The girl I left behind me...

My habit skirt is now a big tube! It's six feet long and my coworker saw me folding it up after sewing the last seam on my lunch break yesterday, and was like "Makin' a tarp?" It feels like it!

Also I just wanted to share because this made me happy. I've been adding to my horse tack stash as sales come up and I now have a proper girth and matching bridle for my sidesaddle work. With extra long reins because you sit higher in a sidesaddle than a normal saddle. But anyway:




It's a full set! 100% living the dream here, y'all.

I don't even know who I am anymore, guys. I'm participating in a blogging challenge, I'm enjoying it, and I already have blog posts scheduled out for a whole week. WHO AM I!?

Go to My Blog tag "CoBloWriMo" to see more!

My weird but efficient and effective hip exercise is working, I think. I think I didn't mention it in my last post, but I've had fairly persistent SI joint pain* for years, on my left side. I have had less pain, or at least less awareness of pain vs. awareness of the pain site, in the past few days, than in a long time. It's not like it was super crippling or anything, but I guess I got used to a certain level of discomfort and now that it's different/less I'm aware of the spot that WAS painful but ISN'T now. It's weird!

I did my exercise before and after running last night as directed and noticed also that I was SUPER wiped afterwards. To be fair, it was also quite warm and humid yesterday--the dogs were very worn out as well. But I wonder if part of my fatigue is that my body is getting used to a slightly different conformation than normal. Anything's possible I suppose.

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has bought something from me in the past couple of weeks. Thanks to you guys, I'm about halfway there on a round-trip ticket!

This week, I've been listing stuff up on my Etsy, so if you'd like to help out or (like me) enjoy buying fabric, go take a look! :D

I've got some lace and trim to list, still, and a couple more lengths of fabric as well. Stay tuned!

Okay LJ...I'm turning to you for help.

My friend Julie is a photographer who up until now has been dedicated to film cameras. Over New Years, I visited her and we had pretty much the following conversation:

Julie: *looking at college classes for digital photography* I should really consider getting into digital photography, but I don't want to learn all this stuff--"digital file management," or "using histograms for color correction." I don't want to have to know all that! I just want to take pictures!
Katie: *petting cat* I'd learn it.
*Pause*
Katie: No, I mean...I really would. I love stuff like that--messing around with pictures and doing computer stuff...I'd do it.
Julie: And I could just stand by your elbow and say "make that more blue" and you could do it! And not know how you did it, it would just happen!
Katie: Yes, exactly! I have no interest in taking photos...just making them look neat. I like this plan.
Julie:Me too!
*pause*
Julie: No, I mean...I REALLY like this plan!

So. Now we're emailing back and forth at length about what we'd need to actually make this work. ( This is where your advice is needed! )

I finally sat down and made a list of places from which I like to order fabric. It's not an exhaustive list of anywhere I've ever ordered anything, but it's some of the top hits.

List over here at my blog!

Now...everyone go buy some fabric! Share the love! *rolls around in yardage*

Katie's listing stuff on Etsy! Tell everyone...and also, help me get rid of fabric I'll never use!

So part of teaching myself to cook has been branching out from strictly chicken and pasta dishes. Today, I took a run at peanut butter fudge. The recipe is courtesy of Bev Lewis, an old friend. It's just a quick fudge recipe; no fancy chemistry or equipment involved.

( Recipe herein contained! )

The hardest part will be waiting for it to set up before eating it!

Good morning. My name is Katie, and I am a Mexican.

Maybe I should disambiguate. Culturally speaking, I'm "American." Ethnically, though, I am half Mexican. My father was born in southern Mexico and was adopted when he was eight days old by a missionary couple from the US. As such, he was raised in a predominantly "American" home with English as his first language. He also as a child learned a native Mayan dialect, since his parents were working with a particular language group in the area on some translation work. When he was ten or eleven, he learned Spanish while playing futbol (soccer, if you must) with the neighborhood kids. To this day, he is trilingual, able to communicate fluently in English, Spanish, and Chamula with no trace of an accent. I should also mention that my father is brilliant.

My mom, she's from Michigan. She's pretty much as white as they come, ethnically, but she is also brilliant, and reached a fairly impressive level of fluency in Spanish in college. She didn't use it for a while so she's no longer as fluent as she was, but she understands it perfectly well.

When people find out that I speak Spanish, and that I am half Mexican, they assume I have spoken it all my life. This is not the case, however; I was a stubborn child and my dad was a pushover, so we only spoke English in the home until I was a sophomore in high school. I took to learning Spanish like a duck to water, and eventually went on to earn a BA in Spanish. I consider myself fluent and literate; my degree is essentially an English degree, with all the reading of novels and literary analysis and writing of theses...just, in Spanish.

So that's the background, just so you understand where I'm coming from. Essentially, half my family is bilingual. The other half understands and knows enough to get around if necessary. And for the record, I prefer to buy my groceries from a self-checkout lane in Spanish. As in, I do it that way on purpose.

Enter Facebook. Lately there's been something going around on peoples' "like" lists, complaining about having to select a number to interact with an English-language menu when on the phone. Essentially, "WE'RE IN AMERICA* TALK IN ENGLISH." The one in question talks about the phone, but the root issue is that they're uncomfortable with the idea that English is just one option among others because there are many people in the US who do not speak English fluently enough to feel confident using it to conduct business. Things like this used to not bother me. Now?

Stop being an asshole. I am a native English speaker and as such, I actually comprehend how difficult English can be. There are no real rules--they call them rules, but there are more exceptions than anything, and some things just don't make sense at all. I didn't even begin to comprehend English grammar until I learned Spanish. The Spanish grammatical structure is elegant and simple, with very few exceptions to each rule, and the language is much more innately grammatically correct than anything in English. And the sad truth is that most native English speakers never learn to use their language to its full potential. Stop and listen sometime. "Don't aks me my bidness." "Nuculer reactor." "Contact the county you were born in." "Where are you at?" "I ain't going." "I seen it already."

No. "Do not ask me about my business." "NucLEAR reactor." "Contact the county in which you were born." "Where are you?" "I am not going." "I'VE seen it already." These are all examples of things that I have heard misused in a solely English-speaking environment in the last week. Don't even get me started on the written communications.

So. If someone can barely speak his or her own language, how do you think s/he would do if suddenly transplanted to a foreign country with a completely different culture and told to learn the language--sink or swim. And I also wonder how offended s/he would be if the natives treated them like crap while they were trying to learn and scorned and mocked them for their imperfect language skills. I just wonder.

For the most part, it's people who can speak only English who tend to complain a. Really? Really--tell me; how many other languages have you learned? What's that? None? Oh...it's a shame, really; I found my second language much easier to learn than my first--which made no sense when I was learning it--and remember, I essentially learned it as an adult. So you know what? Let me know when you've learned a second language. Even better, learn a third. Then you'll really have a leg to stand on. See, other languages are so much more elegant than English, and so much easier to learn...and you haven't even done that yet, so stop bitching.

There are many people on my friends list who speak multiple languages; I can't tell you how much I respect that. And most of them, they don't even live in the US. On the flipside, most of the US citizens I know haven't even bothered to try learning another language beyond "s'il vous plait" and "dónde está el baño." Or, you know, "Where the bathroom at, man?"


*It's the UNITED. STATES. Canada, Mexico, and the ALL of South and Central America can rightfully lay claim to the name "America." It's just that the US is arrogant enough to do so on a regular basis, as if it's the only country in two continents that actually matters.

My rats of choice have been reserved--BVR Pegasus and Cygnus, brothers from a litter named for various constellations. dandytailor already asked if he and superiorcap can be the ratties' godparents, and proposed to re-name them Napoleon and Wellington. I said yes to the godparents idea and we'll-see to the names. Other pair-names in the running include Peter/Neil, Jack/Stephen, Watson/Holmes, Cesar/Brutus, Tybalt/Mercutio, Merry/Pippin (although...our last guinea pig was Pippin, so...), Rush/Oliver, aaaand onward.

As a side note, the music video for Lady Gaga's Bad Romance freaks me out. It reminds me of the creepy child-eating eyeballs-in-hands creature from Pan's Labyrinth, which is just wrong.