cluegirl

Spare me your Heaven

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 17:24:17 GMT

So Heaven's been on my mind lately. Not in a good way, either.

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State of the Clue -- Bullet Point edition.

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 15:01:43 GMT

So... yeah.

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Land Plans

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 17:30:10 GMT

First mow after the meadow clearing this morning. The ivy was just high enough for the bagging mower to get most of it, and we had enough extension cord to reach the limit of the cleared area without having to move the generator around.

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On firing your friends without telling them they're fired.

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 15:14:38 GMT

Okay so. I have said before that accepting an apology and forgiving someone are two different things, however. I feel like if you're not going to forgive someone after you've accepted said apology, it's kind of on you to let them know that. If you're going to hold the grudge when you're letting them go on believing that things are square, then you ARE in fact being the asshole in the equation.

Because passive aggression is still unfair when you get right down to the baseline of it. If you know that the person apologizing for having hurt you is sincere in their apology, then fucking TELL them that you need time to decide whether you're okay with being their friend again or not. Don't go 'yop!' and shake hands, and then walk away with a secret grudge that you're going to hold over them for the rest of their lives. If you're not going to forgive them, then cut the damn tie to their faces, not in the secrecy of your own head, like a damn coward.

(Obviously, this metric is not solid, and -- for instance -- in the case of narcissistic, abusive, and otherwise dangerous situations, silent no-contact is the safe thing to do, but in situations where there was a misunderstanding, and nobody got injured, threatened, or even really seriously inconvenienced? Treasuring a secret grudge over it is really kinda shitty. Just Adult up and admit that you're going to end the friendship over the slight, already. If you have such a wealth of friends that you can afford to hold grudges for every time someone's actions gave you Big Feelings, then good for you, but your 'friends' deserve to know that you consider them disposable, in my opinion.)

Also, if you do this? Get some counseling. Seriously, this is a damned EXPENSIVE coping mechanism when it destroys every voluntary, non-transactional relationship you have in your life, no matter how much you feel you're in the right.

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Mon, 29 Nov 2021 04:47:30 GMT

it's 11:30, and I'm just not tired. This is a problem, because today I had hours of solid, spoon positive socialization for the first time in years, and I'm a little afraid that my sqquirrel brain has decided this means I'll have all the energy forever and who needs sleep when we have AO3 anyhow, and worst of all? I don't have any real reason why getting my ass into bed and to sleep at any particular time should matter. And that means I'm kinda going feral again, in a way. When the patterns that keep me going stop holding shape, I tend to stop going. And entropy makes deep ruts to try and get out of once you get bored of the novelty of doing nothing.

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The Fable of the Fox and the Cat -- or, How Decision Paralysis Fucks Over Polymaths

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 02:50:27 GMT

So.

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And look at that... Gravity's defying me. (For a whole damn year)

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 04:15:07 GMT

So. It's now been proven that SARS-Covid 19 absolutely WAS in the Us before December of 2019. (For those not wanting to click away, they found antibodies in donated blood as early as mid December in several cities. Add to that the incubation period, and the rarity of regular blood donation, along with the fact that 50% of those infected are asymptomatic, and the 'unexpectedly deadly winter flu season of 2019' begins to take on a WHOLE other hue.

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Chewing my way out

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:44:36 GMT

For the last... um... year, I guess, I seem to have been actively, and rather strenuously DIVESTING. This is a real change for me, since my lifelong mode has always been -- that's potentially useful even if I don't have a current use for it, so save it and someday you'll find yourself using it. Part of this was growing up Free-Government-Cheese-Because-Mom-Was-Too-Proud-For-Foodstamps- poor, but a bigger part of this was a deeply ingrained horror of landfills, and the way that USians used them. The idea of throwing away something that was still quite useful in itself, just because I personally didn't want to use it anymore? *Shudder* There's a song that has the line "If you put it in the garbage, you're gonna eat it someday", and that perfectly encapsulated my feelings about waste for decades. (It actually still does.)

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Oh... well shit. That adds up, doesn't it?

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 03:35:29 GMT

So I have finally figured out why I'm suddenly all... "Like That" these days -- and by these days, I mean to say since Obama took office, and the vicious, smugly entitled, cruelly and defiantly racist humans started gathering the courage to be known for it publicly and on camera. Why I've been Cassandra-ing at full volume since 2016, and can't seem to just calm down and not look for awhile. Why it's so bad that I can't find cope under any rock I look anymore.

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Clue's Skillet Pornbread

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 17:42:29 GMT

(A recipe adapted from Emril Lagasse, and that brilliant chick who posted her recipe online, and it was so popular that her server crashed and now nobody can find it anymore. Salut!)

So first -- this is savory cornbread, NOT SWEET. I come from Arizona, and we do not add sugar to cornbread in the desert, thank you no. The only sweetness to this will come from the cornmeal, and the onions. If you need more sweetness, you can put honey butter on it afterward, like the weirdo Easterner you are. Or just make a different recipe. It's all the same to me. Anyhow.

INGREDIENTS:
(Start your oven heating at 400 F, and put a clean 10 inch cast iron skillet in it to heat up.)

* 2 c yellow cornmeal

* 1 c AP flour (Sub gluten free if needed)

* 1 t salt

* 1 t baking powder, (pushed through a screen to break up any lumps)

(Combine dry ingredients, and set aside.)

* 1 -- 2 minced jalapeno peppers.

* 1/4 -- 1/2 c crumbled cotija cheese, OR grated extra sharp cheddar.

* Bacon if ya got it. I won't tell you how much. Measuring bacon is an exercise in futility anyhow. Just know that if you add too much, the fat will overwhelm the egg's ability to bind the bread together, and it will be a bitch to eat. A delicious, delicious bitch...

(Put these semi-dry ingredients in with the flour and stir.)

* 1/2 c Hood brand black pepper cottage cheese. Or some brand's chive flavor if your life is sad enough to lack Hood brand black pepper cottage cheese. Or regular cottage cheese, if ya basic. That's okay. We don't shame basic around here.

* 1 lg egg

* 1 c +/- buttermilk

(Add the wet ingredients, saving the buttermilk for last, since you will only use enough of that to make the consistency something like a thick brownie or cake batter. Think gooey mud pies, and you're just about right. You want it wet enough to react to gravity, but to need a good scraper to clean the bowl. I don't measure the buttermilk, to be honest, but for your first time making it, you'll probably want to start scant and add only if needed.)

* 1 sweet onion, peeled and cut into 1 inch rounds.

* 3 T butter for the skillet.

Take the hot skillet out of the oven, throw the butter in, and make sure it covers the floor when melted. Put the onion rounds on the skillet's floor, arranging them like that carnival game with the painted circle and the plastic discs that never quite cover it except when the boothie does it, only do it quickly so you don't get splashed with boiling grease please. Just get the onions in the damn pan, Tony, that's the whole point!

Pour the mixed batter over the butter and onions, scraping out the bowl quickish, and jostling the pan as needed to get the batter to lie down and behave. Then put it in the oven for... um... I dunno, 40 minutes maybe? Okay look, just don't go too far from the kitchen while it's baking, and when you start to smell cornbread, begin to pay attention, is all. You can overbake this a little and it'll be just fine, but be sure you knife-or toothpick test this in several places, because it'll come out of the pan in lumps if you underbake it.

Once it's cooked to your satisfaction, and your lizard brain is hopping up and down in anticipation of a spectacular feed, take the pan out of the oven. Run a knife around the edge to make sure the cornbread's not sticking to the iron, then put a cutting board over the top of the skillet, and FLIP THE WHOLE DAMN THING OVER! (This is the dangerous part. Best to have a camera running, for insurance purposes. And a spotter if you can draft one. I'm not actually kidding here.)

For best results, put pornbread into facehole within 15 minutes of oven-extraction. Experience culinary nirvana. Share some with God. That said, pornbread is amazing as a next-day cold breakfast too, so don't be too worried about the leftovers going begging.

Like this recipe? Buy me a Ko-fi, and help pay for my new brakes!

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tired...

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 03:14:42 GMT

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Sun, 16 Aug 2020 03:46:18 GMT

I would legit give up an organ if it meant that Scrivener would come out with a Dark Theme...

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Sun, 09 Aug 2020 17:29:34 GMT

Took yesterday low and slow. A cool day -- humid, but not particularly hot, but both of us were deeply weary, so we limited our ambition to basic chores like cat box cleaning, kitchen tidying, and a little vacuuming spaced through out the day. No great destructions, no massive messes, no telescoping projects we can't afford to take on right now anyway. We ... adulted?

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Early Morning Vet on a Saturday...

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 15:08:40 GMT

Miss Nakia is a Very Sad Creature today.

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Mon, 18 Nov 2019 23:12:52 GMT

People are assholes.
That is all.

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Thu, 14 Nov 2019 17:32:19 GMT

So we're running a GoFundMe to try and get the hole last year's grifter/contractor left in the side of our home.

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Well all right then...

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 20:44:37 GMT

Patreon.com/Cluegirl

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I Could Change Your Mind

Sat, 08 Jun 2019 21:54:46 GMT

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Thoughts Contingent on The Secret To Happy Intimate Cohabitation

Tue, 21 May 2019 14:27:10 GMT

So.

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Descent

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:57:53 GMT

I'm thinking about Inanna today.

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Mon, 04 Mar 2019 03:35:33 GMT

An HP-neutral weekend, but still one which accomplished a lot. So I guess it's a win? I'm coming out of it in a slightly less toxic headspace than I had going in, and while I got essentially nothing creative done, I did unfuck quite a healthy bit of my habitat, including actual repairs as well as lower level (and long overdue) cleaning. So I have a crafts shelf in the living room now, so my fibercraft and my co-pilot's embroidery can quit sprawling all over the room; the missing panel that blew off the greenhouse in last week's storm has been tacked over with painter's plastic, awaiting 'working outside' weather, when I'll be converting the obsolete storm windows into replacements for the polycarbonate; we dug through the wall of 'stuff to go to the basement eventually' in the dining room, and finally managed to get to the hutch behind, and (gasp) put the serving dishes from Thanksgiving away; made meals, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed floors, folded laundry, all that groovy weekend stuff you never really want to do, but which is easier to do with a friend around.

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Fri, 22 Feb 2019 04:13:00 GMT

Sometimes you feel like a storm is brewing, away far out to sea. It's not you can smell the ozone, or feel the wet chill rising in the becalmed air, it's not that you can hear the waves beginning to fidget, it's just you know, with the certainty of the mangrove, that the wind will fight the water soon, and their fight will most likely spill over your head before it's all done.

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Kitchen Witchin -- Clue's Parlor Corn

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 03:18:24 GMT

So what do you do when you crave Mexican Street Corn, but it's nowhere near fresh corn season?
Well, if you're me, you improvise, and this is more or less what you come up with.

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Kitchen Witchin -- Clue’s Lemon Buttermilk Pasta

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 01:20:53 GMT

Clue’s Lemon Buttermilk Pasta

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Kitchen Witchin -- Pumpkin Ginger Oatmeal

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 04:08:14 GMT

This one's really easy, but so, SO tasty!

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