Patron Saint of Falling Over Things

I am a little bit ahead in NaNo, huzzah! This is thanks to Steve telling an old man story about this boil he had one time in Poland. That bit is slated for destruction. Steve, you're a super soldier, you probably can't get boils. (He says "Firstly, I got a boil when other men were dying of septicaemia, so have a little respect, and secondly, it was more of a carbuncle.")

Old man stories. I love writing this fic! lilacsigil will be giving me major side-eye when she reads this, because she had to sit through three weeks of hair tearing and chest beating while I got to this point.

(Also, I'm rapidly approaching the part where I really need to know what happens and I really don't know what happens. Again. Every year. I cannot plan for shit, I really can't.)



I work out twice a week with a personal trainer, and we meet at the local netball courts to do this - lately there's been this super cute blue heeler coming to vist me. She's a chronic escape artist - it's a heeler thing - and she pops across the road to see what's going on, and she has this adorable wriggly dance of "HEY PEOPLE I LOVE YOU IF I APPROACH BUTT FIRST WILL YOU PAT IT?".

This morning, I was doing crunches on the mat, and I had my eyes closed because I was dying. I could hear my trainer giggling, which seemed unusually cruel of her, so I opened my eyes to find doggie standing over me, gazing adoringly into my face.

( There's a doggy under this cut, also some discussion of workout goals for this year )



The other thing I wanted to note down so I remember it (because it happened too fast for the phone) was on Tuesday. We were driving along the ridge of a gully, and there was a bird kerfuffle off to the left (my side, the passenger side.) When I looked left, I was eye to eye with an eagle, omg. It was flipping huge, flying through the gully, while magpies buzzed it. It's too late for chicks in the nest, so it must have had a go at the adults? Anyway, wedge tailed eagle, bloody enormous, flying like a boss with those amazing swoops they do, while two magpies about the size of its head chivvied it, fluttering over it and under it, and oh wow. It was like suddenly being in the middle of an aerial dog fight.

Eagle. Very big. (Sometimes they stoop on cars here and damage the roof with their talons.)



Recs:

The Deep End (8697 words) by emilyenrose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, Dubious Consent, Humor, Angst
Summary:

In this story: exquisitely tragic and beautiful Russian romance, James Bond shenanigans, designer drugs with highly specific effects, Steve Rogers’ overactive imagination, a swimming metaphor. Also: a villain has a secret sex room, some assassins join the mile high club, and Captain America punches a shark.

Spy shenanigans, and Natasha/Steve/Bucky, and it's all good.

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what you are asking fits with everything on my list (7356 words) by irnan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Crack
Summary:

Bucky's been trying to set Steve up since 1935. Natasha's been trying to set him up since 2012. What's more logical than that they should join forces?

Bucky would like Sam Wilson to know that that is not actually a dirty joke about him and Nat, thank you and fuck off. (Even though it kinda is.)

I must have been on a bit of a poly bender? This is also Natasha/Steve/Bucky, and also has an excellent villain

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A particle, a wave (1068 words) by kvikindi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Howard Stark
Additional Tags: Manhattan Project, References to Injury of a Child
Summary:

"My father helped defeat the Nazis. He worked on the Manhattan Project."

Short and very ouchy Howard POV.

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Hooked on a Feeling (2901 words) by fmo
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: mildly a crossover with X-Men, Fluff, get-together
Summary:

Some guy creates a machine that gives everybody in New York mutant powers. Bucky gets empathy, which initially makes him very cranky, but later enables him to figure some stuff out that he might not have figured out otherwise, and ultimately turns out to be the very best power of all.

X-Men fusion, which is always like candy for me - who gets what power? What do they do with it? This is short, not particularly angsty, and very neatly done.



And back to the carbuncle mine I go.

1. Tonight's X-Files was Hell Money, which I tend to skip in my constant rolling rewatch because it's kind of shitty. But we're keeping up with Monster of the Week which means no skipping. (Last week was Teso Dos Bichos, with the amazing fake kitties.) Anyway, this episode had surprise!Lucy Liu! And surprise!B. D. Wong! So the rewatch was definitely worth it.

2. This week is Freezer Food Week! (Which comes around whenever we've filled up the freezer.) It's a surprise with every meal. Except breakfast.Tonight was lasagna! And this weekend, I'm cooking a giant batch of curried sausages - lovely Nana food, especially when it's cold.

3. I had a really, really good swim on Tuesday, for the first time in five weeks. The Warrnambool pool has been so crowded, but they just opened the outdoor pool for early morning laps, and it seems to have eased the pressure on the mid-morning lap swimmers like me, yay. And they're filling the local outdoor pool now, so hopefully soon we'll be swimming laps closer to home.

4. The green zebra tomato seedlings are ready to go out in the main beds. The cherry tomatoes aren't far behind. I planted some Lebanese cucumbers, but most of them didn't come up, so I shoved in some cantaloupe seeds. And then some things came up but I'm not sure if they're cucumbers or cantaloupes. I guess we'll find out.

5. Crochet!

( Pics of crocheted things, mostly hats )

Sadly, as a result of all this handcraft, I have amped up the tenosynovitis in my right wrist, but I've got a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, and hopefully there will be a cortisone shot. Hopefully. Because I'm sad about rationing my crochet time.

This is really last night's happiness, but I had to get to bed so I could get up early for my work out. So, mid-morning happiness it is.

ETA: And it took me all day to write this entry, so now it's late afternoon happiness. Stay tuned, it may become evening happiness again after all.



1. My personal trainer day is now Thursday! I was going to have to ask her to switch days when summer starts, because our local pool will be open for laps on Friday morning, and since it's only open three days a week, I didn't want to miss one. But she actually texted me to change days, so it's all fitting together very neatly.

And speaking of which, the pool will be opening in a month! I don't like summer, but I do like having a pool so close that I can drive home in my bathers and shower in my own bathroom. That's extremely convenient.



2. I discovered the cats had clawed an opening in the mattress box, and have presumably been climbing inside and romping around. I guess I don't mind that so much - they've destroyed their share of upholstery, and that's just a part of having clawed creatures in our house - but I don't want to accidentally squash one when I lie on the bed. So, lilacsigil made a patch for it, and lay on the ground to stitch and tack it on and now the bed is kitty free. Also, I can now stop saying box gap. Because gross.


3. Isn't it cool how we still say 'glove box'? It always makes me think of a genteel time when we would put on our goggles and gloves to go motoring.



4. I think I'm still high from working out. I feel good. ETA: Not high anymore, but still feeling good.



5. HAT! This hat.

( Featuring lilacsigil's new career as a hat model )


Links:

- femslashex is taking nominations for a femslash exchange this year, here. Yay!


- lyssie has a round-up of comment fests here and about.


- Genine's desktop calendar is super cute this month: September.


- More Ladies Please, this amazing collection of fancasts for media that should exist but doesn't. This is the TV programming I want! How can I get these shows on my telly?


- Tumblrs I have found recently:
unimpressedbassethounds. You ridiculous, noble dogs.

fuckyeahwarriorwomen, mostly because of this post coming across my dash.

superseventies, could honestly have been shot inside my tiny house.

1. Helped my little sister with cooking adventures over the phone. When she was visiting in June, we did some baking and tried out some low-FODMAP recipes. She wanted to have a go on her own, and she did great! She made a great risotto, and a chocolate almond slice, and she's taking them both back to university. She can provision herself, yay!

Conversations we had: how to roast pine nuts, how to cut up pumpkin, how to chop spring onions. (Onions are generally out for low-FODMAP eaters, but the green parts of spring onions or leeks are okay for low-FODMAP, according to Monash's FODMAP app.)

These were the two recipes she made:

Gluten free, low FODMAP chocolate almond slice

Spinach, bacon and pinenut risotto, which she made without the garlic, and with only the green parts of spring onions.

2. Genine's August calender August calendar was a bit too dotty and busy for me to use on my desktop, but I found a nice alternative, with a cabbage moth, here. Moths! Seem to be a bit of a theme for me lately. Genine's calendars are normally a favourite, though - she uses a lot of handcarved stamps in her art, which I love.

3. My knee is, if not much better, definitely not worse. I'm moving around, and I'm hoping it will be okay for aqua aerobics tomorrow, even if I take it a bit slow. ( Cutting for body image talk )

4. I got my new crochet project started - it's a baby blanket, with a kind of a lacy structure. (It's here on Ravelry, if you're interested: Ocean Tranquility afghan.) It's the first time I've worked with something that wasn't acrylic or wool-acrylic blend, and it's a bit tricky. Definitely less grippy, if you know what I mean. I'm also not sure the colour is right for a baby's blanket - I'm using Claudia and Co's Cotton Ball in Whirled Peas, a variegated green which turned out to be a lot more olive than mint. But I'm pushing on - I got the first six rows done and it's certainly eye-catching.

My personal trainer noticed I walk on the sides of my feet, so she spoke to my physio, and my physio looked at my ankles and sent me to a podiatrist, and the podiatrist said "!"

I am so pronated, man. In bare feet, my ankle bones nearly touch the ground when I walk. I have been fitted for orthotics - fun with water activated chemical socks! - which will hopefully roll my feet back and give me some arch support. And from there, hopefully, there will be less hip and back pain when I walk, I will be more comfortable walking, and my knees will be a little bit healthier. Every little bit counts.

[redacted: big whiny paragraph on how this should have been detected when I was a tiny kid who walked like a duck]

Finished the Hunger Games trilogy! It was so good! And yeah, I see how the third book was problematic, but maybe some of that was offset by inhaling all three books in a week, because I am so in love with this world. This was some good world building, and some seriously smart plotting. I'm not going to be able to see the movie while it's in cinemas - I've heard it's very hand-held, and that's no good for lilacsigil, even if I could convince her to go to see something dystopian. But I really want to see it! I heard that Cinna is awesome - he was pretty damn awesome in the books.

And I've jumped from there to the Montmaray books. You know that feeling when you click with the voice of a book within a few pages? I have totally got that going on now. Sophie is lovely so far.

Hey, I might do a meme. What meme should I do? The mini fanmix one where you give me a character and I give you some songs? The timestamp one where you pick one of my fics and give me a time and I tell you what happened after or before or whatever? Another one I can't think of right now?

I can't believe my family had a discussion over the dinner table about the pronunciation of 'meme' on Easter Sunday. I very much felt as though the streams were crossing. I blame Facebook. (My little sister says "meh-meh"!)