Horrid Wonderful Treats From My Childhood.

SUMMARY: And sometimes adulthood.

Nope, no house posts for a while. So much for Every Day.

BUT MEANWHILE I ran across this fun post about childhood favorites that lose their luster and just had to write my response. Here:

Wow, my childhood in a nutshell!

We loved Wonder bread. Best thing about it was that we’d peel off the crust, break the white part into small pieces, and roll them into tiny hard balls of … white stuff. So much fun to eat that way. Although the slices were also great slathered with a super thick layer of peanut butter. I haven’t bought this bread in decades and intend to keep it that way.

Hostess cupcakes–astonishingly I still love an occasional package of the orange ones. Why? I don’t know, but I do. Good thing they have about 10,000 calories each so it makes it easy to justify not buying them except in a cupcake emergency.

Kool-Aid, YESSS!! We always had a container of green Kool-Aid in the family fridge. All the kids knew that we were the place to go to get a cold glass of green Kool-Aid. I kept it up after I moved out until I was about 23, by which time I was a full-on Mug RootBeer in stumpy glass bottles addict. The next time I got around to making the Kool-Aid…. ugh. Haven't made it in decades, I don't think.

Oreos–the only ones I can handle are the fudge-covered mint-filled ones. Those, I can suck down a container full in the blink of my tongue. So bad, so good.

Necco wafers: I still love them. Why? Not sure. Maybe they taste of childhood? I just about danced in circles around the retro-candy-brands store last week [I left my phone at home! So no photos!] when I saw that they carried them! (I had heard they’d been discontinued.) I went through the roll in a day. Maybe I’ll go back for another in a few weeks. Some things just can’t be explained.

A Place for Family Treasures

SUMMARY: Books. Dogs. Bookends. To start with, anyway.

6:00 PM October 2, 2021. How can it possibly be getting dark this early already?

I'm typing away at the computer on my desk, trying to concentrate. But there's a niggling something at the edge of my consciousness. And finally I look off to the right of my bright, large monitor into the gloaming, and...

… something is staring at me with horrific wide white eyes from the shadows in the bookcase across this darkening room.

See it there on the top shelf, leaning against the little dark blue books? (Below the boxes, to the right of the vacuum handle?)

Let’s take a closer look, since the phone zoom is worthless.

Holy wow! Those aren’t his big buggy eyes!

They are his mustaches! Old friend of a friend.

He is nestling up to a collection of poetry in a set of books belonging to my great grandmother originally (My dad’s mom’s mom). 

Who is Betty?  Might be my grandmother, but no one called her that in my lifetime.
My great-grandmother?
Who is Glossie (seems vaguely familiar?) ?
Time to call on my Sisterclan hivemind! 
So I don't have to actually do the research myself.

And apparently my grandmother and her sister Hap were more or less bitterly divided about the fact that grandma inherited the books and Hap didn’t. (I don’t know: when I knew them, they were good friends and bought houses in Arizona in the same retirement town even though they were both from back east.) 

I was not the only sister who wanted them, but whatever negotiations we did, I brought them home. And have I opened them since I brought them home? I have no idea, but I like having them where I can see them easily. I do think about their growing fragility. The pages still cling tightly, but the spines are sketchy. I handle them with loving care when I touch them. We can keep aging, together.

They always held a prominent place of honor in my parents' living room. Dad had a set of bookends, wood, one of which was a large R and one of which was a large L. Those always… yes, bookended… those books. 

See the "R" and "L" around these books, top shelf?

And I have no idea whence those bookends came. Were they originally dad's, or were they his father’s? A gift? (I'm guessing yes on that.) So many things that I never asked and that they never wrote down. Unless that’s in the anecdotal history that dad wrote.

And... which sister took the bookends home? They were always around these books (at least since the late '70s), so I should've spirited them away when no one was looking, heh heh heh.  Of course... I already have several warehouses full of bookends plus a plethora of items that make fine book-holder-uppers, such as this little guy.

But I do know whence came the dog: My best friend since junior high. It was her Dad's and it reminds her of him. They lived together in their spacious-enough home until he died around 90, so I also knew him for a long time; not well, because he wasn't usually around when we were hanging out, but still. He had a lovely sense of humor. He was a "collector" and she's a minimalist, so she has spent time over a few years purging things. She knows I love dogs and asked whether I could rehome him--and I certainly could. Who could turn down that face? Another permanent member of the household.

So many treasures and memories, none of which will likely matter in any way to the next generation. Unless I collect these stories into a book and deliver it to all. Another project for retirement.

Random Notes on Music and Love at First Sight

SUMMARY: While reading fan fiction online

Started from a comment I left on this chapter   In Feb 2021 (and started this post March 3, 2021). (Finished July 14, '21.)

This fan fiction was for Captive Prince, a trilogy that I am newly (March 2020) a fan of, but that I suspect has only a certain demographic of fans. Auguste is one of the characters.

About that music

I had music in my life from my earliest memories. We always had instruments in the house, including an old crappy piano. My mom still sometimes got out her old cello and played a bit, very rusty. She played the piano, too. Advanced beginner level, I'd say. I liked to pick at playing it, too: major symphonies such as Chopsticks.

In the fourth grade, I learned to play flute and how to read music. 

And I was always in the choir in most of elementary school and high school. (And in the Sunday School choir, too, I suppose simply by being there. I remember singing songs in the church at Christmas: "I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown...".)

And in band in elementary school, junior high, high, and college.

I told the story's author, "I know so many of the composers’ names and the titles of music from your story so far. I love how you weave music all through it." Told me that all those years of playing and listening to (I have albums, as did my parents...) so-called classical music paid of in a deeper experience when reading this.

This is not the albums I was referring to. But I have this, too.

I also said that I laughed out loud when I read: “Choosing a song from Don Giovanni isn’t exactly the proper way to get a girlfriend, Auguste.”  But one has to know Don Giovanni to appreciate that line in the story more fully. Fully pleased with myself.

About that love at first sight thing

Because love-at-first-sight was something that happened in the story, that I believe one of the characters didn't believe in, I noted that I believe in love at first sight. Not because it has happened to me, because it hasn’t. But I saw it happen to two male friends and their now-wives exactly the way you describe Auguste. 

Friend#1, on the day we arrived at the University 300 miles from home, while I and friend#2 were up in the dorm room putting things away, went downstairs to drive his truck to the proper parking lot. He didn’t come back for an hour; should've been about 10 minutes.  He finally walked back into the room with starry eyes and said, as I recall, “I think I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.” After chatting with a freshman girl in the parking lot. And he did. And they’re still married. After – – 40+ years? we certainly teased him originally. 

My left arm is on friend#1; his new girlfriend's (now also a friend) left arm is on me.
Friend#2 is in the center.

But then, eight years later, it happened to friend#2, too! We were long-time friends who had also ended up working at the same company.  Over the weekend, he went to a party that included a few mutual friends. He arrived at work Monday morning, and said, "I think I’m in love." The first time they met. This is a guy who had hardly ever even dated anybody. They’ve been married now for about 38 years.

The latter couple (friend#2) with rabbit ears behind him) came to visit maybe 15 years later
with their three kids. (Me on left in colorful shirt.)

Love and music?

When I hear music, I often feel many emotions. Some evoke the feeling of love.

When I think of love at first sight, I think of music. I blame the movies. ("Love at First Sight {A Montage of Movie/TV Couples}")

And that pretty much sums up life, doesn't it?

Sister and me at Mountain Winery for a Moody Blues Concert

Back in the day

Keeping My Young Self Off the Streets and Out of the Gutter

SUMMARY: Or: What creative things did I do?

Backfill: from a FB discussion July 11, 2021

A friend posted: 

"What time-consuming but creative thing did you do as a child/teen?" She gave the example of her daughter and friends creating a mystery movie, complete with dramatic cuts, etc.  And of her own childhood where she harmonized with herself using two tape players, and also created fake interviews where the answers were all lines from songs (sourcing from a phonograph with records!)

So, other than practicing my flute, taking flute lessons, practicing some more, being in the band, and sometimes playing just for the fun of it -- oh, and choir, too-- here's a quick [maybe] summary.  

(I've posted some of these photos before.)

• Drew.

  

  part of a colored-pencil picture

  
  
• Crafted things. Anything. Clay, paper, glue, beads, jewelry...)
  

• Painted or colored by numbers (mostly of dogs but also The Monkees).
• Painted and assembled models of World War I aircraft.
• Role-playing with friends; you know: cowboys and Indians  (or bad guys), superheroes, pirates, army...
  

• Art Club in junior high. (High school was too full of band, choir, speech and debate, drama club and involvement in performances (as long as that was available) and creative writing club.)
  
• Sewed.
• Wrote tiny bits of short stories. Mostly never finished any until I started making a serious effort late in high school, I think.

(In 4th  grade, got a bad grade on one paper where the assignment was to write about “if I were president“ because I went all nonsense, letting my imagination run wild as a fourth grader who wasn’t very happy with that particular class. (I never said anything about the teacher. I did say that I would do away with all schools. A long long time before I heard “hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!“) She said, "that's a bit silly, isn't it?"  I thought, well, duh... (although "duh" wasn't invented yet). Funny: after that, she became the school librarian instead of a teacher, and she was a wonderful wonderful elementary school librarian! My other teachers usually loved my writing.)

I still love doing all those things. But then, you know, photography, dog agility, blogging, facebook, ...

What time-consuming but creative thing did you do as a child/teen?

Years after, remnants of a shirt I sewed as a HS sophomore.

Ceramic trivets, jr. high

Late elementary school years -- I painted this computer, complete with little lights (or pushbuttons) and maybe blinking displays for Bad and Good?  I had actually seen a tape drive.
(The box, which Dad built for us, is not distorted; that's a trick of the angle and the lighting.)

High school I think.

'90s era

What I've mostly concentrated on in the 2000s: My photography.

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Ellen - note to self -- there's an HTML comment embedded from here XX to here xx.

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I Count 3030

SUMMARY: I've blogged how many times?!

Backfill: date

Yesterday, blogger friend Dawn posted on her Change Is Hard site: Time Warp. In it, she muses on her history in blogging, and how in July of 2014 she had already posted 1500 times. Which got me thinking, which is always dangerous.

Like her, I have met many people through their blogs across the continent--reading, commenting, conversing, reading their comments on mine--and eventually meeting three of them in person, including Dawn. Seems so recent, yet that was 10 (ten!) years past. I need to jump into my Winnebago and start driving for more visits!

If only I had a Winnebago.

A friend's equivalent, when I visited in 2018

But I digress (as is my wont).

This makes my 3,030th Taj MuttHall post. Is it cheating to get to that number with a post about the number? I claim Not Cheating: All's fair in love and blogging.

3030 is a lot of blogging.  From my first post on August 5, 2002, when Remington earned his NATCH (his only championship), to the next post on August 26 in which Tika has her first-ever competition run and Remington exhibits sickness for the first time (won't know it's cancer for a couple more months), and I was off and running as a blogger of dogs and dog agility.

Not being one to miss an opportunity, I started rescuing text about my dogs and dog agility from old emails and Backfilling them into the blog-- for example, this post dated May 5, 1994, which looks like the first post, but I actually posted it on October 20, 2004  from an email from 5/5/94.   (Once upon a time I created the tag #backfilled for all posts that I've done like this--but I've never applied it to all the really old ones! Another blogger project for my imminent retirement.)

I don't know whether there is a way to count back to find my 1000th or 2000th posts, but I can count back using my fingers and toes and my fingers again to my 3000th back in April, discussing divesting myself of agility equipment, which dovetails nicely with the first posts in 2002, as it's where I'm really realizing that I'm transitioning out of agility. ...Probably.

Along the way, I also started posting about my past, my photography, my travel, my food (!so cliché), my family, health, hiking, happiness, my rewritten lyrics to songs or poems, and so much more. Invented my alias Human Mom (first occurrence in June, 2006). Created around a thousand tags (see sidebar). A real olio.

I'm not sure where this blog will head from here on out. Will I find a better way to tag or organize things? Will I start a different blog for travel, for photography, for humor...?

Unknown. But I hope to see you all here, there, or anywhere.

The Happiest Day of Your Life

SUMMARY: Which day was it?

Inspiration: Facebook June 22, 2021

A friend asked: "What was the best day of your life? You cannot count the birth of your kids."

I thought for a long time.

I'm not sure that it’s possible to define that. It would have to be something so amazing that nothing like it has ever happened before and nothing like it has ever happened since. But that would be just kind of sad, wouldn't it? Just one day like that? 

But maybe I simply haven’t had astounding-enough life-changing moments. Such as suddenly being freed from prison after having been wrongly convicted? Or someone you loved dearly was presumed dead and then suddenly you found them? Winning a presidential election? Didn’t know.  Would those be the happiest day of your life or would they be merely be anticlimatic or a huge relief after everything leading up to it? 

How about ending up with a house full of bendy aliens? Oh--well--that's pretty fun, but over and over. 

I can think of many days or times where happiness and contentment welled up within me and stayed with me throughout the day:

• Lying against a warm granite boulder in a sunny high Sierra Meadow next to a stream.(Picture me here (lounging and holding camera). Paradise!) 

• Sitting on the grass at an agility trial with several friends and laughing so hard we couldn’t stop. 
• Completing an important title in agility with one of my dogs that had been a struggle for us. 
• Arriving at Disneyland. Spending time there. Even just strolling. 
• Going on trips with my camera as companion and taking photos and just spending the time looking around and taking things in. 
• Learning that I was accepted to the Clarion West writers workshop. 
• Pulling off a successful surprise party.
• Winning a debate in a competition against a top-level opponent. 
• Watching an amazing sunrise or sunset with a lovely foreground as well.
• Walking or hiking early, at dawn, with my dogs and no one else around.
• Passing clever notes back and forth with a friend between classes as we walk past each other.
• Rereading something I've written and realizing that it's very good.
• Spending Christmas Day with my large family.
• Solving a problem at work that others weren't able to.
• Helping a dog learn something new and useful and cool and suddenly s/he gets it.

Once I started thinking, more and more things came to mind. Lots of happier-than-everyday days in my life. But I don’t know if any of the hundreds of days like that stands out from the rest. Which is fine by me: That means that I have had a steady influx of happy days over my many decades.

How about you?

• When I completed my college degree. 

I are bachelor of science!
No more pencils, no more books...
Sister is also happy with me.

T-Shirt Tuesday Tales: My Guilty Reading Pleasure...

T-shirt tales—Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Tell me more. or Read all t-shirt tales

SUMMARY: ... pronounced "obsession".

Posted on Tumblr April 19, 2021. Written primarily for others in the world of fan fiction and particularly fans of these specific books...

Ack! I missed my Captive Prince anniversary date (3/16/20). 

Title: My Captive Prince   (and AO3 and Tumblr and reading and writing and fanfic and......)  History  (roughly reconstructed): The long version

• [Read about the t-shirt somewhere below...]

Reading background before CP:

• My whole life: Reading reading reading. Owning thousands of books, a large part sci fi/fantasy. Two bookcases full of books yet unread. Subscription to Asimov’s magazine, my favorite. And more.
• fiction with “real” sex: had read a few gratuitous not well-written paperbacks, when bored back in the ‘70s. Never wanted to read more.
• fan fiction: had read only a few amateur things, not well-written, I think Star Trek, in the mid-’80s [yes, on paper]. Never wanted to read more.
• Encountered OTP and “slash” terms maybe 2010, read a couple--shrug. “Just more fan fiction.” Never wanted to read more.
• Romance fiction: Might have read 3 or 4 dozen over the years. Most I didn’t like or even gave up in the  middle because of not good writing or plotting.

Writing background:

Started pursuing fiction writing in mid-’80s, attended conferences and lectures and a year in a weekly critiquing class at a local JC, and started a writers’ group [in person, yes] and participated for years with my own things. Sent out story after story to markets--lots of rejections, but then started getting higher and higher awards in the Writers of the Future competition and some *nice personalized* rejections from editors. 

Drove to Idaho from CA for a week-long writing workshop in1995.  In 1998, spent 6 weeks in Seattle at Clarion West.  I sold a couple of short stories and a poem to paying markets (pro and semipro). Then I discovered dog agility in 1996 and somehow that led to the end of  my writing pursuits, to which I had devoted most of my attention for 15 years. Doh. But, still: Books. Fiction. Writing.

Footnote: Also started this blog to be about my dogs in dog agility. Pffft.

(Now I've done no agility since 2014. Nor writing since 1998...  but wait for it...)

Early March, 2020: Finding images. Pandemic!  While using Google image search for something like “captive prince chains”--Don’t ask--amazed and surprised how many images came up.  Kept searching and searching for days--so many cool images! Including the Japanese cover for this book. Which hit all the right buttons for me. 

March 16, 2020: Ordered the book Eventually it became clear, aha! the book is titled Captive Prince. Jackpot! Because I...was searching for captive princes... don’t ask. I read the synopsis, looked possible, and ordered only the first and only as an e-book. Because--what if it’s as badly written as 50 Shades of Gray? Or worse?

March 16/17, 2020: Reading reading reading can't stop! OMG it matched so so so many things in my own internal fictional world!  and a bonus: amazing UST from the beginning, too. That I never knew that I even needed to have in fiction. OK, then.

Footnote: My internal fictional world: Hrm. might or might not ever discuss.

March 18, 2020: Ordered the next 2 ebooks as fast as my fingers could fly.

March 19, 2020: Fourth book! Desperate for more Captive Prince or other works by the author. ...Desperate barely begins to describe it. And then I found The Summer Palace and Other Stories. fourth book in the group. Ordered as an ebook. Read that, too.

March 20, 2020: Images like crazy. OMG searching again. Started collecting links to many many many of the online fan art, now that I knew what was going on. And so much of it excellent ... (but this was just fan stuff; how could it be excellent? do artists do this sort of thing just for fun?)...

And started reading the series again. And again. And again. And again and again and....  [link, brief mention at the beginning] then, reading things I started finding on Tumblr, and then...

April 22, 2020: Joined AO3. Because a link to this came up in Tumblr and it caught me; I wanted to read more. Fanfiction?! Writing quite good--storytelling, too [not the same thing]. How could that be? Do good writers do this sort of thing just for fun? This one, a modern AU (alternative universe) playing out the same three novels, yet keeping true to the original characters and story arc.

Footnote: Not sure whether readers would enjoy these fictions 

nearly as much if they haven't already read the CP originals. However, whatever.

April 23, 2020: Tumblr and Twitter. I’ve had accounts for years, but have barely done anything in either--mostly just following links. On this day, I sent an online junkie friend a request for help in how to find people and things in both places because I was struggling and craving more art and more fiction and it had become clear that the world veritably teems with Captive Prince artifacts.

Footnote: Friend is not a drug junkie. She's an online junkie of sorts.

Most of Spring and Summer 2020: Reading more and more fanfic AND learning SO much about fanfic and about the vocabulary for that and for M/M fiction and for sex-related things and how to use and navigate AO3...so much to learn.

Footnote: The m/m fiction essay was written by a friend who is also quite a successful author. No self-publishing here that I'm aware of. A smart woman; always has been. I found it, as a writer, to be interesting on its own subject (who's qualified to write what).

May 4, 2020: My first Tumblr comment.  Have been reading CaPri fanfic voraciously for a few weeks, and finding more in Tumblr. No interest in commenting; I just wanted to read and stay anonymous. Might have clicked Kudos. Or not. But on this date, I posted my first comment to someone's post. Somewhat reluctantly, because I wasn’t interested in discourse. But the fiction was so good. My 2nd comment on something wasn’t until July 2. After that, commented regularly.

May 7, 2020: Clothing! Found Forest Elf Fancies artist! And asked for this custom t-shirt from his existing Vere and Akielos designs.  (Never have I had t-shirts for characters from specific fiction among the 250-ish that I remember ever having in my greedy little hands.)

 May 18: Arrived!  Yowza! I am all in now.  ...As if full immersion, week after week, of nothing but Damen of Akielos and Laurent of Vere didn't already have me all in.

Yes, it's a selfie of me in a mirror,
reflected in a mirror again.

July 16, 2020: AO3 bookmarking. On this date, I created my first AO3 bookmark--a bunch, actually, probably of things I’d read. Erk, I'm falling unwillingly/willingly into another universe and community. Resented it a bit, but still--wanted to be able to re-find the stories.

On Tumblr, unknown 2020 date: "Follow"ed my first person. Wasn’t ever going to do more than a few, because: I already have FaceBook, thank you very much. 

Footnote: As of April 19, 2021, I’m following 37 people, almost all of whom post frequently related to CaPri.

Unknown 2020 date: started reblogging tumblr posts from others. Fiction, images, links, comments, quotes, observations, all about Captive Prince. Partially to share, partially to keep my favorites in my Tumblr feed for easier retrieval.

Footnote: As of April 20 '21, I have reblogged over 200 items-- so, not quite as quick-retrieval as I had envisioned way back then.

The rest of 2020: Reading reading reading AO3 and Tumblr related to CapRi. My other reading life slammed to a halt back in March. How is there such good writing so many times in fan fiction? How is there so much good sex? Forget about all those hundreds of unread books I already own--

Around January 1, 2021: Tumbler participation. Gulp. First added a comment to a discussion on Tumblr. Don't want the discourse! Leave me alone!

Around January 14, 2021: First posted an original thing (a short observation) on Tumblr. Started posting like this more often. Maybe weekly on average? OMG started plotting Captive Prince stories in my head! I’m too busy for this sort of thing! Don’t give in! Feb 12, 2021: Apparently I gave in. Posted my first original short fiction on Tumblr. Although it's written as a prequel to another writer's short fic. Have done two more since.  Plus, observations (like this one), discourse...  

Am I ...  writing? ... fiction? What could possibly be next?

The Akielon Lion. Banner of the ancient-Greek-like Akielos, home of the Okton (sport of kings)
 and of Damianos (Damen), crown prince.
(Should be gold on red, but since t-shirts are only one color...) 

The gold starburst on blue of the Crown Prince of 14th-century-France-ish Vere, Laurent,
who makes an ally at castle Chastillon,
home of the finest hunting for "sanglier,
a northern breed that was larger, with longer tusks on the male."