updating

My laptop computer at home died last night and I won’t have money to take it to for repair until at least next week. It will probably be good for me to have a full weekend offline, but it means no updates or comment approvals here and no new pictures moving to flickr. I’m still not making much use of this blog so that isn’t much of a loss, but I wanted to throw a few things out before disappearing out of the ether.

I read the latest volume of Fruits Basket a few weeks ago and I had no idea how rusty my comics-reading skills had gotten. Not only did I have only vague recollections of who the various Zodiac members were, but my eyes didn’t want to leap from panel to panel in any comfortable way. I had to drag myself along, forcing the understanding. It really was like translating from a language you read with awkward fluency, searching for just how things fit so you can piece them together into some sort of tentative meaning. I do realize I’m still more fluent in manga than, say, classical Greek, but it was disconcerting. And I don’t think an American comic would have been much better. I think I’ve just fallen out of the habit of reading pictures.

I’m not all words all the time, though. I ought to be tracking my Netflix use. We watched My Flesh and Blood, which I’ve wanted to see for a long time and which I can’t praise highly enough. It’s an unsentimental view of a woman raising 13 children, 9 of whom (I think) came to her through special needs adoption. I follow the world of special needs adoption on blogs and in public policy very closely these days because I think it might be where I’m headed, but I was thrilled and inspired by Susan Tom’s handling of the linguistic politics and day-to-day realities of her life, not to mention totally in love with all the kids. There’s a beautiful clarity in it, at least for me, made all the more clear by the obvious pain shown.

I should probably get some categories going here if I’m going to make it a useful, functioning blog instead of whatever it is now. I’m writing weekly and that’s that, but eventually it should be more. In my livejournal I went with the six gifts of womanhood Emer exemplified: “beauty, a gentle voice, sweet words, wisdom, skill at needlework and chastity.” Everything I talk about in myself seems to fall into discussing either my success or failure on one or more of those fronts. Here things might be bigger, though.

Since I haven’t discusses any of my needlework here, I’ll say that I’ve got a Sadie-based sweater being seamed up now, though I’ll need to find a zipper to install in it. I’m also a sleeve away from something that started as Ubernatural but is a long-sleeved v-neck pullover. It may be quite a while, given the computer situation, before I can finish them up and have A. take some pictures of me and have a knitting post up here, but I’m looking forward to that. Since it’s 90+ degrees out today and I’m working with wool, I guess there’s no hurry in any practical sense.

I’ll be spending time with my family for my dad’s birthday this weekend. I’m looking forward to having all three brothers in one place. That only happened once over the summer, and it should be plenty of goofy fun.