There's a Mirror On the Wall

It's sunny and lovely, and a glance at the weather forecast says it should be sunny all weekend, and this is excellent.

My cats continue to demonstrate they want to try to help their human, though Marisol has a better idea when to not attempt to climb into my lap than Sigdis. Meanwhile, Sigdis has figured out how to pet the human, which is also her soliciting pets. And she attempts to groom me when she does get to settle in my lap, which is sweet. She has also figured out that the human has less fur and thus can get cold, but has blankets to keep the cold away, so human, your blanket should be over your arm, really. (She kept pulling at the blanket until I pulled it over my arm, then rested her chin on it. It was adorable.)

I ran my dishwasher yesterday, though I did not get it emptied after. I need to do that today. I'll worry about dishes into it tomorrow. I also should do laundry today, as I am out of trousers, and laundry will take fewer spoons than finish sewing the pair of trousers that's cut out and has one inseam sewn. I would also like to get some more of the clean up done on the deck, but that's heavily dependent on my ability to stay on my feet for more than ten minutes at a time, and how chilly it is outside.

More map work, and some work on a running project, and some reading of fic yesterday. It was good. The fic is decent, though it has some issues that make me not entirely certain I'd want to rec it, and I don't know that I'll bookmark it, either. But the issues aren't enough for me to just say fuck it and close the tab.

Alarm has gone off, so I need to go sort food for me and the cats, and then I can poke at things to get done today. And five things makes a post.

A recipe for a lack of a stovetop and a craving for a sweet dessert, and being frustrated with what’s in my apartment to make noms with. Also, not in the mood for chocolate.

Equipment:

• 1 microwave oven
• 1 electric pressure cooker or rice pot
• 2 microwave safe bowls, able to hold up to 2 cups of liquid to be safe
• 1 fork
• 1 standard sized spoon
• at least 2 hot pads and a place to put a hot pot

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs
• 1 20oz can of crushed pineapple
• 2/3 cup of heavy cream (might be called whipping cream. No, milk is not a good substitute. Half and half maybe if it’s actually half and half and not any of the abomination called “low fat” half and half. The fat content is actually important)
• granulated sugar (brown sugar might do, but it changes the moisture content and thus the chemistry. On the other hand, if you want to experiment with that, go for it!)
• 1 cup of medium or short grain rice (long grain rice will do in a pinch, extra-long grain is Right Out)
• salt (table salt, sea salt, comes in colors, just not flavored)
• water
• 4-6 tablespoons of butter (if you can’t do dairy, try coconut oil or other oils, but do. not. use. margerine.)

How to make this:

Into your cooker’s inner pot goes the rice and the pineapple (juice and all!), and however much water your cooker says for that much rice (my pressure cooker says 1.5 cups). Set that to cook.

Cream goes into one microwave safe bowl and goes into the microwave for 60 seconds or until it gets hot, whichever comes second.

While the cream is in the microwave, crack your eggs into the second bowl, and use the fork to turn them into lightly beaten eggs that are all vaguely homogenized.

Take the cream out of the microwave and add 2.5 spoons of sugar. Using the eating spoon, because I did not bother to use an actual measuring spoon to come up with this.

Stir the sugar into the cream until it’s dissolved. Then take one spoon of the hot cream and pour it into your eggs, and use the fork to incorporate it fully. Lather rinse repeat until you can’t spoon more cream that way, even tilting the bowl up to concentrate the remainder. Than pour that last bit in. Keep stirring the entire time. If you need to rest, do it after you’ve gotten whatever spoonful you were stirring in fully incorporated.

Stick it back in the microwave for 10-15 seconds. Stir thoroughly. Continue until you get the first curdles, then leave it be.

Wait for the rice and pineapple to finish cooking. Do not recommend scrolling tumblr while waiting. (... first time my pineapple and rice were waiting for fifteen minutes past finished cooking when I did that.)

Take inner pot out of cooker after turning it off.

Stir in custard and butter. Pretend you’re Gollum with the One Ring and hiss at anyone who attempts to take away your precious treat. Salt to taste.

Omnomnomnom.

I didn't get words written yesterday, but HLH reveals were yesterday, and I got words POSTED yesterday as well.

So, for HLH, I wrote Walking a Different Road, which is ultimately a Joe/Methos story, and I don't think I've written one where they're anything other than platonic. It's entirely from Joe's POV, in close third person, and is functionally a five times Joe met Methos story in an alternate universe.

I posted the first bit of Echoes In Transit, which is Methos's side of the same story, so we get to see what Methos is up to when he vanishes from Joe's life. It's going to take longer, but it'll get to the same end point eventually.

Both of them involve Joe's loss of his legs, because being disabled is part of Joe's character, and erasing that makes me twitchy. And while it is definitely a running theme of the story, it's not the focus of Joe's character.

Caspian and Silas will both show up in the story, but Kronos only will show up if I do flashbacks, because that's technically the precipitating event of the AU, that Methos killed Kronos rather than shoving him down a dry well.

Not all things are tagged in the second story, but the tags will change as the story is posted, and the new tags will also be posted in the chapter notes so new chapters come with their tags readily visible.

It's a sunny morning, and that's a good thing after yesterday. It means I'm in a better mood today. Along with the hormones starting to settle out, because it's a red day finally.

Last night, there was a fire across the local highway in the well-fenced development there. By the time we noticed the smoke, there were already fire trucks lighting the place up in red and using water (we're pretty sure it was water) to get things under control. I haven't followed up looking for other information this morning, and I hope that anyone who was in there, and any pets if there were any, all got out safe. (Mom had alerted me after she saw the smoke and the lights, and we think it was a house that was on fire, because most of the area right here, on both sides of the local highway, is residential, and the non-residential stuff is all on the local highway itself.)

And, reporting on the efficacy of the latest experimental underwear! So far, so good. I'm going to wear this pair until this evening or until they're soaked through, whichever comes first. I need to know how long it takes until they're soaked through, so I know how many more pairs to make to get through a period. I have a towel down where I sit in case of leakage, but so far, they're fitting well (as expected), and they're not bunching badly (... which, the shorts sometimes do, this pair is rather shorter in the leg. And while I kinda want to alter the pattern further to remove the excess fabric, the problem with that is one of the problems with commercial underwear, which is digging in along the crease there, and leaving red welts even without latex. These are only just avoiding that as is.)

I did write a second post yesterday, but that one didn't get posted publically because, well. The gist of it is that I'm hitting a wall on emotional shit, particularly in being angry about things and being too exhausted to BE angry, especially when there is nothing I can do that is within my capabilities more than I already HAVE done. And that does include being visibly and publically angry about anything, when I am a very small person in the scheme of things, and being that kind of angry is exhausting and stressful and I'd like not to develop another spontaneous allergy just because things are a fucking mess. (It's going to be bad enough when the trees start throwing pollen in the air, and I can't even go out the door to the trash and recycle bins without a mask.)

I added more pretty colors to an organizational chart yesterday, because the pretty colors help me track things. As well as being pretty.

And that makes five things, and that makes a post.

It's a lovely sunny day this morning, and I keep forgetting that I am a solar driven critter, and how big a role having the actual sun out plays in my mood. In that yesterday was so many levels of nope on an overcast day after I think more than one overcast day. And this morning, while there's still hormones fucking with my mood and making it pretty difficult to cope with Sigdis yelling at me for food, I'm a lot more able to deal with other niggles.

Hopefully my period shows up a little early, still, because this month is not a good month, and I would like the hormones to please be done with me like now.

I hope everyone else is having a good day, and that you have good sleeps when you get there as well! :D

So I signed up for AP News Morning Wire on Thursday, and it delivered on Friday morning and this morning into my inbox, but not over the weekend. I need more than two datapoints, but if it is a thing that does not deliver on weekends, that's not a bad thing, because it means I have a clear "keep those days free of news for sanity" sign.

And this morning signed myself up for one of the newsletters from the Baltimore Sun, which gives me a relatively local news source that's generally reliable and unbiased, for state-level stuff. (For truly local, I've got no sources that are sufficiently both reliable and unbiased fact reporting over analysis or opinion.)

This morning's breakfast is oatmeal cooked up with garlic and butter and with piece of shrimp dropped in after (as the shrimp I get are thaw-and-eat, because least amount of effort for tasty shrimp). Other than cats in my face attempting to get some of it, it's a successful choice of breakfast.

Yesterday was spending a large chunk of the day cooking, and then not having the spoons for anything else. On the other hand, I have three weeks worth of lunches in the form of chicken something-like-curry that has enough to technically be two meals if I add rice.

Today was oatmeal for breakfast, and a bit much of it, so I'll have oatmeal for lunch too. (Steel-cut oats, honey, peaches, and butter with enough water to cook it all in the instant pot, then a good glug of heavy cream on top of it after. A bit of salt to enhance the flavors, and omnomnom.)

It's also very much a headphones/earbuds day because between yesterday's borrowing of spoons from today, and that it's hormone hell week, I'm very quickly driven to screaming frustration by... even tiny things. Like the pillows not staying where I put them while trying to make my bed. Or Sigdis being vocal. And. Yeah, I need to keep the outside sounds out, and whatever I can in the way of music to soothe, because I do not want to be that person. That's a scary person to be, and I don't like it.

Hopefully today will get better, and tomorrow won't be so fraught.

So I’ve just heard about today’s fuckery and excitement, and I. Am going to go back to sewing my proof-of-concept shorts for my period, which I had been until I called dad for unrelated reasons and heard about the excitement.

I am going to avoid tumblr, and probably news sites for the rest of today, because see above.

Marisol decided to climb the hammock to the hook and tightrope walk on the rope that holds up my canopy. At bedtime. I only just finished getting the hammock back up with some assistance, because I needed to entirely redo things to be at least hopeful that Marisol will not attempt that again (anytime soon, anyway).

I know I've got food, but it's getting low and what I have is being less appealing than I like. I'll manage, and I'll get dad to do a grocery run Friday or Saturday so that I can spend quality time on Saturday downstairs doing a large batch of cooking - meat/veggies/fruit, whole grain mixes, various sauces, three different sized jars, and then I can mix and match for meals.

I watched through several episodes of Magnificent Seven yesterday, and I'm probably going to watch more today. Going to attempt to get some more of the Highlander DVDs ripped as well, so I can marathon some of that. Specifically, so I can marathon Methos episodes. And probably some S2 episodes which have Joe in them. Because Reasons.

And while I didn't get words actually written yesterday, I went poking through my WIPs and abandons for one of my Mag7/Highlander crossovers (with bonus X-Men), and am seriously contemplating just posting the one bit without bothering with edits. Just. It's not a complete story, the end's dangling. So I should probably watch the episode with Matthew McCormick in it of Highlander, because he's one of the important characters in the early bits of that crossover (of which the story in question is), and... well, I'm not the one who wrote him in it originally.

(There's also a bit in that which crosses with Burn Notice, but I think I'm going to leave that as an AU of the AU, because I'm even less interested in rewatching Burn Notice than I am in attempting to write Matthew McCormick.)

Here, have a snippet of that story, since I dug it out. :)

--

Apparently the afterlife starts with an awful headache and a strange sense of having his ears plugged with wax, though at least there's no other pain to be noticed. Vin pries his eyes open after a moment, looking up at blue sky, green leaves, and a patient-looking Matthew. Perhaps he's wrong about the being dead part of things, though he remembers the gut-shot, and the bullet that left him starting to drown in his own blood. There must have been another shot after, to put him out of his misery before he died that agonizing death.

"Thanks," he murmurs after a moment, once he's sure he can breathe enough to speak. He's not sure what Matthew did, though he wonders if he can't help someone who's dying with whatever it is that heals him. Or if it's something else that's why Vin isn't dead, and why he still has that odd feeling that's starting to fade from the strange headache and difficulty hearing into something more like his head is stuffed full of cotton.

"You're welcome, though I'm not sure what you're thanking me for," Matthew answers.  Unhooking his canteen, he passes it to Vin.  "Here; drink up.  You've lost a lot of blood, and your body needs liquids to replace it."  He'd been hoping that both Vin and Ezra would survive until the war ended, mostly because the middle of a war is no place to try training a student.

"Savin' me, or not leavin' me behind for dead." Vin takes the canteen, taking a long sip of the water, though he doesn't try to drink too much down. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he shrugs. "Whichever fits."

Since he can't tell which one's the better fit to be thanking Matthew for, not until he figures out what's happened since he was shot. It's nice not to be dead, but he's still not sure quite why, or how.

"I didn't save you," Matthew tells him.  "You died."  He's always hated explaining Immortality to new Immortals, and he really isn't looking forward to Vin's reaction.  Vin is a practical man -- and Immortality is anything but.

Whatever it was, then, wasn't something Matthew did. And it certainly hadn't been anything like whatever healed Matthew before this, because he's been injured before, and not healed any faster than anyone else might. "Ok."

He takes another sip of water, hoping that maybe enough water would make the headache fade entirely. If nothing else, it's worth trying.

Matthew's seen new Immortals fall into hysterics, or try to deny what they are, or even rejoice in it.  He's never seen anyone take the thought of dying and returning to life nearly as calmly as Vin.

A new day, a new year, and here's to it being a better one overall than the previous one.

Despite people still setting off fireworks after one am, I slept well. Because ear buds that actually stay in my ears are fantastic. (The cord from them goes up over my ear instead of dangling down, and thus, there's an extra line of securing it.)

I got words yesterday, also, so have a snippet. Magnificent Seven (TV show), Seven Legends AU (and the incident Buck is apologizing for again is not a canon one, but otherwise is uncertain):

JD shifts to sit up a little further. "Do you know who your father is?"

Buck laughs, grinning sharp and dangerous and happy and bright all at once. "Of course I do. Not exactly intent on calling his attention right now. Or any of them. The rest of you don't need that, not at the moment."

"If they come here from Olympus, I might shoot them." Chris's voice is rougher than usual, like he's trying to gargle with gravel. "I remember last time."

"I said I was sorry about that." Buck grimaces a moment, before tilting his head to study Chris. "At least it was already rock here."

"And will be until it all erodes away." Chris flexes his hands, looking unblinkingly at the talons still there for a long moment before he carefully picks the blanket out from between them and sets it aside. The talons don't vanish the way Ezra's eyes went back to normal, and the scales are still present, but at least so is Chris.