NaBloPoMo: What Would Loki Do?

A couple months back, Cuddle Bear got scammed out of all of his savings. (He had a good start on saving for a car.) Then the scammer harassed him for more money and started making threats. I didn't realize how bad things were until yesterday. I sat back and asked myself what would Loki do in this situation? Obviously get even, but how? Then it hit me, troll the scammer until they're back in the stone age.

A few gentle nudges and suggestions and Cuddle Bear was having a grand ol' time messing with the scammer. He was sending messages that were long and nothing but gibberish. By the end of the day, he was snickering and plotting what to do today. The scammer foolishly messaged him first thing in the morning. Maybe they were hoping to get 'normal' responses if they caught him earlier in the day. The fool.

Cuddle Bear was back at the blocks of gibberish messages. By lunchtime, the scammer went silent. Cuddle Bear asked them if they were angry. He told them to hold on to their hats because he was just getting warmed up. The scammer replied 'oh no.' The deluge of insanity resumed with the scammer begging him to stop. He finally said, "I'll stop if you send me my money back." Cuddle Bear got no response to that. He decided it was time to eat and proof read the job application he filled out in between sending blocks of random characters to the scammer.

Right now, Cuddle Bear is dropping off the job application. Somewhere downstate there is a scammer who is trying to decide what to do about Cuddle Bear's shenanigans. We're pretty sure that the scammer's already spent my son's money. Cuddle Bear's decided if he's having a bad day he's going to cheer himself up by messing with scammers.

Ugh, politics.

 I must confess, I am horrified by everything going down on the political stage over the last year. At the same time, I am exhausted with it. I am sure everyone feels that way. I don't think people have realized that with an act of Congress, a stroke of a pen, and support of the Supreme Court, we are no longer a democracy. The changes that were made to the Executive branch of the government's powers (via the act of Congress) fundamentally changed the government of the United States from a democracy to a totalitarian state. These waters are unknown to us but we have to forge forward. I have hope that the Republic will be restored, but it is rather slim.

I feel betrayed by Joe Biden. Now one may ask why that is, after all I vote Democrat. He was the bulwark against which the act of Congress that changed the Executive branch's powers should have crashed. And he caved in like paper. A part of me wonders if it was spite that moved him not to veto that act. Here he was, facing the fact that Donald Trump was breathing down his neck and his own political party had jumped ship based on the smear campaign that Donald Trump was running. His vice president took up the mantle of candidate with out much apparent protest shortly before this mad bill was pushed through Congress at lightning speed by the Republicans that were swayed by the cult of personality which surrounds Donald Trump. I still think that law should never have been signed to expand the Executive branch's powers. It's all rather logical but disgusting at the same time.

Let me explain. There's been a push in the United States towards a totalitarian state since at least the Regan era. There's this book that details it (The Cult of the Presidency by Healy) but I'll try to summarize it. The educational system of the U.S. hasn't done a very good job of teaching civics and the fundamental under pinnings of the government we had before this Executive powers nonsense took hold. (I think it is only going to get worse moving forward.) As a result, people took to this idea that the PotUS was like a monarch or a dictator. This was something that has been fermenting on the Conservative front since at least the Civil War. (Yes, that long.) Language surrounding the PotUS changed and voting habits changed over the years.

People shifted to looking at the parties nominally running the government as teams in sportsball (hat tip to the Oatmeal for coming up with that expression). They rallied around their 'team' and didn't think about the long term consequences. The old tribal habits that lurk within social structures of humanity roared to the front and created a schism. The government was run by ...

No, I'm not going to detail it all out. I'm just tired and as much as I want to be an educator, I'm too busy with my cold and trying to take care of my family. If you understand what deep shit we're in here, you understand. This isn't another day at the office in the USA. We've collapsed, betrayed into the state we're in now by people who should have known better. I accept that everyone involved was fallible and probably were more focused on the moment. After all, it's only human to worry about the immediate consequences and not consider the long term effects. (And it is effect not affect, effect is a result and affect is an air you put on. Goddamnit!) It doesn't change the fact that our government is destroyed and fundamentally transformed into something repugnant.

There's a reason that George Washington refused a crown when it was offered to him. Those people who wanted him to be king linger on in their many descendants apparently. Washington believed that the government that he put together with his associates was fundamentally better than a monarchy. Now, people who are eager to bask in the light of the PotUS because they assume that it's the same thing out of ignorance and being caught in a cult of personality ... ugh. 

Maybe there's no hope right now. I don't know. I just know that life has become fundamentally more risky for my family. No one has moved yet but it's only a matter of time. So many people have told me that I was paranoid for worrying about such a thing happening in my lifetime since childhood. The same people assumed that they weren't changing the fundamental structure of the government in voting for these assholes who are in power now. They were too worried about what was in somebody's pants to stop and think long term for the generations that come after them.

Time to change focus, apparently.

 Nope, I'm not leaving this blog. Since '07, I've been attempting (and kinda failing) to run a tarot reading business through Keen. They have made a lot of changes over the last year and a half. Y'all may remember the last time I said fuck Keen it was over a platform change that screwed over my access to my client base. Well, they've done it again in a bigger way. I'd go into detail over it, but I suspect the fact that I have even mentioned Keen on here means that I'll be on their radar and get a nastygram over it. Suffice it to say, long term advisors are getting screwed, again.

This business has changed hands at least two or three times in the last few years. Each time, things have gotten worse. And the people who are supposed to suck it up and take the hits are the advisors. We're being treated like we're employees, except we don't work for Keen. We're not even affiliated beyond the fact that we're using their platform to connect with clients. Customer service for advisors has gotten atrocious and I know that the advisor side of the platform has been hacked at least once (I tried logging in and the firewall popped up to block malware about two weeks ago.).

I was planning running the Keen thing I had going on as a part-time business in a serious sense. I was doing that before my brain went explody. Now that I have that semi-resolved, I see here that Keen is fucking around again. I love reading tarot cards. It's been a hobby of mine since I first started back in middle school (against my parents' permission). My aunt suggested last time this happened that I look into another platform like California Psychics. I am angry and, honestly, kinda hurt by the position I am in.

At the same time, I don't have the spoons to meet the workday requirements of these other platforms because of my disability. The reason I was on Keen was because I could set my own hours and not be penalized if I wasn't on there for an extended period of time. I can't do this bullshit anymore. My anxiety is ratcheted up. I feel like I'm working in a call center and failing at my job because the job requirements keep changing and I don't pressure sell anything because I have a sense of ethics.

What I did on Keen was read cards and give people an ear to listen when things got rough. What I did on Keen was read cards and give people advice on how to fix their marriage. What I did on Keen was read cards and treat all my clients like they were old friends. I can't do that now. I can't with how they've got things set up. I can't because they're getting to be more like the other platforms with their demands upon advisors. I don't have the spoons to dance and be Keen's puppet and pay them for the privilege of it.

So, fuck Keen. I'm just going to focus on my writing now. If you know me personally and want a reading, cool. We'll get in touch and I'll do one for you. But this hobby, I have to put it down because I don't have the energy to get into a big fight with the people who are screwing me over. I'm angry, I'm sad, and it didn't have to be this way. Because what Keen had was working for over 20 years. They got greedy and wanted a bigger bite, and then wanted an even bigger bite. They can choke on my $10 in that account. I know they're going to close the account when I don't go back after a year. So be it. I have other shit to do with my time. I'll find another way to make a side gig work and fund my writing work.

I'm not even going to go on Keen and post a 'good bye' blog post because they won't show it. They'll edit the blog feed and it won't show up. Anyways, their blogging platform is stuck in the 90s and a pain in the ass to use.

This sucks.

Wut r werds?

 It's be a hell of a while since I posted, it feels like forever. On my tiny side blog which I use to promote my religious writing blogs, I got a Russian troll to anonymously send me propaganda with the expectation I was going to post it because I am not a supporter of neo-Nazis. I apparently am going places if I am getting that kind of response to posts calling out neo-Nazis for attempting to use my morning little prayers that I post on there for their bullshit.

I have another embroidery project. This is from the Jaydan company and is simply called Birds. It's a printed fabric one. I had a counted cross stitch one but discovered that the chart they printed was off by ten stitches in random directions. I got so frustrated with it I threw the damn thing away.

This project has been annoying in its on special way. They sent me a sewing needle to do fine stitched embroidery instead of one of the smaller embroidery sharps that you're supposed to use. I did the pink sections with that until I got fed up (bird and flowers). At which point I put my shiny new sewing needle into my sewing needle case and found my smallest embroidery sharp needle. They wanted the flowers and the leaves to all be satin stitch. But with this weight fabric and the small size of it all, even with two threads it was a pain in the neck. I did the pink flowers in satin stitch, managing not to throw the project across the room in frustration because I was doing embroidery with a sewing needle.

After I switched needles I did the brown sections in running stitch. They wanted the solid portions of the branches and the left most part of the tail of the pink bird to be in chain stitch with two strands of floss. I said screw that, it was just going to look wrong. So running stitch for the branches and that part of the tail was whipped running stitch. The leaves have a single detached chain stitch in the center and then single stitches to either side of it to fill it in. This way, they actually look like leaves. The centers of the pink flowers were supposed to be satin stitch but I used French knots because it looks better. I know that I'll keep modifying this thing as I go along. I am filling it in by color instead of my usual start with a motif and move on.

I still want to make the "I Can't Adult" project, but I think I will be freehand-embroidering it because the chart was awful and nothing was lining up correctly. I'll probably put a different motif than the cross stitch roses on the four sides of the motto. I've been working on a lot of embroidery and sewing of late to cope with my sky high anxiety. I forgot to take one of my medications and just about had a panic attack later in the evening because I didn't have my medication in my system to keep me calm.

I'm really frustrated with this whole business of being on a cocktail of medications to keep me calm and help me sleep. It doesn't help that there's a whole heap of learned shame over this because I'm afraid that if 'people' find out that I'll be deemed a drug addict and lose my kids. It's all programming from when I was a kid. I'm trying to unravel it but it's really hard. 

Fuck social phobia.

 No flash fiction today. Just a rant about social phobia. This whole business of the ultra-conservative orthodox Filianic community coming out of the woodwork to take shots at the edition of the Clear Recital that I worked on is making my social phobia kick into overdrive. I'm hurt and upset because its coming from people who had previously been relatively pleasant and professional in their demeanor towards me. Now they're implying that I don't know a thing about the English language and basically saying the whole thing is a vanity attempt to garner more money. Never mind that every single dime that's come out of the book's purchase had gone directly into charity work and I am posting updates about that work. (My box for the preemie hats is about half full and I'm still working my way through the funky colored yarn. I've just slowed down because I'm trying to write a book at the same time.)

I know that I shouldn't read the comments, but I did and it felt like high school all over again. Fake friends and all that rot. It makes me reluctant to engage readers who have emailed me because I feel like it's a trap. Still, I have those emails sitting in my box waiting to be read and replied to. I am afraid that the book I'm working on now is going to get even more flack because it's for the Lokean community who tend to be part of the cult of personality surrounding Galina Krasskrova. I have issues with Krasskrova, big ones. She's a white supremacist and aspiring cult leader trying to get as many people to go along with her warped ideas as possible. When I encountered her at first about five years ago, I thought she was ok. She was putting on company manners. Then she started talking about shit like racial purity in Heathenry and stuff like that. She stopped short of spouting Nazi dog whistles. I've watched Krasskrova's followers destroy someone's career because they spoke up against her. Now I'm concerned that they're going to come after me.

I'm debating getting ahold of some old Disco contacts and seeing if they'd consider a raiding party. It's like MysticWicks all over again, but on Facebook. I'm just not sure if they'd consider the idea because I dropped off their radar a while back due to some political infighting that basically got ugly and I was in the crossfire. I don't know what the best thing to do here is. Aside from finish the damn book.

I am annoyed.

 Way back in 1998, when the site Mysticwicks was still around, I shared a chant that I had written the year before. Flash forward twenty some years, I find that an artist took my chant and set it to the exact music I had planned for it, and adapted it by adding 'baby talk' gibberish as a chorus between the lyrics. I am not amused. I am highly annoyed. This album came out sometime in early 2000s, so they sat on it for a little bit while MW was still up and running.

I have a note book with the dated entry of when I wrote the original chant in September of 1997. A part of me says that I could go after them but I'm broke and the effort of getting into a fight about this isn't going to do me any favors. I am just really annoyed and disgusted. It makes me disinclined to share original material for free anywhere. I'm posting stuff up on Tumblr because if you repost it, it automatically pings back to the original source. 

I think my annoyance with this is just heightened because of someone attempting to rip off my witchy blog in an effort to pad their blog post count and to steal my readership base. That's why I turned off the repost feature on that particular blog. Because that is one of the blogs that I'm using to try to make some money and build a career with, I tend to take a hard line against the theft of intellectual property. It's one thing to quote a blog post. It's one thing to quote it and add commentary. But to just copy it wholesale and then post a link to your blog in the comments is bullshit.

Ramblings

 My new headset came in the mail yesterday. So, I am going to be exercising it doing readings this week via the phone and on chat through Keen. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. My kids have declared it to be the coolest thing they've seen this week. The week is early yet, there may be something else interesting that pops up.

Going back to doing readings on Keen was a tough decision. But, I was strongly encouraged to do so because I apparently was getting squirrely with the lack of regular adult communication. So, Loki and Freyr pushed me pretty hard on that front. They were also concerned by the fact that I was giving up a hobby that I love because of politics (basically). So, at their urging, I went back to Keen. I boosted my rates and informed my previous clients why. It was a pleasant surprise when they came back for readings despite the price increase.

I'm not doing readings today because my schedule has been thrown into complete disarray by the fact that I had errands to run and a child to take to the dentist. Snuggle Bug lost a tooth last week and the new one is coming in well. He was a big wiggly and giggly for his appointment today but apparently the electric toothbrush tickles, so it kinda makes sense. I never thought of it as a ticklish sensation, but he was emphatic that it was. To the point of he was trying not to start laughing, so he decided to make duck noises not to laugh. This made the hygienist laugh and confused almost everyone. Of course, Snuggle Bug did it even more because he had an audience that was laughing. I swear that kid is going to grow up to be a comedian.

I picked up a new journal with a llama on the cover. I needed a new journal like I needed another hole in my head but it was my excuse to solve a mystery. I know now what the deal with the gift card that's been living at the bottom of my purse is. (I had forgotten if I had even used it or not.) And in the course of my travels today, I realized that the craft store is no longer my supplier of cheap ink cartridges for my favorite pens. I'll have to be going to the office supply store now for that. I think that those pens are going to be off the market soon with my luck.

I am planning on buying a new pair of tarot decks. I also have supplies to make my own oracle deck. This is something that I have been considering for years. I think that I'm finally going to do it. I don't know how fancy I want to make it or not. But I like the idea of making my own oracle deck and using it for readings. Putting that together with a tarot deck may get interesting results. I'll post pictures of the cards as I get them done and of the other artwork that I've been working on (or will resume working on).

I want this blog to be more active. I want to write more and communicate with people that are dear to me but far away. This blog lets me do that in a more freeform method than the other blogs I have. And I don't have to worry about some censor taking offense to what I've posted and booting me off the platform.

Better the Devil you know.

 So, I have investigated different platforms. I looked into if I had the capacity to set up my own site and such. In the end, I've decided to raise my rates and go back to Keen. I'm still not happy with their business practices. Platform fees eat about 80 cents of each dollar that gets made each call. This is not how they were doing business before. I didn't want to pass the cost on to the customer, but I can't sit there making 20 cents on each dollar spent on the call. I raised my rates and informed my past clients of this fact. I'm keeping my fees for email readings flat this way they still have those options to go for.

I'm still of the opinion that this is a predatory business practice but Keen is the only site where I am allowed the flexibility to be a responsive parent and handle things like sudden schedule changes. I've set up a schedule where I do my writing work in the morning and my Keen stuff in the afternoon. Today, I attempted to keep that schedule. I had a hard time writing this morning but that was because I'm stuck on how to finish up a scene.

During the time that I would have been on Keen taking calls or chat messages, I was setting up my schedule and doing some planning for blog posts on there. I can't cross post Keen posts because Keen reserves all rights to what is produced there. Basically, if I write it on Keen, they own it. As such, I'm not doing serious fiction or similar work on there. I'm pretty sure that my serious fiction work would get me into trouble on Keen, to be honest, because of their strident policies about what can get posted.

So, I post things like random recipes that I have kicking around. I'm going to get back into daily posting across all of my blogging platforms. It is going to be a fair amount of work, but I look at this as training for the larger, long term writing that I have going on. Last NaNoWriMo, I wrote two and a half novels. I am trying to finish that third novel. Then, over the next month, I'm going to edit them and send them off to the friend that offered me a working arrangement based off of the fanfiction I wrote about their game system. (Yes, I am that nerd. I may not LARP anymore, but I still love the characters and will write about them. Now with the game creator's blessing and encouragement with the prospect of turning a profit off of it.)

I sat down and looked at it all real hard over the last few months. I realized that the income from Keen is good seed money to invest in my writing. Reading tarot cards is something that I am damn good at. If I have learned anything, it is if you're good at something don't do it for free (except in special cases). So, I am digging out my box of tarot decks and getting back into it. It is also a hobby that I enjoy and important socialization during the time of Covid-19 isolation. I'm going to start promoting my Keen stuff across different platforms.

Previously, I only advertised it on my Veiled Witch main blog. That is going to go back up along with a post similar to this one, explaining my logic and my reservations about this. Now, I am going to do things like note when I am on Keen when I go on Facebook and Twitter. I am going to link back to blog articles on Keen that pertain to psychic stuff on my witchy blogs and on Tumblr. It's going to be a fair amount of work, but this will help me learn the skill set I need to promote my books. Because just relying on Keen to advertise my service isn't enough. They've proven that over the last few years. So, I am going to learn how to market my work and advertise it across various platforms.

I am also going to make a point of reengaging some old blogs of mine as marketing platforms too. Those blogs are going to start getting content again. It isn't going to be the same as the others, but I am going to do my damndest to make this work. I can smell trouble in the wind and I have a feeling that I am going to need these skills in the near to immediate future.

The challenging part of all of this is going to be keeping myself motivated and working despite depressive episodes and working around schedule shifts that may come due to the school going to remote learning. 2020 was going to be the year that I made this happen and ... well, 2020 happened. Now that I have a little experience under my belt for how to handle the remote learning situation and such, I think I can make Keen happen under those conditions with minor changes to my schedule and approach.

NaBloPoMo 11: Desk Whiskey.

 I need desk whiskey.

NaBloPoMo 10: Behind again.

 I'm not juggling too many things right now, really. I'm just processing life at about half speed and forgetting about the blogging portion of this challenge. That is because I'm still sick. Ugh, it took me three tries to write the word 'sick'. That's annoying. I am probably going to re-write the saga of the fall of Mysticwicks. I've written it out a few times now. It's ridiculous, tragic, and insane. It carried out like a tragedy in three acts. I've been considering how to write it down and I keep leaning to something in the style of the Eddas. There was a lot of flyting going on. I don't remember exactly what everyone said back and forth but it was brutal.

This was the time where Beloved came up with one of the worst insults I had ever heard: sand blasted vaginal train wreck. It was hilarious in a really dark way the way he said it before typing it down. People act all surprised by the pettiness in the pagan community at large, but, honestly, it's been there from the beginning. They want their power games and to feel important at the expense of others. It's part of the reason why I tend to avoid large groups.

I used to enjoy big online groups of pagans because I got to interact with a bunch of diverse people. Now ... Well, now I don't have the spoons for calling out bullshit on a daily basis like I did before. I have this bad habit of not recognizing authority that is self declared but not demonstrated. Just because you claim you have all the details on ancient history doesn't mean that you get to dictate to me how I'm doing everything wrong in my worship practices, for example. And when you post propaganda as 'historical fact' when all the evidence from the archeologists out in the field point otherwise, I'm going to be that person going 'citation needed'.

When you decide that someone else's relationship dynamic is 'abusive' because they don't share the same faith and begin slandering the 'abuser' with baseless claims of psychological abuse, you can bet your ass that I'm going to walk into that fight wielding a baseball bat. When you engage in harassment of people and attempt to black mail them, I'm going to be there for that fight too. It's just part of my sense of justice.

It's a Loki's person thing, it seems, to be the person who speaks truth to power and be willing to square off against them. I know other Loki's folk who do the same stuff. We are the speakers of the unwanted truth. We are the ones who will utterly destroy you with words because you broke frith with one of our own or because you broke frith and we're offended by it. I've been feeling the pull to re-engage the FB Lokean community. It's a lot like the pull I had back before I got sick and I waded in to the fray with people who were talking smack and harassing a Lokean who wasn't practicing like a 'proper heathen'. I don't know if I have the spoons to answer that call, but it feels like the call of the dead when my Grandfather was dying and they were telling me that the family needed me.

So, I may be swinging my proverbial baseball bat with a railroad spike in it again. People hate it when you sit there and go 'prove it' when they're trying to present UPG as actual history. People hate it when you refuse to bow down to them despite the fact that they're an authority on some given subject. I don't care about how big your name is in the community. We all sit down and take our britches off when we have to shit. It's how you act that I care about. If you can be decent with people, I don't care what you do. Start being and asshole and I get angry. Doesn't matter if it's a religious group or a political one. 

I've been booted out of them too. I just can't abide bullies. It makes me so angry that I could spit.

Officially Gave Up On Keen

 So, I had been doing tarot readings via Keen since '07 on a sporadic basis. I made a little money, met a bunch of people, and had an opportunity to indulge in my hobby of doing tarot readings. Then Keen started bumping up their platform fees. At first I said, "Well, it's the cost of doing business, right?" and let it slide by. Life happened and I drifted away from Keen for a while.

Then I came back to Keen and tried to make it work in earnest. My kids were old enough to go to school. I had more time free and I was healthier, which meant I had more energy to invest in this hobby/business. Somewhere along the way, Keen had changed. They went from a fairly low key and easy to work with platform to pushy. I at first tried to ignore it. After all, I was charging the lowest rate per minute out of the group. Then it got to where they were taking 80 cents on each dollar I made. That is when I said, "I can't do this as a hobby. It's costing me money to go there and read."

I'm upset. I don't have much for social outlets. I can't just do like I did at college and whip out a pack of cards and do random readings for random people over coffee. I am good at tarot reading. I kinda pride myself on it. Even wrote a book on it (published under a pseudonym). Now, I feel like I have had my hobby ripped away by Keen's greed. It wasn't Covid-19 that made my business take a dirt nap. I had actually seen an uptick in business during the lockdown phase of things because people were lonely and wanted a friendly ear to listen. Nope, it was Keen deciding that they could screw the advisors.

Sure, their website looks pretty. Now they have a whole bank of numbers they can send calls out from. They even have it set up so that you can do readings via chat. But that doesn't make up for the fact that they've moved from ethically questionable to down right predatory in their business practices towards people like me, who are their 'product'. I don't know what it is like on the 'consumer' end of the transaction. If their treatment of the advisors is any indicator, the clients are getting screwed too.

I'm debating setting up a website and doing readings via email. That chat server process was nice and I found the interface mostly reliable. But, I don't know how to make that work via chat on something like Tumblr and still get paid. Because, I was seriously thinking about doing tarot reading part time while I worked on my writing. I was working to build up an account of seed money that I could invest into my books.

Then Keen screwed me. I sent an email out to my 200+ clients that I was leaving Keen. I explained that it was due to changes in the platform. I couldn't tack on something like my personal email address because I knew that Keen would have automatically deleted the email before it hit their inboxes. So, I don't know what I am going to do.

I'm a little angry.

So I went on a rant. I'm sick with the flu. I'm tired. But I am so angry that I can't sleep. I'm so angry that I feel extra nauseated. I am going to try to get some rest. But, if you want to see my thoughts on the recent attempt to recreate the Satanic Panic as a Lokean panic, the place of transgender people in Filianism/Déanism, or whatever the hell else I went off about (I'm sure there was one more thing I just can't remember it), click the link. The language is strongly worded, vulgar even. Absolutely not safe for children.

NaBloPoMo 25/30 Meme Edition

Don't worry, it's just Freddie. He might take exception to being called toxic however.

NaBloPoMo 21/30 meme edition

Yep, still going to write the 10 posts over the next 2 days. Here's a stupid one for you.

And one more:

These make me crack up every time I see them. Little fluffy serial killers that purr. Cats are awesome.

NaBloPoMo 5/30 MEME EDITION! CAPSLOCK IS COOL NOW.

Yarn stuff # 2!

I haven't gotten much spinning done this week. Or at least, not of the producing yarn variety. I have been getting a lot of things done right now. This is good, but my time for fiber arts has been reduced. I aim to rectify this as soon as I get the other projects (like putting together a budget for this month and finishing setting up my writing outlines for the month) done.

I sat down with some yarn and a crochet hook. I backwards engineered a bonnet pattern, sort of. The first attempt came out pretty cute. It is about toddler sized. I used baby sport weight yarn remnants I had kicking around in my work basket. I haven't written up the pattern yet. Or should I say, I haven't typed it up yet. I have it noted down in my notebook. It is a step farther along than what I have been doing in other projects.

I am in the search of a good (free) gnome hat pattern. I've seen a few on Ravelry. They're ok. But they're not quite what I need. I may wind up just coming up with one on my own. Who knows how that is going to work out.

In other news, have you seen this thing that is trending? If you look up 'knitter's are ...' on Google, one of the top auto-fill suggestions is 'knitter's are ruining America.' I proudly claim this title. Below is a picture of my engaged in this dastardly activity. (I'm making a baby sweater for a friend of mine. Pattern to come when completed.)

Beware of me and my pointy sticks and sturdy string.

Reworking EVERYTHING!

I'm about to do a major overhaul on this blog. I will be changing the look and some of the format. Please bear with me. It is part of a process to making things easier and more effective. Presently I am rather scattered all over the place. I want to correct that. Please note, a name change will be coming along in the near future, but the content will remain the same. I will also be posting more pictures and such soon as well.

Why emotionally blackmail someone over stuff?

I confess, I have a few guilty pleasures in my blog reading. There is a mommy blogger who tends to have recipes that are usually pretty awesome and I find some humor in her chattering about life at large. While I do my best to avoid the mommy brigade, there are a few that I read because their writing style entertains me and I usually find them a point of light on a dark day. So, I was disappointed when I saw her triumphant post about how she finally managed to get her spouse to throw away his childhood baseball card collection after harassing him over it for 19 years.

I get that she wants her house to have as little waste as possible. I get that she wants to have as few nicknacks to clean up as possible. I even can appreciate the frustration of someone in your family collecting things that you don't understand the appeal for and get irritated upon the sight of them. All of these sentiments I can empathize with and appreciate. At some point in time, I have had them myself or been the object of this sort of feeling.

Those feelings don't give me free reign to pick at my spouse over the hobbies he has. They don't give me the right to tell him 'you're a grown up now, get rid of this childish stuff.' That is simply beyond the pale. I don't dictate who my husband is (aka how 'childish' or 'adult' he is) and I don't get to tell him that his hobbies are bad if they're not harming anyone or causing us problems in our ability to take care of our children, home, responsibilities, or marriage. A few binders full of cards is not a problem.

I'm sorry, but if you are going to take the position that the equivalent of a photo album is enough of a problem in your household that you have to harass your spouse about getting rid of them for an extended length of time, you've got a big problem and it isn't that photo album. Telling someone that they're immature or that they're childish because of what they enjoy is harmful to them. You are telling them that there is something WRONG with them because they're doing something that makes them happy and YOU are uncomfortable with it because it doesn't meet YOUR expectations of what and adult is supposed to be like. You are the problem here.

Because you don't get to tell your spouse WHO THEY ARE. Full stop. You are attempting to dictate elements of their personality and psyche on the basis of arbitrary bullshit and your level of discomfort with the way they fit into your arbitrary bullshit generator. If your uncomfortable with your spouse's hobby but it isn't doing you any harm beyond making you mildly uncomfortable with how you perceive their maturity level, you need to fix your issue. A pack of cards does not dictate the maturity level of the person possessing them. Additionally, a pack of cards does not dictate a damn thing about the state of your home other than the fact that you or someone in your home owns a pack of fucking cards.

The world is full of ugly, horrific things. If your spouse finds joy in little things and it is not causing problems in their ability to meet their responsibilities, provide emotional support, or otherwise be a partner in your relationship, then you need to suck it up and deal with the fact that they are going to find joy in things that are not going to appeal to you. You don't get to dictate what is 'grown up' and attempting to do so is going to cause emotional damage to your spouse and undermine their sense of self esteem.

I'll rephrase that into something a little more concise.

Your bullshit behavior over a pack of cards is emotional abuse. You are telling them that they're not good enough as who they are. You don't get to do that. You are not the gatekeeper of what is an acceptable adult. You are not the gatekeeper of who is an acceptable person.

The only person you get to make those kinds of decisions for are yourself.

And if you can't handle someone getting some happiness out of a pack of cards that has some warm, fuzzy emotional memories attached to them, then you need to acquire some emotional and psychological fortitude because this kind of crap is what dooms long term relationships.

So, yeah, after 19 years you managed to brow beat your husband into getting rid of his momentos from his happier childhood days. Good job. Next, are you going to start telling your kids to throw away their favorite belongings because you've decided they're too old to do what makes THEM happy too?

Sigmund Freud's Doodle.

I don't know how to do a screen capture. I kinda fail at technology, to be honest. But, as I was going to say, Google has a doodle for Sigmund Freud's birthday. His face is represented as part of an iceberg in the image with a little steamer ship to the right heading towards another iceberg.

All day, when I saw that little image, all I could think was that the ship was the Titanic.

Take from this idea what you will.

Day after NaNoWriMo!

So, NaNoWriMo is done for another year. I clocked in just shy of 70 k for my word count. I'm not finished with the manuscript yet. I am approximately half way through my plot map. I honestly wonder if I am going to have to split this up now. I want to finish it. I just feel a bit tired right now. I have spent a good portion of today attempting to catch up on blogging. I hamstrung myself with Facebook. Now, I am going to push to get more done in the evening. As a result, this post is going to be brief.

Here's a picture. Me with my implements of doom. And yes, that is a mechanical pencil tucked behind my ear. Not shown is my collection of calligraphy pens and pile of notebooks. Which I feel like will at some point reach an infinite value if I continue collecting in the fashion I have been.