I Tried To Be Like Grace Kelly

It's been a long time since my last post, and there've been a lot of reasons for that, but mostly it's personal stuff. In the space of the last few months I almost quit Milliways, joined Ten Forward as a mod and player, rejoined Milliways but dropped a bunch of characters that I didn't play much, and then quit as a mod for Ten Forward, to stay on as a player.

I've not been feeling great about all these transitions, and even less good about all the interpersonal mess that came along with them; I hate being ignored and told however kindly or round-about that I'm simply not good enough or not entertaining enough to be kept around.

Not much happy in this update, I guess.

So when I feel bad, I cook, or try to; lately I've been wanting to try more international stuff, so that's been on my mind. So the last couple of days have been busy and adventurous!

I finally made this Mongolian sweet-cured beef I found a recipe for online; it's very sugar-heavy and I intended to fix it as actual *cured* beef, but after both parents gave me a look of you want me to eat what I kind of had to change that up and make it a marinade so I could cook the beef. I actually do want my mom to eat it. So I tried documenting the process of making the marinade mixture, which...kind of worked. It looks a bit like road tar, but my kitchen smelled like a spice market making it; it's got demerara sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, Indian brown mustard, cinnamon, coriander, tabasco sauce and onion powder. I would have used chopped onions, but I wanted to thicken the sauce so it wouldn't be so very liquid and might stick better to the meat. I'm hopeful of it working out, but also kind of apprehensive.

So with it my plan is to make a cracked wheat salad with roasted veggies, though it's been a while since I've made anything with cracked wheat and my family sometimes can be capricious about liking that.

I've been trying to feel good today. It was the beginning of Shark Week, which sucks to begin with but aside fro a couple hours of cramping it's been okay; I take birth control pills for this reason, because I only get four Weeks a year and I can deal with that. Theoretically I can skip them and not have them at all, but sometimes I spot through and that just kills my day, because hello unexpected wardrobe malfunctions, how are you doing?

That said, because I feel kind of 'ehhhhh' already, and I didn't want to showcase that in my look--it's a thing, I hate looking like I feel awful, more on that later--I put together what I think is a super cute outfit for church. Technically I can show up in whatever the hell I want to since I'm under a full-length long-sleeved choir robe (black cassock, while alb) the entire service, but since I also get there like an hour early I like to dress nice and it helps me feel better about being there. I sing alto, which doesn't have a whole lot of 'oomph' to it for most people not musicians; we don't sing the melody an awful lot, we're not pitched for Disney Princess songs, et cetera. (In point of fact I haven't been able to sing any Princess songs in their written key since I was twelve. The first one I can remember singing in the set key since my voice dropped was Ursula. This should tell you a lot about my range and timbre.) And the sopranos at my church...are interesting. They're split pretty evenly half-and-half between young women my age who *ALL* go to a private university, or older women my grandmother's age who've known me since I was literally born.

There's also about thirteen of them, and four altos. Five on a good day.

So when one of them makes snarky comments at me--and she does on a regular basis, I try to ignore it. But that's easier said than done and a lot of what she makes comments on is that I don't dress like she does, or what she deems fashionably. (I wasn't aware that black pants and heels and a blouse weren't fashionable anymore, but then I miss that sometimes.) So I'm kind of better armed to capital-I Ignore when I feel like I look good, which makes sense. I spent a bit of time contemplating what to wear, since it's supposed to be overcast and kind of fall-like for Georgia, and decided on pants.

Grey trouser pants. My favorite. They fit well, they're comfy, they're not too low-rise or high-waist and they don't gap in the back. I have a white dress shirt that's wonderful because it's half spandex and zips up the front--all the fastenings are zippers, which makes it fun to have a relatively narrow waist and D cup boobs, because hello again, wardrobe malfunctions. And at church it's never a good idea to flash people. Especially not at *my* church, because I'm Episcopalian and we're routinely about as happy as someone who's been force-fed a live trout. I wish I was joking. (You know that line from Dogma about how Catholics don't celebrate their faith, they mourn it? It totally goes for us too, we just speak less Latin.) So there's the pants, and the shirt. And then there's this sleeveless plaid jumper-overshirt-thing that my parents got me last Christmas that I love, but have been really conflicted over wearing. It's black, which I'm trying to get away from, and also plaid, which I've never worn before.

But. It looks really really cute. And though the whole outfit is undeniably masculine, everything's made for women so it's not really...boxy, I suppose? I mean, if my mother were talking here--and she has no grasp of the fact that I'm bisexual--she'd say it doesn't look dyke-ish. I personally take offense at that term for a whole lot of reasons, but you get what I'm trying to say here, hopefully. I'm only wearing hoops and a cross, but it's a big multicolored gemstone cross I got when I turned 21 from my grandmother, because in my mind I can never have too many crosses, since they're a nice jewelry piece and they're not in anyone's face and it saves me from having to explain that yes I go to church and no I'm not an SBC member and yadda yadda yadda. (There's a lot of that around here. Some cities, your reputation is dependent on where your daddy works or where your mama's family went to school or what after school thing your kid is in; here, it's where you go to church. Inexplicable, but then we are in Georgia.)

My only still-undecided option is shoes. I love shoes. I really do. I can get wild with my shoes in ways I cannot with clothes, and still be practical. I can either wear black slingbacks that're kind of low but have a cute 1940's vibe to them with the patent leather and knots on the toes, or I can wear by 5-inch black stiletto oxfords. These shoes, man. They're Fioni, and so were like 20 dollars at payless and I love that price, plus they make me super tall--like I'm not already; these shoes make me 6'3"--and that's icing on my cake. (Mmmm, cake.)

The only problem is the stairs at church. And if I can't walk quietly up the stairs, I just feel awful. I get comments from everyone about how clompy I am and how if I lost weight it'd be easier and all that sort of shit that makes no sense but that people who mean well say anyway. I hope to have this problem--the shoe one, anyway--resolved by tomorrow morning; the rest of it may take longer. But that's okay, I have time. Time is on my side. There should be more of these horrible metaphors, but I'm kinda running out. Eh.

I was accomplished this week. I made lots of candy; caramels, divinity, and shortbread, and tomorrow I'm trying brandy snaps as well as more divinity--for my uncle this time--and shortbread for me, and will hopefully have pictures of some of the processes once I'm actually done with them. I mailed all the caramels off to their respective locations--so be on the lookout, those of you who requested them! I want to know how they are.

I also threaded a lot with people both in Milliways and out, and I feel good about that. Work still progresses on the sekrit-epic-needlepoint-of-doom, and it's coming closer and closer to being done at last! I can't wait to see it all completed, because just looking at it makes me happy. In church news I've got a bunch of new music to play, for whenever I get to play my flute again, and we're working on Handel's Awake the Trumpet's Lofty Sound for an offertory or communion piece sometime in the near future, and I absolutely love that song. I've never seen the whole oratorio, but it's Handel and I love him, and he wasn't nearly as musically all over the map as, say, Bach. Though I love him too.

It's going pretty okay, all in all. I'm happy with myself more often than I was, which is a huge deal. I've pruned down and prettied up my muse list and am trying to not feel bad about playing those of them that are loud, and not letting myself feel bullied into doing anything I don't want to.

I'm gonna be okay. Really.

So you've got this magical pie pan, right?

There's a pie in it, your parents baked it for you.

The pie is delicious. It's wonderful, it lowers your cholesterol, helps you live longer--even saves you some money on your taxes. A lot of people love this pie, and would like a slice.

And that magical pie pan? It's awesome. Every time someone takes a slice out of the pie, it is immediately replaced by another slice. It doesn't cost anybody anything except the people buying the pie, and their cost is minimal considering how awesome it is. The materials that replenish the pie are love and hope. Those are the only ingredients.

Now, the only catch is that you can't get a slice of pie by yourself. You have to hold hands with another person, and only then will you be able to cut a slice of this pie and then you have to share it.

Now your parents set up two teams, because their parents had two teams. The teams are called Red Team and Blue Team.

And your parents made a rule that you were only allowed to have a slice of pie if you were purple: one red team member, one blue team member.

The pie pan doesn't set that rule. The pie pan is like the honey badger--it doesn't care at all, long as there are two of you and you hold hands, it gives you pie.

But there's these guards we hired, and we told them to keep enforcing the team rule whenever someone comes to get a slice of pie.

And now, some people on blue team and some people on red team would like some pie. And they've found partners they want to come and get pie with, but they're both on red team, or their both on blue team.

And your claim is that they shouldn't have any pie, because. . . it'll change what your pie tastes like.

The analogy should be pretty blatant.

The pie pan is marriage.

The pie is a marriage license.

Gay couples deserve their slice of the pie.

Yours won't change flavour. I promise.

Our current, arbitrary rule about red and blue teams is the only thing between them and equal treatment with the rest of us.

The teams don't matter anymore. Treat them as individuals, and as couples, not as members of one team or another. Let them have their pie.



...Now I must say, I did not come up with this, but I thought it was pretty awesome.