I Got a Plant!

(This is the plant. It is Tabitha-approved.)

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I've been wanting more indoor plants - many more, like kind of an indoor jungle? - for a long time, but I've always been nervous about what the cats would do to them, and what they in turn might do to the cats. After researching and dithering for literally years, I finally reached a new stage in my deliberations and went looking for a Boston Fern and/or a Reed Palm. I chose them because neither kind is toxic to cats according to the ASPCA website, and they can both live with indirect light. I ended up with this lovely big Reed Palm. The cats have all sniffed it and taken turns sitting beside it, but they're being surprisingly chill about the situation.

It's going to take some thought and modifications to add more. I have a lot of space, but I don't have many good places for plants at the moment. There are two spider plants hanging from the two ceiling hooks I have available, but only one of them is really thriving. I want to figure out how to add little grow lights to the spots I have where there's not even indirect natural light, or install more ceiling hooks that are sturdy enough to be useful, or add little shelves that the cats can't access. I don't mind the thought of moving or getting rid of stuff to make space for more tall plants, after testing how well they grow and the cats behave with them. I guess that the more plants I end up with, the less cat-based peril there will be for each of them. There are only so many hours in a day for plant-shredding when one needs a certain number of naps.

I'm all psyched up about having more indoor plants because:

• I like the way they look, especially in the winter when there's not much green outside
• They smell good
• They absorb carbon dioxide and pollution
• They create oxygen
• I don't think I really need more reasons than this, do you you? Thanks for understanding.

So YAY PLANT. Gotta go, more blog tomorrow, votey-vote-vote!

Hello from Slobsville - AKA Let Me Tell You about My Home Office

(I never said I was perfect)

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Before you get worried, let me just say that I'm about to launch into decluttering. My office is the messy room in my house. I mean, the other rooms are lived-in for sure, but the office is that one room where I put things I'm going to do something with later. It's like... not really a junk room, but it contains a lot of things that currently have more potential than realization. You know? You know. I know you know. 

It's gotten to the point where it's harder to declutter and tidy up because there are no free surfaces to sort things on. It's a roughly 10' x 14' room that contains a computer desk, printer stand, two tall cabinets that are about 3 feet wide each, and also the intended-for-art table pictured above, a couple of smaller freestanding storage furnishings, a couple of to-be-painted small furniture items (an end table and a narrow cabinet, if you must know). It has a built-in closet and drawers that are pretty full of things to make things with, and upper cabinets that are too high for regular use (one of which has a half-broken door that hangs crookedly if I open it. Not to mention all the stuff on, in, and around the aforementioned furniture and cabinets and the floor. 

I SUCK *begins to hyperventilate*

Drama? Where?!

I swear to you that I do have plenty of reasonable, functional other rooms in which there are clear and usable surfaces. One might even be forgiven for thinking of my office as sort of an enabler of a room, lacking the boundaries to stop taking on the other rooms' messes, so that they might function while the office chokes. With the possible objection that it is I, the sentient human, who is in fact responsible and conveniently anthropomorphizing rooms like a crazy person, in this scenario.

The plan, then, is that I'll choose a section of the mess at a time, and do the whole hoarder-show "keep, toss, or donate" routine until that bit is dealt with, and then I'll pick another section, and so on. Maybe I'll even do a follow-up post during this month of thirty or more blog posts. 

Speaking of more blog posts... At EcoAnxiety Club I've added a post for patrons who support my dealing-with-climate-change project at the level of $1 per month. It's about how I accidentally stopped using air conditioning in my house four years ago, and why I eventually continued with that on purpose, and how that's been working out for me. Plus links to interesting related information, and ideas for dealing with humidity! So if you're into that kind of thing, that will be the first of many you'll get for one single dollar per month. I promise I won't be cranking up the sales pitch in every single blog post, by the way. I'm not like that.

Have a great day, you! 

Bookposting, because YES TO BOOKS

(A few of the books I'm reading, as of today)

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I don't think the premise of this post requires much explanation! So here are the books I'm reading, or in one case about to read, and why, and what I think of them so far. Alphabetically by author/editor, because that's how I like it.

The Witch Elm, by Tana French 

Earlier this year, I read the six books of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. The first one basically turned me into the sort of person who's going to stop everything to read any new book by this author, so when my pre-order of this new, standalone novel arrived at my house, you know it was a struggle for me to finish writing my short story instead of putting aside all responsibilities to make more reading time. It's not a spoiler to say that this book - unlike the ones in the series - is a murder mystery that is not about the police investigation side of things. The main character is a young man from a fairly privileged background, experiencing some significant difficulties for the first time in his previously easy life, and the book is also about his extended family and his friends. I'm not quite halfway through it, because I want to take my time and enjoy the words instead of tearing through to see what happens. As with every one of French's other books I've read, I feel confident that the whole experience will be satisfying.

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken

I haven't started to read this one yet, but I'm looking forward to it because I need an optimism boost. The content is divided into categories: Energy, Food, Women and Girls, Buildings and Cities, Land Use, Transport, Materials, and Coming Attractions. In each category, there are articles of one to several pages that cover specific approaches, with a summary at the end of each to describe its potential impact. It's the sort of book I can envision reading in small bites, maybe one or two of the approaches daily. I hope to learn a lot of general ideas, and then look for more detailed information on the ones I want to prioritize. The truth is that we need to be working on a lot of things at once, but no single person is likely to be able to get involved in all of them, so it will be important to find the ways I can be the most useful.

The People's Republic of Everything, by Nick Mamatas

Nick is a writing convention buddy of mine, and I also enjoy his fiction; it's pretty rare to get both of those things with an author, so thanks, Nick! I go in and out of wanting to read short fiction, so it can take me a while to finish a collection of short stories even when I'm enjoying the stories. I'm maybe two-thirds of the way through this one, and definitely enjoying both the stories and Nick's commentary about how he came to write each of them. If you're bored with predictable plots and mainstream ideas, check this out.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Joseph Romm

This is a highly-rated overview of how climate change works, what's going on, and what's likely to happen in the future. I'm reading the 2018 second edition in ebook format, so I can read a section on my phone here and there. The truth is that even the introduction of this book made me cry, although to be completely transparent I was already feeling fragile that day and I had no business reading that material. I just thought an introduction should be pretty safe. NOPE. Don't get the wrong impression. The author isn't going out of his way to make it sad. The information itself is sad. We still need to know it if we're going to have any kind of chance to do something about it. That's why the other climate change book, above, seems like a good way to balance myself out, since it focuses on what we can do to improve the situation. I'll be writing about what I learn from these books, eventually, in my EcoAnxiety Club project, which you can follow for the free posts, and get notifications if you want them. There's even a free Patreon app you can use!

That's my book load for now! I may do another bookpost later this month if I start any others, but I want to finish some of these before I do that.

Effective Voting, Instead of the Other Kind

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Hey! Howdy. Since you're on the internet, I'm sure you're painfully aware that there's an American election coming up. This post is for the Americans who will be voting in the election, which ideally would be every American who is old enough and not currently prohibited from voting for felony reasons, or comas, or other stuff I'd rather you weren't involved in.

More specifically, it's for the people who intend to vote for - or are considering voting for - someone other than a Democrat or Republican for a high-level position (say, Governor or above) at any point before we get ourselves an instant-runoff voting system. That's when you get to rank the candidates in order on the ballot, and your vote will go to your favorite candidate, but if they're in last place, they're eliminated; in that case, your vote goes to your second choice of candidate. Depending on how many candidates there are, your second choice might get eliminated, too, so your vote would go to your third choice. More details are at the link, above. That's a good system for giving any candidate from any party a chance to win. I would be thrilled forever if we could have that system. BUT WE DO NOT HAVE THAT SYSTEM.

Sadly, what we have is a situation where your well-intentioned vote for, say, the Green Party candidate (just giving an example here!) will permanently take your vote away from the Democrat who is sympathetic to green issues, and will give an advantage to the Republican who is really a lot less likely to ever help you with green issues. So I'm here to advocate for choosing a likely-to-win candidate from one of the two major parties, the one who will be generally sympathetic to the more intense values you may have. After you help them win, you can and should follow up by writing to that candidate on a regular basis to let them know what you want them to work on while in office. Voting for a candidate who can't possibly win is not an effective way to enact your preferences. Communicating directly with a sympathetic major-party candidate WHO HAS WON is much more effective. 

However, while we're stuck with our current voting system, it can still make a big difference to vote for alternative-party candidates at the local level, if that's what you want to do. Fewer people bother to show up to vote in local elections, so your vote can have a lot of impact on the results. As they get experience and become more well-known, they'll have more opportunities to move upward in politics, and maybe work to promote the instant-runoff voting system that might propel them to the top one day! 

Anyway, please vote in this election! As effectively as possible.

Sorry, What? I Was Thinking About Flowers: Gardening Therapy

(These are "Cut and Come Again" zinnias that I grew in pots on my deck.)

For the last few years, I've been increasingly into decorative gardening and landscaping, especially in the late spring and early summer. This year, however, I've become really fanatical about it. Although it's a great hobby just on its own merits, it's serving another purpose for me, too: a partial antidote to feeling dejected about politics and worried about the future of our environment. I can go outside, get absorbed in the work of planting pretty things, and then be able to watch them expand over time. 

I'm trying to make my yards really wildlife-friendly, so I don't get the "perfect" results one might expect from using pesticides and weed-killers. I don't really think of that weed-free, bug-free effect as perfect, though. I like a more casual, natural look, and apparently so do the birds, because every morning there's a chorus of I don't even know how many kinds of birds, and I love it. I've seen a monarch butterfly in my back yard twice, recently, and a hummingbird once, even though I don't have a hummingbird feeder. There are at least two rabbits that hop around toward the overgrown back of my back yard, and eat the dandelions. I also see three chipmunks that get on my nerves a bit, but they have as much right to live as I do, so I'm working on scent-based strategies to keep them from digging up certain spots. 

I'm also not in any way a fan of grass lawns. Look, if you want to spend hours every week out there with loud machines that make noise and fumes, and fight the never-ending and expensive battle to keep out every last weed, that's your business - although others also get to hear the noise and smell the fumes, fyi. I'm putting my effort into gradually replacing my grass with low ground-cover plants like mini-clover, which only grows four to six inches tall and also pulls nitrogen into the soil, or creeping jenny, which likes shade and also brightens up shady spots with its green-yellow color and pretty foliage. This process is definitely a lot of work for now, but over time it will lead to less work, and (in my opinion) look more interesting than big, flat expanses of grass. I am also breaking up the flat expanses with perennial flower beds and shrubs arranged so that there are curving, flowing paths through the back yard, with something different to look at from every angle. And, since I'm aware that this is not the favored type of landscaping in my neighborhood, I'm also trying to plant things to close off the yard pleasantly - not a solid wall, but a soft and nice-looking enclosure. 

Eventually. 

Have you ever heard the expression "if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs?" This applies to my efforts in so many ways. I could actually spend a couple of days each week going around and dealing with weeds and volunteer trees and even nice plants that are overgrown, and then by the time I got all the way back around to the beginning, it would be almost as bad as when I started. That would be soul-crushing, and the yard wouldn't end up looking prettier. So I've been trying to alternate between types of project: plant some pretty things in a bare spot; cut the "lawn" (which could in some places be more accurately described as a "weed farm"); get a life and some rest for a couple days; work on harder and less-fun projects like cutting down small trees and (soon) pulling out the bricks from a super-ugly old patio remnant; and then reward myself with getting to plant some new things again, next time the budget allows. Oh, and sometimes I actually sit on the shady patio for a while in the morning and just enjoy being outside.

If this sounds to you like my new full-time job, you're not entirely wrong, but it's more of a part-time job. It's time-sensitive. The more I can get done in the warm months this year, the better the situation will be next year, and - more importantly - the less time I will spend fretting about what deeply unpleasant actions might come blasting out of the current government next. I'm still Doing the Thing I mentioned in my last post, but I'm taking advantage of the good weather to do this additional gardening thing outside when I can.

I'm DOING the THING. Here's What It Is and Why I Took so Long to Do It.

("A Colorful Cat #2," by Nayad Monroe, in the extra-fancy embellished version.)

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For years, I've been vaguely saying that I should post my art online somewhere, to make it available for people to buy. I've sold my art before - to complete strangers, even! That was back when I painted in acrylic, on canvases. I had several coffee shop and restaurant-level shows, where people bought paintings every time. Then I had babies, and felt a combination of less time and interest in painting, and worries about having paints with not-so-healthy pigments around where toddlers might get the notion to eat them. I also had the ambition to write fiction and get it published, and I did THAT thing repeatedly for a decade. I expect to continue writing short stories once in a while, but it won't be my main thing. I like it, sometimes a lot, but I don't get absorbed in it the way I do with art-making. 

My problem with art was that I couldn't decide on how to approach it. Return to painting? Draw on paper? Make upcycled garden ornaments from thrift-store materials? Learn how to do tile mosaics? (I still want to learn how to do tile mosaics.) Make digital art? AHA. Yes. Digital art! And I made bunches of abstract digital art a few years ago. If you scroll down a bit on my Instagram page, you can see it. But I also got involved in editing my anthologies, What Fates Impose and Not Our Kind, back around then, and I was still writing fiction.

Then I went through a big ol' creative slump for a long time, after a certain election here in the United States. You know the one. I dragged some fiction out of myself, but only a tiny bit. The thing that turned me around was participating in the Inktober challenge in October of 2017. I drew my daily ink drawing every single day of that month, and I posted each drawing online. They were in a new medium for me, alcohol marker, and I enjoyed the process. A few people commented that they'd be interested in buying some of the drawings (which were mostly creepy, Halloween-inspired images). Since they were small drawings in a casual sketchbook, I decided I should do some digital work on them and offer them as prints somehow. 

BUT HOW??? That was the final problem. I wanted to find a way to not have to produce, package, and ship things out myself. I'm willing to do that on a limited basis for friends, but I didn't want that to be a big feature of my life. So I glanced at a bunch of print-on-demand sites, and decided that I would start with just one for now: Zazzle. Since I was working on it, I started to look at other artwork of mine that I could post, and I ended up making two Zazzle shops for the very different styles of art I was posting.

As it turns out, the brightly-colored, whimsical art like the cat above is now my main focus, in my shop called "by Nayad Monroe," and I've been drawing lots of new images for it! Every time I draw one thing, I get ideas for approximately seven new things to draw, so my to-draw list is huge. The smaller selection of Inktober art is in "Nightmares by Nayad." I still like those drawings, and I may do another round of Inktober this year to add to them.

The way Zazzle works is that you can make shops for free, and you have the option to add images and text to a staggering array of product types. You can actually design a product just for yourself and buy it, but you can also offer it for sale to other people. Then, if someone else buys it, you get a royalty. It's a well-established site where you can reach people worldwide, but it also takes work to get your stuff noticed among all the other stuff. I've been reading advice and watching tutorial videos, and I think I'm making progress, but I know there's more I can (and will) do. For whatever reason, I find this type of effort more appealing than having to fulfill orders myself. Things I post now can stay on the site and have the potential to sell for as long as the site exists. I want to expand to other sites, too, but I want to get a good start on this one first.

So what I'm going to do now, since I'm here, is post links to some items I've designed, since that's recommended by Zazzle as a way to make my shop more visible. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME. I promise this blog is not about to go all selly-sell 24/7. These WILL be affiliate links, fyi. Thanks for reading this far! 

Embellished Hopped-Up Hare #1 Illustration Metal Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Illustration with Swirly Lines Canvas Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

No Ordinary Owl #2, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Hopped-Up Hare #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

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Note: This post contains affiliate links to products that will earn me royalty money if you buy them. I hope you will, because I worked hard on them! But no pressure. :)

I've Been Making Some Art!

"The Dragonfly Key" by Nayad Monroe

"The Reach of Light" by Nayad Monroe

Sometimes I get absorbed in making pictures, and I forget to use my words! But here are some new-ish artworks I have made lately. 

About the "-ish" part: I actually drew and painted small, somewhat different versions of both of these compositions back in 2014. Those are 6" x 6" acrylic paintings on canvas, and I'm keeping them unless someone can figure out and fork over my "make me sell" price for the originals. I'm not actually sure what that would be, but I guess I would know it when I saw it! I tried to scan them and turn them into prints, but a combination of issues -  their size, square shape, and the texture of the canvas - made the results displease me.

For these new, print-worthy versions, I re-drew the images on larger paper, with some composition changes, and scanned them, and then did a lot of digital development to the color and texture of each until I got them looking the way that I wanted them to look. I have a couple more from the original group of little paintings, so I'll probably give those a similar treatment before moving on to adding completely new compositions. I'm working on building up a selection of images before choosing some online venues where I can make them available as various products: definitely prints, but I'd like to get into some other things, like t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other nifty swag like that. I've also been creating print versions of some of my creepy black and white drawings from Inktober 2017. I think it would probably work out best to create separate shops for the different styles, though... THERE IS MUCH WORK TO BE DONE.

Spring! Cleaning! Frenzy!

(When there are no real flowers: FAKE FLOWERS)

One thing I can count on every year is that I will get to a point when I sense spring coming, and at that point, I will need to not just clean my house as if my life depends upon it, but also CHANGE THINGS AROUND and GET RID OF THINGS and GET NEW THINGS. I behave almost as if I am a biological organism acting upon seasonally-triggered instincts. I need to basically clear my schedule for a while and do this thing with every available moment. Because of that, this post is going to be short! 

In the last week, I have rearranged the furniture in four rooms, moved furniture from one room to another, moved art from place to place, and cleaned out my walk-in hall closet (which had somehow been neglected by my efforts for the last three years). I have also created a different set-up for my yarn storage, chosen some furniture items to repaint, and ordered a bunch of seed trays and seeds so that I can start growing plants to put outside after the last average frost (which will not be until MID-MAY). And? I'm not even done. I have to get back to it and accomplish as much as possible within the next few days, because another thing I can count on every year is that I will lose steam after a couple weeks of this, and go back to doing my normal things. Except for planting things outside. I expect to dive into that for the last few weeks of May, and then be over that by mid-June at the latest.

It's a system? I guess? It keeps me from being bored with my environment and letting unused things pile up.

The Art of the Selfie: Natural to Supernatural

(WARNING: This post contains many selfies of me. 

If you don't like selfies - or me - you are in the WRONG PLACE.)

Here's what's happening. About a month into my process of growing out my very short hair that I am no longer dyeing various colors, I'm already SO BORED WITH MY HAIR. So I thought I'd fix that by doing some selfies with wigs, and now here I am with a post that may be self-indulgent, but may also be helpful for anyone else who wants to level up in selfotography.

This post is not a tutorial on how to get any exact look, but it will include lots of general tips and ideas, plus information on products, devices, and apps I use. Plenty to experiment with! Also, the stuff about styling yourself is applicable to times when someone else will be taking your picture.

First of all, I take all of my pictures with my iPhone 6s, with the regular camera flipped so that I can see myself on the screen. I use some apps that are available for the iPhone, but I suspect that other types of smartphones have similar apps available. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of photography apps, and plenty of outstanding ones that are free.

So! I'll start with the relatively natural approach to selfies, for getting pictures that look like you at your best. You can obviously use your very own hair for them, but wigs are an option, too. Here's one of me with an auburn wig from Arda Wigs, in the style Vivien Classic. This is a great, shoulder-length wig I'd be comfortable wearing out in the world, and it's only $30! It arrives already styled, but you can use heat tools like a curling iron or straightener to style it differently. The top photo is completely unfiltered, but I'm wearing piles of makeup (more on that in a minute). For the second version, I used a pre-set "look" filter called Portrait, in the Snapseed app. I wanted to show you that even a perfectly good photo can be elevated to a more magical, glowy look without taking you too far from reality.

Tips for natural-looking photos:

• Get yourself some good, ideally full-spectrum, lighting. For nearly all of the photos in this post, I took the original picture in front of the one window in my house that lets in perfect daylight: nice and diffuse, but bright. You want to have enough light, but avoid harsh, direct sunlight - at least for the way I do it. There's one shot coming up where I used a full-spectrum light that's sold for helping with Seasonal Affective Disorder. The effect is the same as whitish light from outside.
• If you never wear makeup, because that's not part of your look, the lighting could be plenty for you, but you might like the effect of reducing shine on your face with some powder. If you're aiming for enhancing your prettiness, I recommend mascara and/or eyeliner, at least. Or continue on with the next level of makeup...
• Whether or not the camera adds 15 pounds, it definitely subtracts makeup. So if you look at the above "natural" pictures and think I'm hardly wearing any, what you need to know is that this look includes a layer of pore-filling primer, a thick layer of full-coverage foundation, another layer of full-coverage concealer under the eyes, translucent powder, heavy, dark eyeshadow, fairly dramatic false eyelashes, and a couple of layers of mascara on both my real and false eyelashes, plus lipstick and some eyebrow pencil. It actually looks kind of gross if you see it in person. So the guideline is that if you usually wear makeup to go out, try tripling the coverage for your selfie. 

Ready to go for more glam?

In the green-hair photos, I'm wearing the Candy-Striper style from Arda Wigs, in the color blend "Dryad." It's long, with a blend of three colors, great quality, and only $35! I LOVE THIS STORE. (I should mention that I do not have any connection to the company - I just like it.) I'm wearing even darker eye makeup in these - literally black eyeshadow all over the lids, black liquid eyeliner on the upper lids, false eyelashes of course. Oh, and on the bottom, I have white waterproof eyeliner on the waterline, which is the name for the bit of skin above the lower eyelashes. Using white or skin-toned eyeliner there makes your eyes look bigger and brighter. I think I also had some shimmery green eyeshadow beneath the lower lashes. Dark eyeliner under the eyes looks too harsh on me.

The bottom two photos in this set look filtered, but they are not! I just took advantage of how the camera responded to the light as I moved around in front of the window. That brings me to another few tips:

• Take lots and lots of photos, and pick the best ones to use.
• Move around and try different angles. If you have age-related developments happening around your eyes like I do (thinning and sagging skin, dark circles, puffiness, wrinkles), shadows can be a problem. It's easier to control that problem if you're open to holding your head at different angles, and/or let your hair hang down over one eye so you only have to manage the look of one eye instead of two!
• Make sure you crop your photos to bring the focus in to your face, and eliminate distractions from the background as much as possible.

On to creative filters!

In these photos, I'm wearing the Amber Classic style in Lavender. Each of the photos has gone through at least one filter, and this post is getting long already, so I think I'll have to take any discussion of filtering to another post. But this gives you a look at just a tiny bit of the range you can get from iPhone photo editing apps. My favorites, used in all of these, are Snapseed, Mextures, Union, and ImageBlender, 

And now for the supernatural!

Look how creative you can be! These looks are not even that extreme (check Instagram and Pinterest under "Fantasy Makeup" and "Cosplay," if you have doubts). I used bolder colors, face gem stickers, and artificial flowers, plus a more lengthy, artistic filtering process for the mermaid one. The apps I use let me layer photos and erase bits of the foreground image to let the background through, or change the opacity of the foreground for a more transparent effect, or use other image-blending techniques to make colors brighter, more subdued, higher- or lower-contrast, or just about anything else I can think of.

I hope this post is giving you ideas about how to rock your next selfie! And I hope you have an excellent day.

Open Endings in Fiction: Terrible, or THE WORST?

(A sunset view from my house)

Nayad: Overly Dramatic, or INCORRIGIBLE?

There are good examples of open-ended stories. I'm sure I could definitely think of some. They're probably all by Kelly Link, now that I think about it. I do love a Kelly Link story.

However, I'm not a fan of completely open-ended fiction. Let me back up and explain what the hell I'm talking about.

What do I mean when I'm ranting about a story with a completely open ending? I mean a story where it's left to the reader to figure out the meaning of what just happened, and the clues given could be interpreted in a number of ways. It could be written as a series of vague hints and suggestions, or there's conflicting or missing information, or there may be an unreliable narrator. The story goes along, full of fascinating possibilities, and then leaves all the possibilities equally possible. 

The reason I'm writing about this is that I just finished reading The Grip of It, by Jac Jemc, It's a haunted house story. A young couple gets a suspiciously amazing deal on a beautiful Victorian house with some quirky features - lots of hidden compartments and passages - and then the weird stuff starts. I love the weird stuff. The weird stuff is not the problem. It's just that, in this book, the weird stuff is so abundant, and so escalating, that I could never develop an opinion about what's really going on. What I want is for the author to know what's going on, and to write a book full of weird stuff that allows me to guess what's going on. And if the author would be so kind as to set up two or three equally plausible ways to interpret the story, that would be the best thing. A not-completely open-ended story: one that allows for forming opinions that make sense, but then doesn't tell you which interpretation is the right one. 

To be fair, that's probably the hardest kind of book to write, so I will support you in your opinion that I am demanding and difficult. And I still think you should read The Grip of It, because I like the prose, and the possibilities. It starts very well, and you may very well have the kind of imagination that would appreciate being handed no answers but dozens of questions. It will give you lots to think about!

Frugal February

(The Tabitha of Judgment says I need to save my pennies! 

Kitty wants a new scratching post.)

Okay, I'm not broke, but... It's been a spendy few months. There was Christmas, and then new tires for my car, and then a trip that I didn't strictly need to take, and then property taxes, and then the quarterly water/sewer bill here in my town where the water apparently is MADE OF GOLD. I budgeted for these things, but this month still feels like a good time to let the majority of my dollars have a little staycation in the bank.

If there's one thing I know about how to deal with money, it's that having a budget is the most helpful thing. Here's the basic way to make one. If you have a regular monthly income, you figure out how much you actually must spend each month, in your current situation: bills, housing payments, etc. You make note of the expenses that are quarterly, annually, or whatever, so that you can divide them up and set aside an appropriate percentage of those each month, to be prepared for them in advance. Then you figure out what to do with what's left over, if anything is left over. Ideally, some of that goes to savings. If nothing is ever left over, that's the time to start thinking about how to change your current situation, but that's a topic for another post.

For me (and most Americans who are not absolutely broke), the most flexible category of required spending is groceries. You have to eat, but there may be ways to do it more cheaply than usual. Many people buy more drinks and snacks than they have to, or don't comparison-shop as hard as they could. There's nothing wrong with that, if you have money for it and that's what you want to do. However, in times when you're struggling with money, or you want to save up for something, this is a good category to examine for those areas where you can cut things out. 

Not everyone can do this, but I have enough of a grocery budget that if I find something on sale - if it's a thing I always use and it won't get wasted - I'll buy extras of it to stock up. I have a small extra freezer that doesn't jack up my energy bill, so I can keep things like extra bread, butter, shredded cheese, and much, much more. When I cook, I often make two batches of the same thing at once and stick the extra in the freezer, which saves time later. I do this enough that, sometimes, I can do a thing called "shelf cooking" for a month, mostly using the stocked-up food, and spending $25 or less each week to get produce, milk, and anything else that's better to get when it's fresh. In the long run, it's less expensive to do things this way because I'm getting better prices on a lot of the ingredients; when I cook double batches that's only one time that I fire up the oven or stove, instead of two, which I think more than offsets whatever extra I'm spending on running the freezer. 

Anyway, that's what I'm doing this February! I have other frugality-boosting methods I may post about this month, too. What are some of your money-saving methods?

Tracking 2018: What I Did In January and How I Recorded It

(Here's my monthly "hair-growth progress" photo. Um, not much progress yet.)

Happy February! I hope you're having a good 2018 so far. I am! Since I ended last year feeling like I couldn't remember much, I set up a system to keep track of my activities this year, and here's how that worked out in January.

I needed to come up with a system that I would actually use. While I like the idea of putting everything in a digital format, I know that I'm more motivated by being able to write things on paper. I like to make lists and cross things off, and fill boxes, and make check-marks. So just know that I recycle and buy recycled paper products and try to be as efficient with my uses of paper as possible. 

The system I came up with is a binder with three pages for each week: one page for noting how much time I spend on the activities I want to do, as well as ones I'm trying not to do as much; one page for nutrition (like how many servings I eat per day of fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc); and a page with spaces to write the notable events of each day of the week. This might sound incredibly tedious to people who are motivated differently than I am, and that's okay! But when I want to put in a certain amount of exercise each week, for example, I enjoy writing that I did it, and I find that I'm more likely to fit it in if I look at the page for that week and see that I haven't done it yet. 

I'm probably not going to post much detail about exactly how many minutes I did this or that, but I may sometimes write about how a certain category is working out, especially if I find it particularly helpful or particularly vexing and in need of an overhaul! 

Generally, I have an idea of how much time I want to spend on various things each day or week, such as blogging, reading fiction, reading non-fiction, making art (which can be either visual art or any artistic form of writing I'm working on), meditating, exercising, crafting, and doing "life maintenance chores" like cleaning the house and doing the dishes. I'm starting the year with just tracking what I do, and I hope to improve on my stats as I figure out better ways to arrange my time.

Anyway... In January I:

• Went on a six-day trip to Michigan to attend ConFusion SF.
• Finished reading four novels: Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson (which I had started to read in December), and the first three Dublin Murder Squad books by Tana French, which are In the Woods, The Likeness, and Faithful Place. I don't usually read mysteries, but my current favorite author, Jeff VanderMeer, posted that he had really enjoyed reading Tana French's novels. So I thought I'd better give those a try, and they turned out to be extremely good and hard to put down. One thing I especially like about them is that the main character is different from one to the next. You get to know them as a side character in one book, and then they become the main character in the next (and the impression you've gotten of them from the outside can change a lot once you get to see things from their perspective: this series is a master class in character development). Speaking of VanderMeer, btw, I am super-psyched to see the movie Annihilation this month, which is based on his Annihilation: A Novel.
• Got the new tires my car needed BEFORE going on a road trip in the middle of winter, because that's the way to be an adult in spite of much preferring the idea of spending that money on, say, ANYTHING ELSE.
• Also read most of Better than Before, by Gretchen Rubin, which is an outstanding book about making and changing habits, and I think it will deserve its own post after I finish it. It was a lucky find on the day that I was walking around while waiting for my new tires to be installed. Anyone who knows me understands that I can spend hours in Barnes & Noble. When I worked there (over 20 years ago! Jeez!) they said that they wanted to encourage people to read the books in the store. I have learned exactly how effective it is for their sales, when they let people get attached to a book and then feel the urgent need to buy it.
• Went on a few fun outings with my boys, mostly involving restaurant food, because that's what teen and tween boys are talking about.
• Spent many lovely hours with the man in my life, who is shy and doesn't want to be written about, but deserves the occasional mention for being awesome nonetheless. :)
• Achieved my goal of losing one pound this month. I'm trying to be more about changing my eating habits for long-term health, and less about dieting to get to a certain weight as soon as possible, but I think it's reasonable to adjust my eating habits to aim for losing a pound a month for a while.
• I exercised every week. Not quite as many times as I think I should (I want it to be three, and I mostly managed two), but that's better than not at all, ever. I'm trying to make my exercise about benefits other than weight loss. There are so many benefits, and it's more encouraging for me to focus on those. Maybe this philosophy will become another post!
• I meditated one single time in the whole month of January, right on the last day, because I didn't want to have to say I never did it at all. I don't know why I resist it. I like it when I'm doing it, and it's usually only ten to twenty minutes. So I'll be working on finding a good time and/or trigger to get myself to do it more frequently.
• Finally, I'm very pleased with the illustration I drew for the story I co-wrote with Maurice Broaddus, "What the Mountain Wants." I really want to post it to show you! But I'm saving it for a more impactful reveal sometime in the future. I may post a smaller detail portion of it before the full thing, though!

It was a good month! I do have ups and downs in my moods, and I don't want to give the false impression that nothing bad ever happens in my life. January was a happy time, though. :)

I Went to ConFusion and Found that ConFusion Is Great!

(Check out this beautiful print by Rachel Quinlan! I bought it at ConFusion.)

Weekend before last, I was away at a speculative fiction convention I'd never attended before: ConFusion SF. It was in a suburb of Detroit. Normally, the idea of traveling from Wisconsin to Michigan in the middle of January would be a non-starter for me, but when Maurice Broaddus tells you it's a must-go convention, you must go. That's just the way it works. He was right, of course. It's a well-run event, in a good space, and I lost count of how many pro writers were there after the first couple dozen I saw.

I find it very mentally stimulating and creativity-boosting to hang around with writers and artists, and to be around books and art for sale. Even though I didn't participate in or attend a single panel, I had conversations with amazing, creative people - old friends and new - all weekend, and looked at so much artistic goodness that I came home with a whole new battery full of creative energy. And some goods. It was really hard to choose which things to buy, but in addition to the beautiful print above, I also got a lovely, embellished key pendant made by Sara Goodwin, and some awesome-looking new reading material from Apex Book Company.

I did talk business a little bit, but mostly I was there for the social time. I plan to return next year!

Oh, and I have to report an actual miracle. I can be confident in this because I've been back for a week now. You ready? I went to a large convention, in the middle of winter, and didn't catch any illness of any kind! THAT NEVER HAPPENS. I used my standard precautions, but nothing extreme. I am amazed.

Quitting Hair Dye

(Does this hair color make me look crazy?)

After three decades of constantly having dyed hair - age 15 to 45 - I'm out! I've actually tried to stop dyeing my hair a couple of times in the last few years, but I was trying to keep my hair longer at the same time, and the difference between the roots and the ends made me want to scream every day. Then last summer I felt inclined to partially shave my head, and eventually got to the point where I could do a pixie cut and get rid of all the dye. So here we are.

An interesting thing has happened pretty much every time I've mentioned this to women my age. I don't have a huge sample size because it's not like I go around telling everyone my hair goals... at least not until today... but I've mentioned it here and there. Every time so far, the woman I'm talking to has responded with "Oh, I could never stop dyeing my hair. I would hate it!"

I just want to stop right here and say that I'm not promoting this as a universal lifestyle choice. Really, do what you want with yourself. I don't have any motivation to stop you. Okay? Okay.

But I do find it interesting that you think it would be so terrible. I am really enjoying it! I might have an unusual perspective because my mom has never dyed her hair even once in her life, and hers was already much more gray than mine is now by the time she was in her 30s. I think that silver and white hair can look stunning.

One thing that pushed me toward this decision was that as my skin changed over time, the warmer red colors I used on my hair started to make me look washed out. Cool brown looked better, but then it would turn a brassy gold after a while, which was even worse than red. Having some silvery hair seems to brighten up my face. The silver strands are shinier, too, especially after being used to all the damage and dryness I had from dye chemicals. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks as it grows out!

More importantly, I'm here to fight the widespread idea that being middle-aged and older is bad. I don't feel like a much different person on the inside than I did when I was younger, but I do have more knowledge and skills now. Wrinkles can be discouraging, but I actually feel better about most things these days. I know that I can handle what life brings. On the occasions when I feel down, I know that it will pass. What I'm saying is that it's good to see the benefits of whatever age I am. And it's good for the world to see me out there, having an excellent time as my 46-year-old self with my graying hair.

Since I'm known for changing my mind, there's a chance that I'll go back to dyeing my hair again sometime, but I've decided to at least take a break from it for the year of 2018. And I'll be posting at least a monthly photo to keep track of how quickly it grows. :)

Dealing with the Northern Winter: Some Things I Do and Products I Use

(A view from my front window this month.)

I live in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin. Intellectually, I know that it seems cold to people in the south when it's only, say, 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside. However, what I'm dealing with today is, without considering windchill, 4 degrees Fahrenheit. FOUR. And that, reader, is not actually the coldest it gets around here. 

We didn't much of a gradual progression this winter. It went from being more normally cold, in autumn (like in the 30s and even 40s) ,straight to frigid right after the winter solstice. I typically like winter better than summer. If you're cold you can put layers on, but if you're hot, you can only spend so much time submerged in a tub of ice before your life starts to fall apart. However, even I, the winter-preferring freak, can begin to struggle when it's this cold, and so very, very, constantly dry and electrosparky. In the summer, my skin is so oily that I develop sensory issues about my own face, but in the winter that completely reverses itself and I'm so dry that I lose the ability to move my mouth or blink.

Hyperbole? I don't even know that word.

Whatever! Here's a tiny list of the products that help me feel more comfortable. I'm not affiliated to any of them. Maybe you'll find them helpful.

• For dry feet: Burt's Bees Coconut Foot Creme with Vitamin E
• Facial Moisturizer: Garnier SkinActive Ultra-Lift Wrinkle Reducer 2-in-1 Serum + Moisturizer (they give you your money's worth in the title length alone)
• Eye Area Moisturizer: Skyn Iceland Icelandic Relief Eye Cream
• Lip Balm: Fresh Sugar Lip Caramel Hydrating Balm 

The latter two are a bit pricey, but you get a lot and you only need to use a little at a time. The "lip caramel" truly looks and smells like caramel.

One product that does not live up to its hype, in my opinion, is the Jack Black Intense Therapy Lip Balm. I tried it after seeing a lot of good reviews, but it doesn't stay on as well as a basic Chapstick, I tried the most pleasant-sounding scent for my taste, Black Tea and Blackberry, and even when I diligently avoided eating the stuff I ended up with a weird taste in the back of my mouth from the scent. At least it wasn't expensive! But I can't recommend it.

So far, I haven't gotten to the point of needing hand or body moisturizer (and I honestly have no explanation for that), but I probably will get there. Please leave recommendations in the comments if you have them.

For my mental well-being in winter, I like to make sure I use a full-spectrum light for part of the day (it's good lighting for doing my makeup, it turns out), and I take extra vitamin D because we in the north cannot get enough vitamin D from sunlight between November and February. Not that we're supposed to be sunbathing the rest of the time, anyway. As always, if a medical expert tells you not to take it, then don't.

I also like to make sure I have green plants around. I grow low-maintenance, cat-safe spider plants in my house, and occasionally visit the not exactly nearby Olbrich Botanical Garden's tropical conservatory. Once or twice each winter, I find it very worthwhile to take the 40-minute drive to a place where I can hang up my coat and enter a warm, humid environment of tropical plants and flowers where there's a waterfall, koi swimming around in the pond, and birds to look at. 

And to avoid colds, I have zinc lozenges (Cold-Eeze brand; I found them at Walgreens). The instructions are to start taking them immediately after cold symptoms start. I also take one after I get home from going anywhere crowded (that's in addition to washing my hands frequently and trying not to touch my eyes or nose). The idea is that zinc fights cold germs, but it's better to have a lozenge or use a spray than to swallow zinc supplements, in order to keep the zinc in the location where you want it to rough up some viruses. It doesn't taste great, and you should eat something before you use it, because it can be unsettling to stomachs, but I think it's helpful. There's a lot of chitchat about this on that newfangled World Wide Web. (Remember when we used to call it "the web"? I rewatched an episode of Charmed last night while I was knitting, and that intrepid researcher Phoebe reminded me of olden days when she used that term.)

What are your winter tips and recommendations?