end of a week

[cimorene]

I have managed to do some laundry this week! Not catch up on laundry, but I did a few loads of linens.

We managed to go for a walk yesterday! Less than an hour, so not really long enough to get the good endorphins, but long enough to feel like a proper walk. We meant to stop at the cafe owned by Wax's cousin once removed, where his wife does the baking, but it was closed due to an accident. I hope his wife isn't in the hospital again. We bought some pastry from the corner store by the guest harbor though.

Today, with Wax's help, I swept under the bunny cages and changed their litter boxes. The litter box contents always turns quickly to very high quality humus and the hay and dry bunny poops they scatter all over the floor filled two big bins which Wax took to the compost for me. Also she shook some rugs - the ones that don't need to go through the wash (we only have machine-washable rugs in that room, since they need to be washed frequently). The rugs are back down and the floor mostly clean and the bunnies have had a celebration, because bunnies love when the furniture moves.

I learned two days ago, from the Marple fic that Ellen Fremedon wrote for Yuletide, that Britain has a loaf-shaped gingerbread that you slice and serve. I looked up two recipes and it seems basically similar to spice cake, but I'm still really curious. I haven't tried it already because you have to melt the stuff on the stovetop, just like with Swedish gingerbread cookie recipe, and that extra step still feels like a bit too much right now (I keep trying to get myself to make shortbread, but I can't face taking the butter out in advance right now; maybe I'll make brownies instead).

I have been listening to Victorian ghost stories read by a Northerner - maybe Northumberland? Wax and I aren't good enough at Northern accents to tell - while knitting for the past few weeks. (Classic Ghost Stories podcast by Tony Walker.) It has been an amusing and enlightening tour through the lower-than-A-list entries in this period where the Gothic was starting to evolve into the modern horror genre (which I'm not a fan of, but it's adjacent to my genre and Wax and my sister and my friend Ella are fans, and my dad reads and writes 'dark speculative fiction', aka sff horror - so I have osmosis-knowledge and have consumed a few bits on purpose). A couple of gothic works I hadn't heard of have been really great, and the near-mediocre genre potboiler works that always exist in such profusion have given me new insight (to the period and the genres). Also I've heard a couple of my favorite type of ghost story, where the ghost is completely nonthreatening and isn't even doing anything scary, but the story is melodramatic about the chilling/unforgettable horror of them, so that at the end you're indignantly going "This is ghost racism!" I've also heard a story about a ghost hand and one about a ghost finger (both competent but neither good), a ludicrous story about a haunted duffel bag, and TWO stories about haunted paintings (neither really good, but one better than the other).

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Hurray for bunny cleaning! Hurray for walkies!

[cimorene]

Oh man, yeah, it was tiring because it's one of those things that you have to do at once and can't break up into pieces - moving the furniture, shaking the rugs, sweeping, then putting it all back - but it made a big difference in how pleasant it feels to be in the room!

[barbaratp]

Então você gosta de gótico, mas só de alguns tipos. Legal saber disso. Eu me sinto assim às vezes com quase tudo. Gosto de um gênero ou estilo, mas só se for descrito de determinado jeito.

Podcast não é meu forte, sou mais de rádios com músicas do que pessoas batendo papo contando causos online *risos* mesmo que tenha amado quando jovem programas na rádio desse jeito, acho que só não sou fã das novas tecnologias que parecem meio chatas ou muito superinfladas.

Ain biscoito amanteigado que delícia. Só fiz biscoito umas duas vezes na minha vida. Um de queijo que mais parece um salgadinho e outro que é um sequilho amanteigado. O pessoal chegou a achar que eu tinha comprado ele na padaria não acreditando que eu fiz. Não foi um elogio na verdade, mas sim uma forma de menosprezar meus dotes culinários. Desde então não cozinho mais... no entanto desejo sorte na sua jornada na cozinha. Você parece estar indo melhor que eu u.u

Ter coisas em casa que só precisam de uma batidinha para limpar é o cúmulo da comodidade. Adoro demais.

[cimorene]

I think any genre will have good and bad works, but I don't like the Gothic as much as some other ones, or maybe I should say that I'm not interested in ALL the concerns and themes of the Gothic but I'm very interested in some of them.

And actually I don't generally like podcasts. What I've been listening to are mostly just him reading old books though, so more like audiobooks. I prefer reading myself over audiobooks but I need my hands free when knitting! And usually I watch videos while I knit, but I felt a stray whim to check one of these out when I didn't have anything else that I wanted to watch immediately, and then I got interested!

[barbaratp]

Nunca fui de audiolivros, prefiro eu mesma ler do que ouvir outros o fazendo por mim. Acho que ouviria música ou veria alguma série quiçá um filme enquanto faço um trabalho artístico manual como crochê.

Eu nunca soube identificar o que é em si o gótico. Acho que conheço poucas coisas relacionadas ao gênero. Mas sim, gosto de algumas coisas aqui e acolá.

[cimorene]

I think that makes sense that you would be less familiar with the Gothic since it's a genre born in England, and its stories are very linked to that time and place and the changes that their society was undergoing. (Not that people don't like them and read them in translation of course; but I'm sure it's less likely to read them in Portuguese than in English.) Of course it has had such an effect on romance and horror that many more recent works can be described at least partly as Gothic, but usually they are modern reinventions and riffs with influences from other, later genres and tropes.

[barbaratp]

Minha cabeça não está tão boa quanto antigamente então posso estar confundindo as coisas mas acho que o Brasil se inclinou para o gótico uma época, mas como tínhamos nossa própria literatura com temáticas parecidas mas diferentes entre si acho que não emplacou muito por aqui. No entanto acho que tivemos um filme inspirado em uma obra gótica.

[cimorene]

That sounds cool and really interesting! I wouldn't be surprised if it flourished there too. Colonized countries arguably resonate even more than Europe and England with the themes of repression and inequality exacerbated by change/modernity, horror and monstrosity within humanity, and painful confrontations with the past embodied in places.

[barbaratp]

Fui verificar e realmente temos literatura gótica, mas por vezes nunca foi assim chamada na época. E nem aparecemos no artigo da Wikipedia sobre ficção gótica na América Latina,o que é triste porque Brasil faz parte dessa denominação tanto quanto qualquer país hispanohablante. Mas pelo que vi José de Alencar e Álvares de Azevedo são autores góticos. Nossa literatura de cordel, causos populares, contos folclóricos e até mesmo o cineasta Zé do Caixão são artes góticas. Temos muitas igrejas em arquitetura gótica no país. Na literatura, junto ao gótico anda lado a lado o realismo fantástico. Cim agora você me deu pano para manga, vou pesquisar de tudo um pouco sobre isso. Em breve deve sair até mesmo uma entrada muito longa e desconexa sobre minha empreitada louca na busca de informações sobre esse tema. Obrigada querida.

[cimorene]

That's so interesting and cool! I would love to hear more about it!

[barbaratp]

Pode deixar que quando fizer algo acerca disso lhe darei o link para poder ler u.u

[cimorene]

🧡! Thanks ☺️

[twistedchick]

I've made a variant on the English gingerbread loaf for years; the recipe is in the first Foxfire Book, which has old-time recipes brought over from Britain, and the only difference I make is to triple the spices, which are more easily available than in past centuries.

[cimorene]

Yes, I always think about how expensive warming spices were in the past when I'm using them for holiday baking! Gingerbread cookies are called 'pepper cakes' in Swedish because before regular people could afford ginger, they were made with black pepper!