The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I did dishes, I did a load of laundry, I got the Goodwill all bagged up and I made cornbread (this is all shirei_shibolim's fault) and I have just one more load of laundry to do before I leave and that's mostly the clothes I'll have been wearing to work.

We ate so much cornbread growing up, I think it's a wonder we didn't get pellagra. My mother's recipe was extremely simple -- cornmeal, salt, baking powder, egg, oil, water -- and she'd make a 13x9 sheet pan and we'd eat that with sweet potatoes for as long as it held out.

Ew.

So it took me some years of relative economic stability to go near cornbread again. Or maybe it was just that Sherman didn't serve cornbread, so I had some enforced years' separation from the foodstuff.

But. Anyway. I like it once again. Just don't make me eat the stale corner-crumbs with milk poured over.

To do today:
EVERYTHING ELSE WAH.

I am suited.

I have a suit.

60% Clearance how we love thee.

It's black, and the pants have a very nice drape and are the proper length, and the jacket is -- well, it's a single-breasted suit jacket, rather on the boxy side, but actually fitted, which is not something I can say about the rest of my wardrobe. I look like I have a figure, and I am pleased. The shop didn't, for whatever reason, stock any shells or even turtleneck shirts to wear underneath, but...

I dunno. Harness me into a decent brassiere and I actually appear unslouchy. I was impressed. I think I look moderately good -- in the sense that no one of my build looks stunning in a two-piece bog-standard black suit, so I'm happy -- and I spent $58.98 to do it.

Clothes one would wear to an interview for a government clerk position are rather expensive, have you noted? Trop cher! said the Selkie, inwardly, her eyebrows racing toward her hairline, as she hastily put back that pair of trousers...

Also, to the designers of trousers for the larger lady: stop putting pockets on dress slacks. Right now. What do they think we need pockets in a pair of silk-rayon business trousers for, to keep an emergency Hershey bar in?! Yes, pockets are useful, but they pooch out. They look awful. I tried on slacks two sizes larger than fit me, and the pockets still pooched out. Ditto faux zippers and other cute 'details' designed to make it look like there are pockets when there aren't any. That little black zipper pull with the rhinestone on it doesn't do anything but pooch out.

My khaki-cotton work trousers and my denims have pockets. For heaven's sake I don't need them on my interview trousers; I'll keep my subway pass and my Hershey bar in my purse.

darthrami here. Selkie asked me to let everybody know that she'll be MIA until Thursday evening because, well, essentially, her aunt is a psycho hose beast. And I don't say that with any sort of positive connotation whatsoever.

So. No IM, no e-mail, no LJ. If anybody wants to let her know anything, drop a link here, or IM or e-mail me, and I'll make sure she finds out. And the next you hear from her, she'll have landed safely down here.

I don't know when I will be able to get on again before Thursday night, as my beloved said; perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not at all.

So I'm nearly all packed; the only reason I'm not all all packed is because I am bad at deciding things. Some clothes are to be used as padding for my possessions, most are going in my cases and being checked by the airline -- but which? Yeah, so I'm looking at the piles grimly. la_rainette, I feel your pain.

I found my copy of Ballet Shoes, and when I picked it up and flicked through it, I discovered I couldn't put it down again. This is a book I will read aloud to my children someday; like A Little Princess, passages from it sometimes come unbidden into my head when I am feeling very un-grown-up. So yeah, take away my computer and I knock out 300-page children's classics. It is a wonderful book. It's sort of old-fashioned, but well-told, with a distinct and matter-of-fact voice right out of a Proper British Interbellum Childhood. It was the book that made me realise that if you have got a talent at one thing, then all you can sensibly do about it is follow, and keep to your craft, and... I don't know. It expressed very well for me the idea that sometimes art is what you have to do. You don't think about it being any other way. And that's the way it was for me and writing, even when I was seven or eight years old and in hospital. I had so many stories in my head. They were waiting and clamoring. Can't explain it. And I read this damn book so many times the covers cracked and fell off. It has traveled with me since I was eight and all my travels began. It's traveling with me again.

When I read it to my kids I'll do all the voices, Pauline and Gum and Theo and Nana. And has anyone ever noticed how Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith lived together, shared dishes and glassware, took all their holidays jointly and sent telegrams and birthday-presents together?

Yeah. This book groomed me for lesbian marriage but good.