by Sixer

Old as Dirt

The world is another year older now. It’s trees have shed leaves after leaves, lying down the components for a new layer of dirt even as the clouds atttempt to wash away the old. My house, young as it is, as already accumulated a quite unyeidling layer of Stuff and Things and General Mess, which sometimes I think I will never be able to budge. Thanks to my week of culinary excess{{1}} my kitchen looks something of a war zone, and I know I’ll have some scrubbing to do today if I’m ever going to get it clean between meals.

Becasue my kitchen is so dirty and I’m tired of washing pots I’ve suddenly developed a passion for cleaning my room. Now, my room has pretty much been untidy since the day I was born, except for a few remarkably well kept years at college. Lately I have been using my floors as an excuse for my “drop-it-and-leave-it” ways, the argument being that I can’t put in proper furniture until I have my carpet ripped out and the wood laid down. It’s a good excuse, but it has gone on too long. If I think my room is too messy, it sure-as-yolks is.

Part of my desire to clean is really just a desire to redo. My room plans are pretty ambitious and I want everything to be well thought out before they’ve been properly begun, so when I realized I might have found a flaw in the propsed layout of my sitting room area I just had to go and move my bed and desk to the ooposite side of the room. This meant shifting boxes, and paper, and what I must admit can really only be called junk, to new spots on the floor. So I woke up on a completely different side of the bed than I normally do, a nice change for a new year.

So far I like the new layout, but the best part is having to redo my whole design inside my head. I had just decided that I wanted a sunset with telephone wire painted just so there, and now I find that whole wall is likely to be hidden completely by shelves. Do I flip the painting to the opposing wall, or keep it out? What about the full length mirror?

[[1]] Soup and fish Satuday, stew and pretzels Monday, and soup again Wednesday [[1]]

by Sixer

As Daring as the Smoldering Dawn

I wish I could’ve shared the sky with you this morning, the way it loooked from the window of my garrett. Just before seven it began to pink-en, and it went on until there was a thick ribbon of deep, deep red-flamingo pink glowering over the tops of the trees and reaching up towards the retreating night. It was not anything at all like a proper blush. There was nothing sweet about it. It seems strange to say that the dawn was full of passion for the coming day, but that’s how things looked. A dawn like that is sure to make people talk.

I did finish that skirt, by the way. Right after I clicked “publish” I took myself dowstairs and asked my my flat-mate if I could borrow hers. With her kind permission, I then whipped through the construction of a channel for the elastic waist, pulled the stretchy thing through, and  zip-zip,done. Of course, the elastic is twisted, but I don’t really ever plan on wearing the waistband out, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.


Ah, Christmas is only a few days away. You know Dawn, I think I feel a little passionate about life myself.

by Sixer

Ripping – The creation of creating

It’s been awhile since I sat and did nothing simply because I could, and not just to defy the universe in a badly thought-out temper tantrum. Sitting and doing nothing is really unnatural, though, and so I find that on days where I propose to “go no where and do nothing” that the silent world begins to scream at me to get moving. I start to want to clean, to cook, to create.

Last week I went to my grandmother’s house and she helped me start on a skirt. Just a simple gathered skirt, in a really nice and drape-y fabric. I took it home to put the last touhces on it – the elastic for the waistband. Here it sits still, on the floor of my house, waiting for a sewing machine to appear so that  I can work some magic on it. I’ve been really feeling like sewing lately, so you would think that, today, when I have nothing else to do, I would jump on this project and finish it in seconds, right?

Well, guess who is missing the stitch-plate for her sewing machine.

In a typical moment of wasted foresight it was removed to “keep it safe” from the general chaos of moving. I can remember it quite clearly. The machine sitting on the floor of the family room, waiting beside a half-dozen other boxes to be taken to my bedroom. Everytime we moved it closer to the stairs the little metal plate under the needle would slide out. It’s going to fall and get lost in the shuffle eventually, I thought. And so I slid it out and placed it in the box closest to the machine. This was in July, when I was still moving in, and now, two or three re-packings into the un-packing process, I have no idea which box it’s in. I thought I put it in one of the tea boxes (“Treadewinds: real BREWED tea” ー curtesy of the grocery store), and so I’ve duly emptied those all out, but alas. No stitch-plate was uncovered. I’ve gone through most of the boxes that lie like unknown soldiers on the floor of my garret room, trying to shift through their layers for a thin business-card sized peice of metal without disturbing any of the other contents, but this hasn’t turned up anything.

“Looks like I can’t sew today.” I say to The World with a shrug.

“You’re right,” says The World in reply, “You’ve got a much bigger project to work on first.”

by Sixer

JLPT for Fun

December 2nd was the JLPT. I’ve taken it before, back when there were only four levels, and failed it pretty impressively. I remember going to Chuck E.  Cheese (my “clique” in high school was really into the dance pad*) and knitting while my friends studied. It wasn’t until talking to one of the other “testees” that I realized this was over five years ago.

Okay, seven.

It’s kind of cool to know that I have lived long enough to start something half-heartedly, let it flag nearly out of existence, and then revive it with pure and mindless determination. It’d be cooler if I had felt confident enough to take something higher than the N4, but as my results haven’t come back in yet I can’t even say for sure that the N4 was the right level. The testing was fun, though. Goodness, I have missed tests. There were quite a few places where I had no idea what the question was, let alone the answer, but these were balanced out by times where the answer was so blindingly obvious I had to blink a few times to make sure I was reading it right. And of course the environment was a lot of fun too. Dozens and dozens of people my age, mixed with nine-year olds and a few gray beards. There was one study group of children, and they gathered in the hall with their sensei. The first of them to arrive were these completely Anglican blond girls, with their parents and younger sister and a whole host of lunch boxes and electronic gaming devices. Then the Japanese moms started coming with their kids. Seeing the girls I had felt an almost jealous pang of regret, because by my competitive way of thinking they were ahead of me, but for some reason when I found out that the rest of their class was composed of kids with Japanese speaking parents I felt much better*. I’m not sure exactly why this comforted me, maybe it made me realize that we all have different resources to tap into. I know that mine haven’t even begun to dry up yet, so why should I worry about another’s?

The results for the JLPT don’t come out until the end of February, but I’ll be starting back up with my studies before then. I really would like to beat DQ9 before March so that  I can start on 二ノ国. And Anki, and, and, and . . . .

But that’s all later. After Christmas. For now, I’m taking a short break. No anime, no DS – only the books and music that  I would probably be interested in anyway. I’m looking forward to starting January with renewed vigor. Watch out grammar, here I come!

________________ Socks off _____________________

*My clique being composed of my mom, my sister, my best-friend-since-forever, and so on. At one point in my life our familys went to Chuck E. Cheese every week. We were on a first name basis with the manager, and when I heard them playing  “kiss me” on the radio a few months ago I nearly caused a traffic incident. The orange arrow, the green arrow!

** When the Japanese moms started coming in you could almost feel the rest of the room straining to catch their words. The very air seemed to scream “Real Life Example!”

by Sixer

Footnote on a plan

My appetite has been completely squashed.

Yes. I’ve been reduced to punning. Punning is more fun than pureeing. In case you’ve ever wondered how much puree you can make from a five dollar farmer’s market gourd – a fairly pretty blue “sweet meat,” bought with an eye for its cuttable flatness more than for its shade. There was a simply exquisite slate blue, of a different variety, but it was dangerously egg shaped – the answer is over twelve cups. Ugh. Just the thought of orange makes my over-licked fingers cringe reflectively.*

On the bright side, the bright green side, I now have pumpkin-miso muffins, which I’m sure will taste great once I can face them again. And I have frozen pumpkin custard.

The heart plummets at the thought.

I have also done a more thorough job of cleaning the kitchen than any of my family could ever have expected*, and I have bathed for over an hour with Bram Stoker’s Dracula – which I am earnestly enjoying. Would it be too redundant to say I’m enjoying it with great delight? The prose is hilarious, the meals described do not involve squash, and though only twenty-some pages in, I have already been surprised quite a few times. It’s not at all what I was imagining, and it will be most difficult to pace myself and finish it near halloween.  Especially since I have another squash, already cut, on a plate in my fridge, waiting to be simmered.


___________________ Sock’s Off ____________________

* I’ve never claimed to be some paragon of cleanliness, but more than once today the idea of washing my hands again has nearly made me throw them up in the air in surrender. Hopefully the squash stains will come off the walls.

* As Stoker writes “Despair has its own calm.”