A bit of moving...

If you want to read my latest post about my writing, and latest pics-a-beans of Minion being Squirmy and also Wormy, they are here. You can also see the recentish posts in the box at the top of this blog, so you don't miss something in mabeltalk that might interest you.

If you use a subscription service to follow blogs, the RSS feed for Mabeltalk.com is here:

http://www.mabeltalk.com/feeds/posts/default

I'll post personal things on the weekends. I think. That's the plan for now.

Retiring the Trivial Buttonhole?

Oscar & Will contemplate the unexamined life. Decide not worth living.

I'm thinking of retiring little Trivial Buttonhole (or Butthole as my brother's always read it.) I've been making Mabeltalk more personal, so I'm posting here less anyway. I'm thinking maybe the things I would normally post here--pictures of the cats, vegan chat, what I'm writing etc.--I could just post on Mabeltalk on the weekends. Cause I don't usually post my regular mabeltopics on Sat and Sunday (though lately even that schedule's been all woooo!)

So for those who are only interested in checking in on me on a kittykat level, you'll know to just check mabeltalk on the weekend, and you can ignore me the rest of the time, if you're not into all the "Fat shaming! Makes me mad! Arrr!" and "Love yourself! Here's a song! Grrr!"

I think I'm also trying to reconcile my two sides a little better, as well. (Yes I'm still in this massive cocoon phase I've been in all winter. You'd think I'd be out by now, eh? I finally received my cute oracle cards. Maybe that'll help!) I've always said I only half fit the Gemini profile because while they're supposed to be big communicators and flit around to a lot of new interests (oui, c'est moi), they also have trouble with constancy. Well, I might be inconstant when it comes to clothing styles, but I've been in love with the same man since I was 15 years old.

But I do feel like 2-in-1 in terms of having a Very Silly Side married to a Very Serious Side. Trivial Buttonhole, starring Oscar Wilde, with it's funny "quotes of the now" and so forth represents frothy me. The is the fiction writer side of me. Half of the friendships I have correspond to this side. I identify this side more with my mother and my brother.* I say it's frothy, but it's super important. Georgette Heyer's Friday's Child helped keep Romanian prisoners sane. Hugh Laurie credits Wodehouse with saving his life. And Oscar said life was too important to be taken seriously. Humor is Serious Bidness.

The other half of my I associate with my father and step-mother,** and it's who I married, and I have a bunch of friendships on that side too. That's the side that launched Mabeltalk, and is concerned with fat shaming, and racism, and sexism, and other-isms, and wants to teach, and cares about people's inner childrenz, and reads non-fiction and wants to talk for hours about politics and people's relationships. This side of me ends up befriending some pretty intense people.

But I think I'm getting tired of being Trivial on one side, and Mabeltalk on the other. Maybe it's because when I'm frolicking about in Bettyland I get to be both, so separating the two sides is starting to confuse me. I don't know where to post things anymore.

I'll keep up my music blog, though, because every once in awhile I get on a real music tear and there's no blog that can hold all that. Better to keep it isolated, at least until I feel otherwise. Same with my comments blog. I'm not consistent with it, but when I do read a bunch of articles, I always come up with tee hee things to put on there.

Well. This pot's on the front burner. The temperature's turned up. I'll know any day now whether the dish is done or not. :-)

______________
* **

My mother and 1/3 of the Brat Pack

Okay obviously my mother and brother aren't all-silly, and my father and stepmother aren't all-serious--it's a generalization. I do come by my feminism and social politics from my mother, and she rescues animals and loves politics.

But my brother and I also know that--although our father is very funny--the truly wickedest part of our humor is a genetic inheritance from our mother's side of the family. It's also with our mother that we can watch anything from the Beavis & Butthead movie to Pineapple Express. She used to have a life sized giraffe statue in her living room. She used to spit beer at us between her teeth when we were little. She and my brother are my top "beta readers" for my writing. Her hero is Auntie Mame, and she introduced me to The Thin Man, A Room With a View, and Georgette Heyer.

Also, my mother's father (the English professor) introduced me to Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, used to tell dirty but erudite jokes, and wore a t-shirt that said: Here he cometh, there he goeth. So yes--I stand by my statement that I associate my frivolous side with my mother and brother, the R--- side of the family.

My father gives Yoda a shave

...Whereas I'm in the midst of helping to edit my father his article taking down Just War theory from a pacifist standpoint, for a progressive Christian magazine. Next he wants to write something for them on animal rights. My step-mother repaints dolls and donates the money to an orphanage in Mexico, never approved my fandom of Prince because of all the sex in his music, and didn't get the difference between S&M and abusing women when Madonna recorded the song "Spank Me." She's adorably goofy, but not in the Wildean way.  ;-)

I haven't said much about my brother. Cause he's due for his own post soon.

Do you knit? You NEED this caplet. You need it! (Celebrating Ms Casapinka)

One of my favorite blogs to read is casapinka. She's a doctor * creative (and currently full-time) mother of two * wife * knitter * knitting designer * her-home decorator * lover of all things pink * and all-around witty lady. The way she writes about her the weirdness of kiddos amoozes me greatly, so I get to enjoy child-rearing at arm's length.

She makes so much effort to bring out their creativity, and it always feels like her children have plenty of breathing room to blossom into their Own True Selves--whether that means her son wants to wear Hello Kitty socks and carry a baby doll named Tom, or her daughter wants to skateboard while on a royal-wedding-weekend-getaway.

 

She also makes the funnest sewing and knitting projects like her son's "Japanese surfing trousers"

 

And she has the same can-do attitude as the women-folk in my family. When confronted with tinted car windows that would prevent her taking her driver's test, and the impossibility of having the tint removed before six months, she wrote (in re her husband stressing out):

"I, however, love problems like this. These are the challenges in life that don't really matter and are just begging to be solved creatively."

Yes. Some challenges don't really matter.


Pink also takes beautiful photos...
 

And is just so durned quirky, sarcastic and down to earth, that though you'd love to hate her for being so talented, and such a great parent, and having such great taste... bahhhhh you CAN'T!!! Look at her! Cute! Quirky! She made a sweater with pom-poms on it!!
 

And speaking of talented, the reason for all this netluvs is that I wanted to celebrate her publishment: Her pattern for a bridal caplet was published in Love of Knitting magazine. Yays!!! <--I don't make knitting patterns so I can afford to be generous and unjealous. Yays!!!

But I don't knit, so I can't run out and buy the magazine and be supportive. So I'm posting it in case it inspires someone else. I presume one can change the color and--amazing!--no longer just a bridal caplet. Eez cute non? Eez cute.

Baby cheeses it's good

My bettybuddy[see other blog] in Australia turned me onto this show, but now I need to find a source for episodes! Amazon only has the US version of the show.

Arthur and The Rightness of the Couple

I finally saw the original Arthur movie. Aaaaat laaaaaaast myyyy looooove haaaaas come aloooong. Where has it been all my life??

If you haven't seen it, the basic plot is: Arthur = spoiled millionaire child of a snobbish and distant father. Drunk most of the time, but you understand why when you see his family, and the woman he's expected to marry. She's the most wonderful Wrong Person Hero Is Engaged To I've ever seen. Unconditional love of the most stifling and horrifying order.


Her father abhors Arthur, but will force him to marry Susan, only to please his little girl. One of my favorite bits of dialogue in the movie is where Susan's father manfully says to Arthur: "When I was 11 years old, I killed a man."  Terrified, Arthur replies understandingly: "Well, when you're 11 you probably don't even know there's a law against that."

Arthur will be cut off from all monies if he doesn't marry Susan, and having no useful skills he resigns himself; but then he meets Linda. He sees her shoplifting a tie, and when the guard follows her out of the store to arrest her, Arthur follows them out and saves her. Here's where I decided the movie was perfect, because in the five minute scene of him saving her with lies, and her going along with his lies, and then the first flirtation between Arthur and Linda, followed all the while by Arthur's butler, and then the first witticisms exchanged between Linda and the butler... you know that Arthur and Linda are meant to be together. [The scene isn't online, but here's a later scene from the movie.]


Sometimes you go an entire movie or novel not quite convinced that a couple is meant to be together. Once you're sold on this, you're sold for the rest of the movie (and the sequel) because you're rooting for them. They were so good together, they're one of the few movie couples you could imagine hanging a series on, like Nick and Nora Charles.


Billy Mernit, who writes about romantic comedy, agrees about the importance of being convinced over the rightness of a match: 

"Romantic comedy writers all too often put way too much emphasis on figuring out ways to keep their leads apart.  But conflicts and obstacles are actually the easy part of romantic comedy screenwriting.  The harder task lies in creating what I call a chemical equation for your protagonists - presenting the clear, vivid and genuinely convincing evidence that because he's like this and she's like that, they absolutely, positively must end up a couple." (In his review of Just Go With It)

Georgette Heyer was aces at this too.

Oh my days, that last post was supposed to be posted on my comments blog, upon which I was fixing technical problems. I hit post, went to look at it, and then face-palmed. I feel like a moron this morning.

Cutetube is ruining my life

The Cutesie Video


The Best Comment

The Case of the Disappearing Ants

Ants Part I
Ants Part II
Ants Part III
Ants Part IV

No ants tonight, but the little pile of dead bodies is gone (and not left in front of my cat box.)

All's Quiet on the Antsy Front

Ants Part I
Ants Part II
Ants Part III

It's been quiet again on the ant front. I always take credit when the ants disappear, but now I realize it's because they stop being active around midnight (I've been researching again.)

Apparently ants take dead ones away to the trash heap to keep from cluttering up the hallways, or from bacteria/fungi forming, so I guess the dude I saw just happened to be a Janitor Ant. He decided the cat box was far enough away from where the other ants were working, and he'd done his duty.

God I'm gonna dream about ants tonight, I know it.

I've also learned that carpenter ant workers are females--female eunuchs. So these have been femdudes I've been killing.

I also need to take a closer look at their thoraxi to be really sure their carpenter ants. [Feels disrespectful as she checks dead body.] Yes, they are.

Bugs are so interesting. I wish we didn't have to fight. And I wish I wasn't squeamish about them. Being a bugologist is the only science job I could imagine being interested in. But then you end up having to be a forensic entomologist. (I know someone who got that far, and then realized he could not work with dead bodies. He works in publishing now.)

By the way, Medieval Days and Ways is a book, in case I didn't make that clear. My brother thought it was a wonderfully named bug spray.

Night of the Ant Graveyard

Ants Part I
Ants Part II

Had to kill several ants for awhile there, but the wave seems to have ended. I don't know if they manage to get a message back through the lines: Medieval Days and Ways is out, retreat retreat!

My brother said he saw in a show that ants pick up the bodies and bring them to a graveyard, and I said: "now I feel like I didn't let them bury their dead. :-( It's gonna turn into one of those weird Earth 2 episodes, where I think I'm being menaced by ants, but no, they're just here mourning, come back to claim the bodies I put in the trash with the kleenexi."

At one point tonight one of the ants picked up a dead body and hefted it around a bit and I thought: My God it's true! Is he going to carry it back home?

He walked around a bit, dropped it, and kept on his way. Wham. Down went the book.

Just now as I was writing this, a more hearty comrade came along and picked up one of the many bodies I'd left in a pile. He started carting it across my room. I was hoping he'd take it out so I could see where they're coming from, cause it's driving me crazy. Even when I'm watching the window and heater, they appear like magic before my eyes, I never see one enter!

But I watched him carry his buddy across the length of my room, and I'm like, great, he doesn't know the way out. Or the Ant Graveyard is somewhere in my apartment.

Well it turns out it's in front of the cat box, because that's where he left the body.

For the love. I had to kill him. And his little friends too. Well I was going to, but they'd disappeared by then. I'd let two more live, hoping to watch them collect bodies too, but I guess only one was on the graveyard shift. The other got lost in my bookcase, and another vanished into thin air.

I somehow lost Medieval Days, so now it's the 1993 Writer's Market. I'm gonna have to do more research cause I do not know what they're doing. Hoping to set up a new nest in the dust bunnies under my wooden book case?? They're very interested in that one case, and that one shelf.

Maybe the last two that lived have returned to tell the tale of the dead bodies.

Return of the Ants

Ants Part I

Ahh the ants are back and in greater numbers! And Minion's pouting because when she showed me a spider yesterday I didn't kill it.

"We don't kill spiders."
"It's black and has lots of legs and moves!"
"It moves very fast and has more legs. Makes it a spider."
"Kill it!!"
"You kill it! I'm only interested in ants."

So she's being aloof.

I'm leaving the dead bodies of the ants out, as warnings. They keep coming up on my desk, which seems courteous of them.

"Hallos!"
"You know I'm going to kill you."
"I heard you were vegan."
"Have you heard of leading-a-compassionate-but-not-perfect-life?"
"No."

And down goes Medieval Days and Ways. Poor anties.

I remember a few years ago some Buddhist monks who had a bug infestation and wouldn't kill the bugs, or hire anyone to kill them. But made their problem known so if someone wanted to come aloooong and take care of it for them... Come on--

ah! Killed another and one escaped me. Where are they coming in?? I can't tell! It's gotta be right behind my desk. Gonna look again.

Entertaining Myself With My Taxes

I repaired to the office (bedroom) today to do The Taxes. I find it mildly enjoyable, if given time and space. Had plenty of both.

The felines were present for moral support.

  

I used Ufile first, cause I used to find it easier than Quicktax. But they were TOO simple and tried to make me declare thousands less to the Quebec government, which I don't think They would have appreciated.

Ufile was all...!! Woo!!

 

 "U file silly" I told it.

After some fiddling, and sending an email which still hasn't been answered, I tried out Turbotax.

I was immediately struck by THE CUTESINESS OF IT ALL!

 

And who wouldn't want to follow this wee roadmap??

 

If the Israelis and Palestinians were given this as a Roadmap to Peace, they'd make real headway. Who wouldn't be eager to get to step 2, step 3, step 4 5 and the FLAG! "Let's get this borders thing settled, boys, I want get to the picture of Jerusalem!"

Compared to Ufile:

  

Plus they had a screen in the corner that suspensefully increased and decreased with every question I answered and data I entered! Ohhh the drama of it all! (No this was not the final number. But the drama!!)

And let's not forget the window on the right where you could check in on everyone else's livetime agonies, and either laugh at their stupid questions, or get answers to your stupid questions.

 

I was able to enter the T4 and Relevé information accurately this time, and fiddle with my donations, and I understood the medical expenses better (I should have been keeping prescription bills all year, for the amounts not covered by insurance - frick!)

People often suggest I should hire someone, and I have done when Fernando or I had back years to catch up on. But with a couple simple T4s, it's really not worth it. It's gotten more and more expensive, whereas this cost me $30 for the two of us. If I had a business, or worked freelance etc., then I'd hire someone.

The other question to consider is how much my time is worth--my pay per hour. But I measure that against the self-esteem I gain from accomplishing the work, and the sense of confidence from better understanding my taxes, and what I need to be doing throughout the year to prepare for next year's. That's worth my time.

Of course, like many things in life, it's all a big LETDOWN when the other guy isn't there for you in the end. I tried to upload my files and both governments were all "We're, like, SLEEPING now? And you have until MAY 6 moron? So like come back at 7 AM like a real person. F**cking night owls."

 

 

I'm gonna go make cookiez.   :-)  Booyakasha.


Thanks to my dad for putting up with my breathtaking tax updates all night.