So, you know that feeling when you're just walking along the street, not thinking about much of anything except how the temperature's dropped forty degrees since day-before-yesterday, and then your brain goes "hey look it's a chicken"?



It's the part where this KEEPS HAPPENING TO ME that I just don't even, man. Either civilisation is collapsing faster than I thought or I'm some sort of freakish chicken-magnet. I considered trying to capture it, since it let me get close enough that I could probably just have picked it up, but I don't exactly have anywhere to put a chicken and anyway I think the condo board would really get their collective noses out of joint over that.

When last seen the chicken had crossed the road (...I KNOW RIGHT) and seemed to be being asked into the car of a man who had stopped to watch me taking pictures of it. I'd have called Chicken Protective Services, but I have no idea who that might be.

Tags: photo-post, this_so-called_life_of_mine, wildlife
feeling: confused

Still arguing with Proposed Story, for values of arguing that include that uneasy feeling of having retreated to our respective rooms to brood about the last attempt at communication and wonder if it would be too awkward to run into each other if we both ventured out to go to the can at the same moment. But in other Muse-related news, I turned around the other day and realized that I think I've been sitting on the Main Project's "elevator pitch" all along:

Paranormal bromance -- a supernatural-roommates story that focuses on how living with that circumstance would inform a modern life: How do you shave when you have no reflection? If you turn into a wolf in the city do you need to bring someone along to scoop your poop? Would you get fired for eating your annoying boss?

Not that I have any elevators to pitch this in at the moment, but there's something to be said for having at least found a jumping-off point to start explaining WTF it is that I'm doing, here...

Tags: fiction_and_sausages
feeling: aggravated

We have (something resembling) proper visual confirmation of turtles:



The little guy on the log there was one of three probable painted turtles, while the blob in the water proper that looks like a hubcap is A SNAPPING TURTLE THE SIZE OF FREAKIN' GAMERA. This is the mink's snag below the bridge, which I keep checking in the hopes that it made it through the flood, but now I wonder if Gamera there just bloody ate him. I pity the Park District the next time they come to try to clear up that bend, man...

Tags: photo-post, wildlife
feeling: scared

Still going around and around with the Proposed Story on the question of the validity of the Narrator's motivations, vis-a-vis agency and gender-roles. Currently the hangup is that she seems to have dropped her work on a big External Emergency to come home and deal with a smaller Domestic Emergency; the problem I'm having with this is that I know that that's the choice that would be organic to this character, but I'm not at all sure that there's a way to pull this off in-text that won't automatically read as "oh, Family Concerns snap their fingers and the woman chucks her life to come running".

Is there a way to present her two possible paths as equally valid choices, and also make it clear that the decision to prioritise the domestic crisis at this time isn't being driven by a desire to conform to a woman's "expected" role? The Narrator would be the first in line to call bullshit on the idea that her place is in the home, but at the same time she's faced with a situation there that she not only needs to but wants to deal with...

{sigh} How much do bricklayers make per hour, again?

Tags: fiction_and_sausages
feeling: frustrated

Well, at least this installment is no longer hanging over my head, anyway. Muse does play a long game, yes...

( Trevor and Jason, Vignette #49: ''I'm sorry, man,'' Jason says...Collapse )

Tags: fiction:hiraeth

Weather appears to have temporarily settled down for a spell of OH MY GOD THE DAYSTAR, so Muse decided this was a fine opportunity to make me go outside and take care of a bit of research that I've been putting off for a while now because every other time I've thought of it it's been raining. This almost turned out to have been a Very Bad Idea, because as I was setting an alarm to keep from accidentally getting shut into a cemetery (...don't ask), out of my hands went the phone, cartwheeling across asphalt into a grassy verge; I thought it would be a goner for sure -- but not a scratch on it, and the experience even knocked some sense back into the compass, which has been a little screwy since the last time technology met gravity. And the camera, we can see, is fine:


Hardly the first example of team memorabilia I've seen as a graveside artefact around here, but as blended traditions go...


But we can only hope to go out as dapperly as this guy.

So, score one for dumb luck and unexpectedly rugged engineering. I suppose one of these days I should look into finding a case for the damn thing...

Tags: photo-post
feeling: relieved

So far it's 600 words of rambling grief, random chickens and the fortuitously timely availability of safety-razors, but I think I'm starting to find the voice for the Proposed Story. It's at the frustrating stage where now I can see the overall structure and roughly what goes where when, but the individual images don't have words coming through as fast as I'd really like; but words are starting to attach themselves to one another and precipitate out of solution, so I'm more encouraged that there's really a story somewhere inside this particular chunk of marble Muse has dragged in and set up. Y'all try to make me leave the worries over what sort and how long until later on in the game for once, will you...?

(Oh, and it has acquired a title I like better than "Women Standing In Kitchen, with occasional Vampire". Also, for Muse, a good sign, even if it's another one that's going to confuse the hell out of people and autocorrects...)

Tags: fiction_and_sausages
feeling: cautiously optimistic

( Trevor and Jason, Vignette #48: I go round Jill's in the morning...Collapse )

Tags: fiction:hiraeth
feeling: hoping not to get hit by a bus

Fed the cats the other morning and went out of the room for about ten minutes. When I came back into the kitchen, Snip leapt up onto the counter and began making a case that she hadn't been fed in, um, ever, and was in imminent danger of a gruesome death by starvation.

While she was licking the grease off her whiskers.

And there was still half a can of gooshyfood left on their plate.

So I told her, in all seriousness, "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"

Snip was not impressed.

Tags: pop_culture_babylon, this_so-called_life_of_mine
feeling: amused

Proposed Story now has something resembling an outline, or at least a complete sequence of events from inciting incident to resolution, even if one line does read, in its entirety, "PROFIT!". (I believe that this may be Muse's code for "insert happymarriedsexyfuntiemz here".) This is weird for me, because it's not usually how I work, but apparently all that remains is to chase down 3-7k of actual words and see what it looks like when they're all glued together in some sort of an order...

Tags: fiction_and_sausages
feeling: anxious