elective credit, not an English one. And it was really only taught because, I think, Mr. Joiner was bored out of his skull. There were no creative writing classes at the main highschool (housing 10th, 11th, and 12th grades) but I did dual enrollment starting my junior year. Which meant creative writing classes, in addition to everything else, at the community college.

That class in the 9th grade taught me a lot about the business of being a writer - about actually writing things down and journalling. The classes at the community college, every one of them with a woman named Yvonne Sapia, taught me both about craft and about practice - you have to practice, just like any other skill; the more you write, the better you wind up. (Usually.)

Mr. Joiner and Dr. Sapia were both big believers in reading. I was already a compulsive reader - no one ever had to twist my arm to get me to read and respond to something, that's for sure. But they made my reading more conscious, more aware.

I won't say they made it more critical, per se, but I do tend to analysize everything in the background even as I'm enjoying it. For me, looking at how something works just increased my enjoyment of the thing - writing isn't magic so looking at the mechanics of it doesn't pull away any sort of veil of mystery.

Those classs, and all the ones I have taken since... they've certainly made me more disciplined and they've shaped my conscious thoughts on writing. But I'm not so sure they taught me HOW to write. Because when I read Reading Like a Writer, it reminded me of something that I rarely give myself credit for. I already knew how to write. When I took that class in the 9th grade, that's not where I learned how to write. It's one of the many places where I learned how to consciously shape what I'm writing and it is one of the many places where I learned how to talk about writing. It's one of the places where I got better at writing.

But I learned how to write when I was reading. When I was absorbing amazing sentences - and also terrible sentences. When I was getting to know characters, and when I was discovering that some characters are unknowable and that can go one of two ways - and you'd better get it right.

Francine Prose is pretty eclectic in her examples in that book but she keeps coming back to Chekhov. I've spent a while thinking about who I keep coming back to and the list has actually made me laugh a great deal: It's Stephen King. It's older Tom Clancy. It's J.R.R. Tolkien. It's William Faulkner. And it's fairy tales.

And that makes me feel a little bit ridiculous. But then I look at what those writers, as individuals, DO.

King is a masterful storyteller. I don't care that people don't find him literary - he creates compelling characters who are ordinary in all the ways that count. He is amazing at small details that paint a larger picture. I'm reading Full Dark, No Stars at the moment and I'm forcing myself not to devour it just because I want to spend more time with these people - and because I know terrible things are coming for them. What I want to learn from King, what I hope I have made some progress in learning, is that sense of voice, that inescapable character narrator who, unrelentingly, takes you with them no matter how awful things are.

I swear, Tom Clancy's stuff is ghost-written at this point. But the older stuff.... It always surprises people when they ask for my favorite books and I name The Hunt for Red October as one of them. I don't go in for military writing as a general rule. I find a lot of espionage stuff just too.... I don't know, maybe Clancy ruined it for everyone? And now it all seems trite? Clancy wrote some pretty exciting stories with lots of action where it counted but that's not why I really love him - it's for the tension. Clancy can make you wait for it - and then when it, whatever it happens to be, you feel that it was inevitable. OF COURSE that's what happened next; it has the gravitas of reality. Maybe that's a better way to put it than "tension" - it feels real in the way that Bond has never felt real to me (and I love me some Bond). I want to be able to ground my fiction in a feeling of reality so that, when it comes time for the magical realism to really kick in, the reader is 100% along for the ride.

Tolkien... everyone talks about Tolkien. He's the reason I know so much about the world of my novel that will never make it into the novel. Like, the political situation with Cuba, okay? His world is epic in scope, as I think we all know, but the completness of it is what keeps bringing me back. I want to spend more time walking around in that world even though I've read The Hobbit and LotR and the other assorted histories more times than I can count. Just as I do not remember a time before reading, I cannot remember a time before I knew the story of Biblo Baggins.

William Faulkner is not to everyone's taste. And that's okay. My boss swears I'll appreciate Hemingway more once I hit 40 but I don't know about that. Faulkner is decadent to me. Faulkner is rolling around in the pleasure of a complex sentence. Faulkner is construction and word choice and nuance influenced by punctuation. Faulkner taught me, if any one specific author taught me, that reading aloud can be a visceral thrill and about how language is, in and of itself, a beautiful tool.

It kind of distresses me, sometimes, that I don't return to any female authors, any authors of color, the way I return to these foundation writers. These are the writers of my childhood, before I managed to break out of the B. Dalton's and the Scholastic book order form (man, I loved those forms) and find other authors. Their voices are not my voice - they certainly don't speak to any kind of female experience (though I give King credit, especially in some of his more recent writing).

Other authors have taught me other things (Margaret Atwood has taught me about ambigious endings, for example) and, as I continue to read, I learn more.

I dated a guy who didn't read much but who was trying to make a career for himself as a writer. It... It showed, in his writing.

What my Creative Writing degree gave me is something vastly different. It's often regarded as a throw-away degree because the workshops are so subjective. But that's where I learned how to consciously break down my own writing process. It's where I learned how to revise - and how to even think about revision (both conceptually and from a process perspective). My Creative Writing degree is where I learned the specific names for what I had already seen people do - the specific tricks of mechanics and construction that people use to specific and highly choreographed effect.

Without all of that reading, the degree would be wasted. I'd know the methods without any of the applied theory. And I think I could write without the degree, absolutely - but having that knowledge base helps when it comes times to think about my writing in a larger sense, beyond the surface of plotted events.

I hang out, in real life and online, with a lot of people who are very educated. And while I'd love to go back to collect more degrees, right now it's just me and my lone B.A. in the company of terminal degrees to the right of me, terminal degrees to the left of me. I let that weigh on me sometimes - I feel actively bad about it sometimes, and I wonder if I am cut out for the sort of work going back would entail. But I think my degree, as not-impressive as it is, taught me some valuable things about looking at the world, about reading for meaning, about communicating. It's not a sexy degree, but in the end: it was useful.

I suspect I think about this sort of thing entirely too much. *laugh*

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1290359.html.

Not only is it the first Monday of the month, it's the first Monday of the new year! How awesome is that?

The rules haven't changed:

1. Leave an anonymous secret.
2. Interact with other people leaving anonymous secrets.
3. Don't be a douchebag.

Happy New Year!

Though not at the same time so much as in the same general area. I'm entertaining myself on the cheap this weekend and that means taking advantage of my stash of spray paint and my stash of interesting roadside/yard sale/whatever finds.

I really like mirrors, though Ed makes fun of me for it, so when I saw two matching tall mirrors on the side of the road a few months ago, I jumped for them. I realized I had, like, five cans of apple red spray paint and the living room is predominantly red... So now there are two tall mirrors that will go in the living room once they are dry.

There was a stamp in the back of each of them - 1979. That makes them 31years old. I think that is pretty freaking cool. They kind of match a set of tall mirrors we got a while back and painted yellow (those are in this short little hallway between the living room and Ed's office and the guest bathroom).

I also painted a great big frame "hammered metal" - it looks pretty rad. But my favorite is the 7ft tall columns. I saw them on the side of the road on my way to doggie daycare one day. And they were still there at the end of the day so Ed and I brought them home. The plan is to put them in the bedroom - which is why they are now bright orange. GOOD TIMES.

So, that was a bunch of spray paint and a little dent in the contents of the shed. And since we have plans for this stuff, it isn't gratuitous - I am really very excited about how cool the columns are going to look once we get the bedroom cleaned up some more.

While I was spray painting, I snapped this photo of our shovel, leaning against one of our gargoyles where we left it... ages ago.



This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1284558.html.

Hey sushispook! DO NOT CLICK THIS. I like you and I do not want you to die!

Animated gif of a wolf spider with a gazillion trillion babies on its back

Truth in advertising, it is exactly what the link says. I think it's neat looking, in a creepy sort of way. I wanted to share it but I didn't want to give anyone a heart attack. SO. Not reblogging. Just linking here.

There's a list of 100 book titles going around on Facebook. Apparently the BBC put this list together; the supposition is that the average person has only read 6 of the books on the list.

I've read 91 of them.

The list is pretty heavily skewed to Western (predominantly white) literature. There's a decent mix, I think, of "classic" lit and modern lit. There aren't a whole lot of authors on the list who identify as anything other than male.

None of this is a suprise, of course. Lists like these are almost inevitably a white European-or-American dude party. And that's not to denigrate the books on the list - though some of them suck eggs, in my not-really-very-humble-when-it-comes-to-books-thanks opinion.

But all of that aside, what the list reminded me of is just how MUCH I used to read. Well, I still read voluminously; it reminds me of how much FICTION I used to read. Seriously, I consumed the stuff like it was food, like it was more important than food.

The past few years, I read less. (Reading online counts, in my opinion, but it still isn't the same as reading narrative - and I'm not sure anyone is going to claim Wikipedia is literature, you know?) I've had my Kindle for almost a year now and it has ramped my reading way back up. I don't document the books I read, though I admire people who do. I've just never been that organized about it, especially since I tend to reread and rereread and so on.

But I'm predominantly reading nonfiction lately (I have a hard time counting Harlequin Blaze romance novels even though I average 4-6 a month - that has dropped off since they've jacked up their prices and removed the titles from Amazon); some of it is novel research and some of it is just my continuing obsession with the advent and arrival of the 20th century in America. Right now I have two primary books in progress: Them That Believe, which is an academic work about snake-handling religions in the Appalachians, and The Big Burn, which is about the Great Fire of 1910.

But even as I write my own narrative, this ridiculous Florida zombie story about bodies, I find myself really hungry for something, really missing exploring someone else's world.

I need recommendations of modern fiction.

If it's on a highschool or college reading list, chances are good I've read it at least once if not more. I don't like Oprah's book club all that much - too many predictable and saccharine stories of women overcoming their tragic childhood/widowing/family disaster. I loathe books dependent on cruelty masquerading as humor (see: The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - ugh, I hate this book). I come away empty and self-defeating from books that glorify a decadent-yet-substanceless existence in the face of a souless time (yes, F.Scott Fitzgerald, I AM looking at you - the Great Gatsby is beyond depressing to me and I'm not looking to get into an argument about that but I think it sucks from a story perspective even as the craft is phenomenal). I prefer Faulkner to Hemingway (I always think of this as being the Beatles vs. Elvis of the English major circuit). I don't like investing my emotional energy when there is nothing likable on any level about any of the characters who survive/succeed in a novel.

That makes it sound like I am a really demanding, critical reader - and you know what? I AM. I don't think I've ever really owned that but it's true. I've read A LOT of books over the years and I am a damned good READER. I don't have to read great stuff (Harlequin Blaze, okay?) but there are a few kinds of fail I'm just not interested in dealing with when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself. I'm not afraid of a book being work but I don't think they should ALL be work (yes, Eco, now I'm looking at YOU). More than anything, I go into every book wanting to love it.

I want to love every book I pick up.

I really don't care about genre - I'll read just about anything eagerly (though I have not had a lot of success at loving Westerns or straight-up military fiction) so if you have something to suggest, don't worry about that. I'm especially fond of sci-fi/fantasy/spec fic - whatever the hell they're calling it now - because that's kind of like comfort food to me. I mean, I joke that I was raised by Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein, okay? But I REALLY love magical realism. Oh, love it love it love it. I'm actually not a big romance reader outside of my steady consumption of the series books. There's a lot of cliche and over-reliance on tropes. That said, if it's good, I'm all about it.

I read really quickly; there are very few books I haven't finished. Because it isn't a significant investment of time, I'll often read things I don't particularly enjoy just so I know what happens - I've got a rapacious curiosity when it comes to "what happened next." None of that JJ Abrhams preserving the mystery for the sake of the mystery bullshit, okay?

This has turned into the most ridiculous request for book recommendations ever! *laugh* I'm sorry about that. I really did just intend to say, hey, y'all! What should I be reading from the world of modern fiction. But I have opinions on these things and I don't really get to talk about books nearly as much as I'd love to.

Any book suggestions? Anybody?

ETA: I can't respond to the LJ comment because I'm still at work, but why leave out YA? I love YA. Bring it!

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1280030.html.

I am 31000+ words into my zombie novel. This feels significant.

While I know some of what needs to happen in the missing chapter 6 (and have JUST fleshed out the previously missing chapter 2), I have no idea what happens "next" - what's going to come after the bits I've already got onto paper.

Discovery writing is really fun - it's exciting to figure things out along as I go. The creative writing program from which I graduated emphasized character-driven narrative, regardless of genre, and that really went along with my focus anyway, I think. I tend to focus on character anyway, sometimes to the exclusion of plot entirely!

tl;dr: I'm kind of trusting that my characters will tell me what happens next.

I know there are a lot of writers on my friends list and reading list. I'm really curious how this process works for you. I LOVE process talk - it's so interesting to me. There are so many different ways that people go about this.

Another example - the standard advice is to do your rough draft and then reduce by however many percent. I can't do that - if I did that, I'd wind up with a short novella, if that. I write really skeletally, in part because I'm kind of lazy on the first go through. I actually have to go back in, add scenes (hence the need for chapters 2 and 6 to be inserted), make things more clear, add things up in a different way that makes sense on the page instead of just inside my head.

I have no idea where this novel is going to end up! I've been aiming for 60-80 thousand words. That means I'm halfway to a third there already. My mind, she is blown! Even though "already" really means "this took a large chunk of this year." *laugh*

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1278919.html.

So, I missed Secrets Monday this month. OOPS. But better late than never! So let's have ourselves a Secrets Wednesday.

1. Post a secret - anonymously!
2. Interact with other people - without being a douchebag!
3. Repeat!

I can't get to my LJ at work but the settings should already be in place so when I cross-post from Dreamwidth, everything should work as usual.

For those who are new - we've been playing this game for a long time; it's usually the first Monday of each month but I've gotten kind of hit or miss with that. I'm trying to find the routine again. It's often difficult secrets though sometimes there are really happy secrets, too. There's a lot of really constructive advice and support and very little douchebaggery even though everyone is anonymous. I'd like to keep it that way.

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1277621.html.

It's kind of like a meme. Usually it's about people saying nice things about each other and the person being complimented not being allowed to argue. *grin* But today....

Say something nice about YOURSELF. Leave me a comment here, write a post about it, something. Tell me why you are awesome, even if you are not entirely convinced you are awesome. Just one thing, unless you have a list and then share the list.

We're conditioned, I think, not to toot our own horns, proverbially speaking (because who else's literal horn would you toot? I mean, that just seems unsanitary), not to say good things about ourselves because it is vain or arrogant or what the hell ever.

Here, I will start:

I altered a hat I bought at a thrift store this weekend. I totally changed the shape (yeah, I basically made a pill box hat since I couldn't find a plain one to decorate), covered it with pink glitter, and attached all the necessary whatnot to it. It kind of looks like I need a flashlight so as to escort you to your seat in the big fancy movie theatre (also, I could be the glammest bellhop ever) and that's pretty much exactly what I was going for. I am good at turning things into other things when I really focus on it.

YOUR TURN.

This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1277043.html.