Friends
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omg chance painting!!!!
I got a package in the mail today from Leah Moore, for whom I drew a silly little comic recently (which I’ll be posting soon, in fact!). It contained a watercolor sketchbook and a dip pen and ink and I thought AW YOU DARLING! and said AW YOU DARLING! to her on Twitter.
“Have you looked inside the sketchbook yet?” she asked.
“NO!” I said, “LET ME GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW!”
“I’ll wait,” sez she, and I ran downstairs to open the sketchbook and inside was THIS!
OMFG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG *INCOHERENT SQUEEING*!!!!
It was painted by a friend of hers, Al Davidson, and I swear I haven’t stopped squeeing since I opened the book and found it. OMG. It’s SO BEAUTIFUL and that was SO KIND of her! Of them! OMG! *falls over*!!!
Also, now I totally have to do more art. I’ve got dipping pens to try (a terrifying thought!) and the new pens Ted got me for Christmas, and just yes! I must art!
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a fabulous coat & the ruin of two families
Yesterday over on Facebook I posted a link to an utterly fabulous 1940s bomber-style womens’ jacket. Things almost immediately got out of control as my dear friend Leah Moore loved it as much as I did:
Leah: That is just gorgeous. I would marry that jacket.
Catie: I would show up at the altar and object because I saw it first and loved it more.
Leah: Oh damn!
Leah: With high waist trousers and a killer haircut….oh man…
Catie: actually i would show up at the altar and you would look so fabulous in your coat and your high waist trousers and your killer undercut that i’d run away with you instead
Leah: I’d fly off with you in my plane…and we’d land on hawaii or somesuch.
Catie: we would live the roguish life of passionate adventurers, travelling the world and laughing carelessly at passers-by
Leah: YES!!! I’m up for all of that. Anytime. ❤💗❤💗Wow. What a jacket…
Catie: look at the trouble it’s already causing! :)
Leah: Two broken homes and financial abandon, not to mention the fact i don’t know how to fly a plane! 😄😄
Catie: I understand *flying* a plane isn’t that hard. *Landing* a plane… :)
Leah: Is it wrong that i want to draw fanart of us?
AND THEN SHE DID!!!!
I have never in my life wanted so much to do a web comic. It’d be like Delilah Dirk & the Turkish Lieutenant, except two bonkers ladies fighting crime & injustice in a modern world that was a massive mash-up of all the stylistically visually amazing bits of the past 140 years. It’d be brilliant modern social commentary. With great clothes. *flails*!
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we have amazing friends.
this morning i came home from dropping indy off at school and ted, looking very emotional, said, “come into the kitchen and see what our friends have done.”
a little befuddled, i went into the kitchen, and there saw a large box and thought, “oh! yes, one of them said they would send a few–” and somewhere around that point a started to realize that there were two large–*large*–boxes, crammed full, and…
this is…i just…i don’t even know where to start. they organized a care package of Food We Can’t Get Here, in the wake of Mom’s death. a dozen people helped put it together. people across the whole the united states, from alaska to boston and everywhere in between.
i have literally never seen so much bakers’ chocolate at once in my life. not even at a store. (the lady who bought it cleared the place out of it. <3) you can't get crisco here at all, nevermind in giant tubs. this will last us forever. i used to eat that kind of cereal when we were in alaska, and missed it terribly when we moved here. people sent me some for a while, but then i got used to other stuff, but someone (i suspect mary anne) *remembered*. i will be bringing one (or 1.5) of the ENORMOUS BOXES of mac&cheese to my sister Deirdre, whose boys love Kraft mac&cheese with... well, all the love of 11 and 13 year old kids. :) and i'd just used the last of the chocolate chips we had, and now we have bags and bags of POSH ones. and one of my oldest friends sent me a hug, in the form of this beautiful, beautiful scarf that she made:
i’ve been wearing it all day. ted and i have been pretty much crying all day. every time we go into the kitchen it just starts again. we are so overwhelmed. so grateful. so thankful. so amused because OH MY GOD IT’S JUST SO MUCH!
i had pop tarts for breakfast, of course. <3
we don’t really know how to say thank you. we’re just stunned and grateful and feel so, so loved. ♥ ♥ ♥
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ethical oversight
For some reason I was reminded, this morning, of a discussion a few years ago post-Snowden, where an acquaintance of mine who had worked in the intelligence field spoke at great length, and passionately, about why Snowden had been wrong to leak the surveillance information that he did. His reasons were (roughly) matters of trust inside intelligence agencies, safety of intelligence officers, necessity of some secrets being kept, and possibly a couple other things I’m now forgetting.
It was well reasoned and well written and I fundamentally understood and agreed with his arguments. It was a rare occasion where I could understand and agree and also think he was totally wrong.
We must have had an actual discussion about it, because in the end he told me that the intelligence communities needed people like me working in ethical oversight, so that people like Snowden would have somewhere to go. (And then it’d be me leaking the information and living in Russia, I suppose.)
The part I found odd about it, anyway, was that it wasn’t the first time I’d been told I’d make a good candidate for ethical oversight; one of my high school science teachers told me a while ago that she’d always kind of thought I’d end up doing that sort of thing for animal testing (and I have no idea what I said or did in her classes to make her think that!). Apparently I come across as highly ethical.
You people clearly have no idea what I would do with superpowers, is all I’m sayin’. :)
(My husband and my friend Emily do, though. In a discussion of such things, it was instantly agreed that Ted would obviously be a superhero, and Emily practically is one already. When it came to me, though, they both fell silent for a moment before Emily said, “Well, Catie wouldn’t be a *villain*…”)
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funny things with houseguests
Woe, our guest has had to return home, but she has left us with many smiles and funny memories. The other night she cleared her plate from the table, then returned to the dining room, where she picked up a napkin and wrung it as she gazed indecisively at our plates.
Ted said, in the driest and most certain tone ever, “You’re procrastinating. Go work on your thesis.”
She said, “I’m NOT! I’m trying to be a good guest!”
Ted said, “I’m married to a writer and you’re procrastinating. Go work.” And she did, although she protested that it wasn’t HER fault if being a good guest and procrastinating both displayed in the same way! :)
The next day she said, for reasons I no longer recall, “But you cook so well! You could feed me much less nice food and I’d still be happy!” Then she paused, reconsidered, and said, “I mean: ‘I require continued excellence in my culinary experiences.'”
So I fed her a tikka masala for dinner and a brownie sundae for dinner. :)
We have a pretty broad overlap of things we both love, which, the night before she left, resulted in Ted being treated to renditions of both “Kokomo” and “Dance Magic Dance,” which bemused him greatly and made us laugh at least that much. :) Eventually she’ll be done with her thesis and when she comes to visit we’re just gonna watch a million movies that we love and giggle a lot. :)
Yesterday after her departure I did a lot of stuff, and reported it thusly to Ted:
Me: I’ve made brownies and applesauce, planted bulbs with Henry, cleaned the kitchen, picked 6 cups of blackberries, done two loads of laundry and changed the sheets in the guest room.
Ted: I’m exhausted just reading about that.
Me: I also have to make jam, bread, and dinner.
Ted: Now you’re just showing off.
(I made jam and dinner but waited until this morning to make the bread, which is currently on its second rise. The 3rd load of laundry for the morning is in the washer, and there are more berries thawing for another batch of jam. I need to take a shower and write, not necessarily in that order.)
