uhhhh....

[mrissa]

Dear universe,

Please excuse mrissa from braining today. She has the dumb.

Signed,
mrissa's mother

(She always said it was fine to forge her signature in good causes. "Good causes" were understood to include "I would rather ride with Daieuen than with Doc Tichy to the debate tournament" or "I totally want to have pizza you never heard was a possibility.")

Uff da, uff da. I am not the kind of tired where I could go immediately to sleep if I went to bed now. No, that would be too easy. I am the kind of tired where I blink stupidly at things, wondering why...that thing...is over there...where I put it...why did I do that? Yes. Like that. This is the kind of the dumb where you go downstairs and wonder what you meant to do and then go back upstairs and figure it out, lather-rinse-repeat until you are frustrated enough to repeat, "Towels in dryer, towels in dryer, towels in dryer..." all the way down the stairs. Except that I really can't and shouldn't do that with the vertigo; we are still minimizing stairs. Especially today, when my PT has been a great deal rougher, with more falls and harder/more dangerous falls than usual*. So mostly I am standing around trying things in case some of it might be right. I have a list. But that doesn't help if nothing on the list looks at all coherent. Probably I will end up sending a couple of birthday presents early this evening just because that'll be one less thing to try to sort from my list. And, y'know, also because I like those people and want them to be happy on their impending birthdays.

One of the things about this stage of tired is that I get very odd bits of story popping out, and some of them eventually cohere, if I am patient and write them down. This one has girl cooties all over it. This one reads like I was reading Ursula LeGuin and pameladean and Zenna Henderson all in a row, and I haven't been reading any of them lately. But I am not opposed to girl cooties. I'm sort of stuck with 'em, so it's just as well I'm not opposed. Only I fear I'm supposed to go read Willa Cather to find the title, and I don't wanna. I have gotten over most of my Nebraska schooling-induced aversion to Willa Cather, but that only brings me to neutral, I'm afraid. (Apparently there is no other writer Nebraska schoolgirls can grow up to be like. This did not, as you might well imagine, sit well with me.) Maybe one of you can read Willa Cather and tell me what good titles might come from it? I thought not. But it was worth asking.

*I am a good faller, and all but two of the PT exercises come with built-in safety stuff. But I had to twist around fast to land on my butt, which is padded for it, rather than my knee, which is not. You know how you can feel the sort of fall that's going to be dangerous on your knee, twisty and at the wrong angle? I averted one of those this evening. I am mighty. I am fierce. And damned if I'll make progress on the vertigo just to have to start a course of PT on a knee.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You are fierce. *\o/*

[redbird]

Dear Mrissa's mother,

She is excused, and I hope she feels better tomorrow.

Signed, the Universe

U:vr

---

I'm glad you managed to avoid the bad fall.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What sort of agency gets you a job typing for the universe?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Mighty, fierce, and stubborn.

I hope the universe is smart enough to cooperate.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

I tell you what: you fold my laundry, and I'll flip all your loads for you.

(Don't ask how many loads I have waiting to be folded, that wouldn't be fair for you to know that you've agreed to indentured servitude for a week or two.)

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Hey, M'ris-ness....

There's a slight chance that I will be in your area (ish) over Memorial Day Weekend. (This weekend.) If I AM, do you think you'd be up for a low-key visit? I'd be happy to stop by and put your towels in the dryer...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Low-key visits good! We will be at a bonfire Saturday night and a jazz concert Sunday night, but otherwise, would like to see you (and meet the boyo if he's with you). Do you have my phone numbers? If not, e-mail me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ummmm...no deal, we don't have very many full loads yet since markgritter still has a bunch of the laundry in California.

[redbird]

The sort that doesn't return calls, and may pay me tomorrow, or in August of 2037. Still, it's hard to refuse some of these jobs.

What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all sure I'm on the right track here, but how about:
Sunflower-bordered Roads
Split from Ripeness
Letting in Flies and Sunshine Alike
Old Songs to the Children
A Lifting-up of Day
The Two Men who had Fed the Bride to the Wolves
The Great Fresh Open

Re: What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Best Eileen EVAR. Thank you. It is "A Lifting-up of Day," for sure, although you may have made it into a series, because these are exactly the right titles for this world.

Re: What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

You're quite welcome. I am reminded to be thankful that no one made me read anything in high school; so I could find Willa Cather on my own. They're all from My Antonia; do you want the paragraphs they're from?

Re: What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If that's not too much bother, it'd be awesome.

Re: What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I am taking cunning advantage of Google Books.

From part IV:
Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the woman and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs's story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower- bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.


From part V:
The house I thought very comfortable for two men who were 'batching.' Besides the kitchen, there was a living-room, with a wide double bed built against the wall, properly made up with blue gingham sheets and pillows. There was a little store-room, too, with a window, where they kept guns and saddles and tools, and old coats and boots. That day the floor was covered with garden things, drying for the winter; corn and beans and fat yellow cucumbers. There were no screens or window-blinds in the house, and all the doors and windows stood wide open, letting in flies and sunshine alike.

Peter put the melons in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stood over them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He gave us knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon swimming with juice and seeds.

From part VI:
While we were lying there against the warm bank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. He missed it, fell back, and sat with his head sunk between his long legs, his antenna; quivering, as if he were waiting for something to come and finish him. Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gayly and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us — a thin, rusty little chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a moment afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that in her village at home there was an old beggar woman who went about selling herbs and roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took her in and gave her a warm place by the fire, she sang old songs to the children in a cracked voice, like this. Old Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see her coming and saved their cakes and sweets for her.

....
The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death — heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.

Paragraphs part two.

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I was afraid I was getting near the length limit.

From part VIII (this is the two men who were 'batching.')

Peter and Pavel drove into the village alone, and they had been alone ever since. They were run out of their village. Pavel's own mother would not look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people learned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the two men who had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went the story followed them. It took them five years to save money enough to come to America.


From part IX

The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shivering beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they were so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother's scolding that they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter's house. The great fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made them behave like wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they never wanted to go home again.


Bonus less than a paragraph about sunflowers from part III:

The road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them.


More about the frail green insect from part IV:

What were we to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to life by false pretenses? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully put the green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely over her curls.

.... Her Father put his had on her hair, but she caught his wrist and lifted it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of old Hata. He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his fingers, and stood looking down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly, he listened as if it were a beautiful sound.

And a sentence to grow on: I admired the cheerful zest with which Grandmother went about keeping us warm and comfortable and well-fed.

Re: What's in the story besides girl cooties?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Your cunningness is much appreciated.