You know you want to…

You should have a nap.

It’s been a long week. You deserve it.

The week’s hardly begun and you’re already tired. How will you get through to Saturday without a little rest?

This time, start the week off right. Nap now, energy tomorrow. Logic.

You should have a nap.

There’s housework around the corner, so now’s the time to have a rest.

You’ll fold that pile of laundry tonight so what’s a little break now?

How can you possibly get all that housework done in one day anyway?

You should have a nap.

It’s only 2pm. You can get the rest of your work done before dinner.

It’s almost dinner, might as well have a snooze. Start fresh after.

It’s late anyway. Go to bed now and get up bright and early tomorrow.

It’s still early, the day doesn’t start until after lunch anyway.

And the cats are already settled on your legs.

You should have a nap.

1

It started with gerbils. Nothing says destruction like a pet that must constantly chew on things or its teeth will grow through its head — and I had several of them. They reduced a plastic mouse wheel to nest lining in three days. Also every single shirt I owned had rodent-sized bite marks all over the cuffs and collars. There is probably photographic evidence of this in all my elementary school photos.

2

My magnificent hound would do anything to make sure you loved her, and would look utterly devastated if she gave you cause to scold her. That did not, however, stop her from making a handy snack of a silk blouse, and eviscerating a rather expensive bra, among other things.

3

I once had a collection of classic Coca Cola glasses. Nothing fancy, but they were that good, sturdy, old fashioned green glass. Over the course of eight months, the husband’s cat systematically knocked every single one of them off counters and tables.

4

I named my cat Heathcliff. I should have expected the rest. Aside from such affectionate tortures as kneading my flesh in the middle of the night, this cat has a thing for cords. A kitten-mouth-sized chunk of wire sat in the middle of the floor one morning. It came from the Wii motion sensor bar, which he had efficiently snipped in two. We ordered a replacement bar. We found another (slightly larger) mouth-sized chunk of wire on the floor one day. All told, we went through three bars before switching to wireless. I learned to solder phone cords and got pretty handy with electrical tape..

5

We adopted the Queen of Destruction. A cat who turns envelopes into confetti in thirty seconds. A cat who perforated every inch of dry kibble bags to get inside, and then perforated every inch of the tupperware containers we transferred the kibble to. A cat who would rather rip a box to pieces than hide in it, and approaches the task with methodical precision. She snipped the strings on a set of pull blinds, gnawed the heads off every cat toy with a fluffy, feathery head, and bit a hole through a stuffed animal, no longer manufactured, which was newly acquired off eBay.

And then, just the other day, the husband and I were talking about how she hadn’t destroyed — anything she shouldn’t be destroying — in such a long time. What a good kitten.

Then I went into the next room and found this.

That sound where you’re weeping and laughing and cursing yourself all at the same time? Yeah, I still don’t know how to describe it.

So come commiserate with me. What have your pets destroyed?

Love triangles are a funny thing. People love them, or people hate them. I’ve had multiple people tell me, after reading The Hunger Games, that they loved the book, but shame about that whole love triangle thing. Others are filling their social media streams, in the days leading up to the movie, with proclamations of “Team Peeta!” or “Team Gale!”

Both these responses, it seems, are missing the point.

Choosing a team implies pulling for one side or the other of a great conflict. Hoping your horse in the race comes through. Hoping the sports club from your area defeats the sports club from the other area at the match this weekend (yes that is the extent of my sports lingo). It’s Team Frodo vs Team Sauron. Team Harry vs Team Voldemort. It’s not Team Ginny vs Team Cho.

(I have now typed ‘team’ so much that the word looks funny.)

The Hunger Games is Katniss’s story, the story of a girl trying to survive against incredible odds. Catching Fire and Mockingjay as well carry on this same theme, and expand with conflicts I won’t go into with so many new people venturing into the series for the first time as the movie hits theatres. It’s a trilogy of hardship, sacrifice, bravery, trauma, and a deeply flawed character doing the best she can for herself and the people around her. Those people include the baker boy and her poaching buddy, but they also include her family and all the members of District 12, and even her uncertain allies in the arena. This is Katniss’s story, and the ultimate goal is to survive, and maybe, one day, thrive. Romance, she explicitly states at multiple times in the narrative, is a liability right now. Not an option. The person Katniss chooses to attempt a relationship with has no impact on the outcome of the story.

I’ll say that again. The person Katniss chooses to attempt a relationship with has no impact on the outcome of the story.

Katniss’s feelings for Peeta and Gale impact her character, they impact her decisions throughout the story, but her feelings do not, in and of themselves, alter the outcome of the novels or the trilogy as a whole.

Katniss cares deeply for Peeta and Gale, yes, but she also cares deeply for her sister, for all the people she struggles to protect. Her story is not one of being pulled between two rival suitors, but of being pulled between wanting to live and facing death. I know who I’m rooting for in that conflict, and it’s the girl on fire.

The trilogy is, however, a story with a romantic subplot, and those people who feel the love triangle was a waste of time miss the point for two reasons.

Firstly, there is nothing at all wrong with a romance adding a layer of complexity to the story. The feelings Katniss struggles with bring additional depth and conflict to her character, they push her into situations she might otherwise never face, and they bring out the heroism and bravery in her. Without Peeta, there would be no Feast, and we learn a great deal of Katniss’s courage and resourcefulness through that moment and situations like it.

Secondly, and people may disagree with me on this point, this story has no love triangle.

I’m going to borrow from Wikipedia just so we can have a functional ‘definition’ here: “Split-object triangle, where a lover has split their attention between two love objects.” I think that’s what most people mean when they refer to the love triangle in The Hunger Games. It’s like the love triangle in that other fandom with the teams.

Here’s the problem for me though…Katniss rarely, if ever, actually splits her attention and romantic feelings between her two love objects.

[Fair warning here, I will try to avoid spoilers as much as humanly possible, but to illustrate my point, I will have to speak in broad terms about all three books. If you don't want spoilers, just skip down to the grumpy kitty.]

Over the course of all three books, Katniss’s struggling affection comes not as simultaneous desires pulling her in opposite directions. Instead, it comes in waves. In The Hunger Games, Katniss does not even register Gale as a romantic option, and hardly knows where she stands with Peeta. In Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Katniss has stretches of time where she feels a bond with Gale and is hardly on speaking terms with Peeta, then has no contact with Gale and intense contact with Peeta, then no contact at all with Peeta and tons of quality time with Gale, then conflict and hostilities and way bigger priorities than who might be a nice person to spend time with if everyone doesn’t die, then…you get the idea.

This does not in any way resemble a love triangle to me. This resembles the natural cycles of enjoying someone’s company and getting fed up with them or hurt by them, the way all our friends and family and romantic partners can make us, magnified by the backdrop of an incredibly harsh, extreme, dystopic society. Seriously, I can’t think of a single point in the whole trilogy that sincerely feels like two suitors both happy with and wanting to be with the same protagonist at the same time, and that protagonist simultaneously feeling happy with and attracted to both suitors at the same time. And in the end, even the books make it clear it isn’t about a character sitting down and choosing. Vividly so.

Okay, spoilers over.

So what about that other fandom? The one with all the ‘team’ stuff?

For the vast majority of the Twilight series, the love triangle is the point. The big question, the big conflict, is which of these supernatural dudes Bella will choose. Other conflicts, such as the Volturi, are subplots to the main overarching conflict between the three principle characters. The big, fraught question sustaining you through these ever-increasing tomes is, “Who wil she choose?”

The big, fraught question sustaining a reader through The Hunger Games is “How will she survive?”

That’s why I’m on Team Katniss.

And I’m not the only one.

1:35 am: way too tired to focus, should just go to bed

1:39 am: teeth done, now totally awake, back to work!

1:55 am: fart around on interwebs

2:08 am: play Harvest Moon

2:20 am: bed time!

2:22 am: lying in bed…

2:25 am: snowmelt in gutter thumping on the other side of the wall

2:26 am: maybe I should get back into drawing

2:27 am: I’d love to go take some photos right now

2:28 am: the thumping always comes in fives, why does it always come in fives?

2:35 am: hey, if the snow is melting, that means wellington boots soon!

2:45 am: okay, not bed time, interwebs time

2:53 am: no new tweets, emails, status updates

2:58 am: I bet if I sat down right now and wrote a story without thinking, it would be amazing

2:59 am: I bet if I sat down right now and wrote a story without thinking, it would be awful

3:02 am: check twitter, email, facebook, pinterest, no new updates

3:11 am: this would be a great night to go for a walk

3:12 am: no, it really wouldn’t (this decision required absolutely no movement whatsoever)

3:14 am: contemplate fiddling with unstartupable laptop

3:18 am: walked on by cats [highlight of the night]

3:21 am: contemplate learning to fiddle

3:22 am: browse violin for dummies books online

3:23 am: remember ocarina and ocarina sheet music still unlearned in the other room

3:24 am: remember it is the middle of the night and non-awake occupant of the house may not appreciate ocarina practice even if it does involve Zelda songs

3:30 am: swear there’s someone standing in the gap of the open door watching me

3:32 am: attempt to ignore it, but every time I look away I can see someone standing in the hall outside the door

3:33 am: wind picks up and does not help things, house is thumping

3:36 am: seriously every time I look away from the door — GO AWAY HALL CREEPER!

3:41 am: check twitter, email, facebook, pinterest, no updates

3:55 am: hall creeper has grown bored, or eyes are too fuzzy to see that far

4:13 am: once more unto the bed, dear friends, once more

4:35 am: by the power of warm cats, I amzzzzzzzzzz

This is why I'm leaving.

Dear WarCraft,

I thought I made things clear last year when I uninstalled you, but I guess I need to put it in writing. I’ve moved on.

Look, it’s not like I don’t value the time we spent together. It was great! Most of it. It’s just…we both knew this wouldn’t last. We were young. I had never played an MMO before, you were fresh out of beta and had me skating rather than running in Stormwind half the time, but I never complained. We both stuck with it. You got your latency issues under control, and I learned to gank and grind mobs and ((separate my IC from my OOC speech)) like a pro. I still remember when I first stepped out of Northshire Abbey. Elwynn Forest stretched for miles ahead of me, all green and dappled sunlight, and people chatting on General saying thee and thou and “For Lothar!” everywhere I looked and….

You know, I still don’t understand why you had to be so difficult with me over that naming policy thing. I just said the guy’s name was Slimshady and maybe it didn’t fit in a Medieval(ish…the motorcycles still make me–ugh, forget it) roleplay setting, and then you had to go all “This is not affecting your roleplay experience I will not address it don’t ever talk about it again” on me.

But I know, that was early and we were still figuring each other out. I paid for how many more years after that? A lot. It’s not like you made me stay…although the paladin charger was pretty sweet, and Stratholme, and Alterac Valley was awesome…but then there was also the fiasco with the pvp armor, right? I mean, I thought we knew each other by then, and I was gonna go upgrade my set after you raised the level cap past 60, but you had to go and coat Every Single Thing in glowing crystal fragments like some kid who got hold of glitterglue! And then the spikes in Northrend, everything spikes as though poking out eyes was so hot right now. I just…I don’t even know what you were thinking.

You gave me Tyrande Whisperwind, but then you put her in a dress and had some other character run the show. You revamped Sylvanas Windrunner and then had every male character insult and undercut her potential badassery. You…well, you didn’t really give me Jaina Proudmoore at all. You just rendered a huge human mage and told me it was her, and then did absolutely nothing with her except write derogatory quest text speculating about her penchant for interspecies erotica.

You retconned your own lore so much I had to redo my backstory more than once to account for the changes, but you also gave me little random huts dropped on the Barrens where you and I passed some of our very best times with likeminded friends. The stories we made there didn’t need retconning. You kept me up past dawn weaving tales, sharing worries and dreams not part of your stylized pixels, and helped me fill up my bank slots with low level leathers and tailored shirts for RP. I hear you’ve added a transmogrifier now. That’s wonderful! I also hear you’re adding pandas. I…I guess whatever makes you happy.

You and I are just both in different places now. I think the best thing we can do is acknowledge what we both knew a year ago when I reformatted my laptop and wiped all your screenshots. It’s over. We had a lot of great memories, and I’ll cherish them, but you know what? I realized all the greatest memories I had from my time with you were the ones I made myself, with the friends I made while we were together. I still get to keep those, without the constant retcons, and without paying you a monthly fee to fuel most of my jaded fangirl rants.

Thanks for all the fun and all the cured ham steak. I hope –

What? A free week of playtime?

Well…

It…did not end that way.

So here are five games to keep clear of — or plan your evening around, depending how much you like your friends.

White Elephant Gift Exchange

Also known as Chinese gift exchange, Yankee swap, this game never fails to rapidly devolve into a social litmus test. Players bring gifts, either good or tacky, and then take turns either choosing an unwrapped gift or stealing one already open. It seems like a simple enough concept for a group who don’t know each other that well, but that’s just what the game wants you to think.

First, there are the rules. Does everyone choose a gift before opening? Can you open and steal? Can you steal back what’s been stolen from you? What about trading? Price limit?

Then, there are the gifts. You get a bottle of locally made hot sauce, how neat!  The next player gets two bottles of wine. The next player gets a complete barbecue set. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things stuck to the price limit. Whether you mean it or not, something will become the dud gift, and if it’s that thing you carefully picked out and put thought into, then your evening sucks just as much as that unlucky soul who got the hot sauce.

Then, there’s the stealing…

Picture this. You open a gift, and it’s a lovely box of chocolates! Oh, but there’s something more too. It’s…$5 worth of scratch cards! Um, thanks? That’s basically just $5 less of a gift than all the rest. But then that gift gets stolen, “for the chocolates.” Ha ha, sure, I bet. And then I–I mean you–spend the rest of the evening wondering if I’ve just had $1,000 dollars snatched out of my life forever. You sneaky jerk.

Or there was the time with the tacky gift exchange when the 12 year old got to join the adults from the office opening their gag gifts, and got one of those ice cream punch toys, which was totally super cool and clearly the best gift there! And then the 12 year old had that gift stolen by some 40 year old who totally wasn’t going to play with it or anything, and the game wasn’t fun any more. I’ve clearly gotten over it.

10] What prairie winters taught me about the holidays
Thoughts on holiday lights in the middle of a blizzard. That this recent post made it to my top ten is entirely a reflection on the awesome #wana1011 crew and their support.

9] Artificial Intelligence and World-Building – questions and no answers
In which there is much pontificating on AI and Sci-Fi, and very few resolved questions.

8] Three uses for champagne that don’t involve drinking it
 A Foodie post for everyone out there who’d rather cook with champagne than swig a glass of it on Saturday night.

7] Hot villains, bad boys, and narrative lies
A quick look at some of the problems inherent in the bad-boy narrative, in contrast to outright villains who have no narrative thrust to claim they’re secretly a good catch.

6] Looking back and finding evil muppets behind me
Some personal ditherings on writing progress and my decisions to rewrite a couple years ago. I think this one is only popular because the word muppet was used.

5] A cry against democracy, gender equity, and wise rulers in fantasy
 A brief and marvellous tale about life in EverythingIsAwesomeland, featuring its leading citizens, Queen NeverMakesMistakes, King Don’tForgetThePeasants, and the romantic couple, Mr and Mrs IdealModernValuesButWithSwords

4] On Maxi Pads and Magic Tampons
Magic stones, cryptic herbs, moss, and how the only blood in fantasy comes from swords.

3] Globsters – A tale of sea monsters, tides, and blubber
Strange, dead creatures keep washing up on the shore, and finally there’s an explanation for this old cryptid story.

2] Five Folklore Hoaxes
An April Fool’s look at fairies, Nessie, and the most famous naked man you’ll ever find spread on a hillside.

1] Why every book has meaning: Reader-response theory
I’m not sure if it’s the literary theory discussed, or the ripping good comic included with the text, but this post gets a ton of regular hits. It also declares that “What the author meant” assignments are bullshit — and that claiming nothing has meaning is also bullshit.

See you in 2012!

Now and then, that data is truly hilarious.

Here, in no particular order, are

Five bizarre search queries that led people to my site

• blood splatter from a shotgun blast to the face

• rivers of poop 

Okay, now I had a lot of poop queries this year. Some of them were pretty bizarre, a lot involved fetishes, but this one takes the cake… because it had a  0% bounce rate. Somebody found what they came looking for.

• sex anima lavik life vedio

You know…learning there are nude photos out there of someone with the same last name still doesn’t top learning that this site is a better match for those keywords.

• dear god this migraine fucking sucks

I hope you feel better now.

• not all stories end with the characters living “happily ever after.” consider the importance of a happy ending in a work of literature. is it necessary for the story to be satisfying? explain your opinion using specific examples from the texts you have read in this unit and elsewhere.

Okay, this is my favourite. Not only is this a blatant test question copy-pasted into a search engine, but this query brought multiple hits to my site, including some with variations on phrasing. Someone tried so hard to avoid doing their English work.

Do you track your search results? I’d love to hear the most bizarre things that brought someone to your site!

I originally shared this book two winters ago. I’m happy to say I now have a beautiful used copy of the book in my possession, a wonderful Christmas present from my sister last year.

Mousekin’s Christmas Eve by Edna Miller

I cannot begin to say how much I love Miller’s Mousekin books. They were my brother’s, but I loved the illustrations and the sweet stories of the little brown forest mouse. In particular, I adored Mousekin’s search for shelter on a chilly winter night.

Mousekin finds a house nestled in the forest, and slips inside to spend the night exploring the glistening tree, the tiny Nativity scene. I think in this children’s book I found one of my earliest associations with the winter season, the division between the cold and the wild, and the tiny points of warmth one can find indoors. Neither, however, seemed bad–both were beautiful options. The cool still of the forest, the midnight light of fallen snow among the trees (a rare experience for this West Coast born girl), and the shining warmth of tiny lights, comfort and company indoors, and the little bits of each leaking into the other. We bring trees into our homes and decorate them, after all. It’s a perfect time for blurring the thresholds.

It was when he had stopped for a moment to catch his breath and warm his toes beneath his fur that Mousekin first saw the great blue circle of light. It covered him and it colored him. He jumped aside with a start. In jumping, he found himself in a circle of bright red. Then yellow and green surrounded him. Lavender and gold glistened on the snow. The white world had vanished and there was color all about him.

This scene has always stayed in mind, the beauty of coloured lights on snow, and I only wish I could find a copy of the gorgeous image that accompanied those lines. The illustrations in this book are truly lovely, and this is one of my favourites. Sadly the book is long out of print, and the family’s copy is half a country away from me right now.

This passage also shows another sources of my love of light and shadow, lanterns, and other glimmers in the dark. The whole story is filled with light, from the string of lights glowing on the snow, to the high sheen of Christmas ornaments lit by fire, reflecting the face of a curious mouse. These little images of Mousekin in the tree spawned my standard game every Christmas, making houses for my little toys in the tree and running them around since I couldn’t creep in the branches myself. I’d say this also spawned my tendency for amateur macro photography of our tree every year.

I think of this book every year at this time, and one of these years I will finally track down a used copy of my own, but in the meantime I have my memories, my tiny lights in the heart of the tree, and the beauty of a coloured glow on the snow.

If you’re on the blogosphere this week, stop by and share the origin of one of your strongest associations with the holidays or the season. I’d love to hear them.

(Immense credit and thanks to Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves for the only interior illustration from this book I could find online, as well as the quote from one of my favourite moments in the story.)