reunions and cooking and fic

[ciroccoj]

Party time yesterday, and Oh How I Adore My Dishwasher. Because otherwise having ten people over for dinner would be a little frightening.

As it was we had a lovely potluck time, tidied a little afterwards, loaded the dishwasher twice, and now have a lovely home again and enough leftovers to keep us from needing to cook for a week or so.

Nice time, too. It was like a mini-high school reunion, but not. I have two friends from high school that I still keep in touch with, and one of them ran into another friend from our high school days whom she hadn't seen since high school. Turned out she was still in touch with yet another friend. So we decided to get together, all five of us plus spouses and children, and it was really nice. And, oddly, I think we may have only spent about ten minutes total catching up on "whatever happened to so-and-so?" and that kind of thing. There was plenty of other stuff to talk about, what with careers and marriages and moves and children and pregnancies (two of the guests were currently pregnant) hobbies and all that. And the food was amazing :)

I don't know where I thought I'd be at age 34 fifteen years ago, but I'm glad to be where I am right now. It's a rare and precious thing, the abilitity to look at your life and feel like it's a good place to live.

***
Speaking of good places to be, Justin went to cooking class yesterday, after ballet. Needless to say, he was thrilled, very proud of himself, one of the best behaved kids there even though he was also one of the youngest, and one of only two boys.

That's my boy, the girl. The big girl, who can beat up anyone who mocks him/her, and cook their remains and eat them at one sitting.




***
Query for scarf-knitters: when you are writing a story sequentially and you run into a scene that you just can't seem to figure out, what do you do to get yourself going again? Do you skip it and then come back? Stubbornly slog through? What? Because I'm currently quite stuck.

OTOH, being quite stuck in my scarf story is proving beneficial to my quilting story, in that I'm actually quilting again. Although I've got a scene in my quilt (a square, if you will) that's also stubbornly refusing to cooperate. I've built up a suspicious, cautious tone to a social interaction, and I know I want to end the scene with a rather more relaxed, trusting atmosphere. But my characters are having too much fun glaring at each other. They refuse to chill out. Currently I've got

Character 1: snark
Character 2: bark
Character 1: bat
Character 2: snip
Character 1: snarl
Character 2: growl
[insert miracle here]
Character 1: smile
Character 2: nod
Character 1: chirp
Character 2: myurp

... and the [miracle] just ain't happenin.

::sigh::

***
Today's fic quotes, and don't ask me which fic these came from, 'cause I don't remember. Sorry Sarah ;)

"Tattooing your followers, what a ridiculous thing to do. And really, a skull and a snake? You might as well make it a huge red heart with 'I love Mum and the Dark Lord' in a banner across it. My father has always been mortified by his."

Harry stared at Malfoy and gave a short, incredulous laugh.

Draco frowned. "What?"

"Mother of God. Trust the bloody Malfoys to hate the Dark Mark because it's tacky."

and

"You can't be the good Auror and the bad Auror at the same time, Weasley. You should have delegated one or the other to your minions."

Kingsley looked, Remus thought, rather amused at being called a minion. If Remus knew Kingsley, he was probably tempted to have it put on his business cards.

Comments

[bear.livejournal.com]

... and the [miracle] just ain't happenin.

That's because [miracle] needs to be replaced with [shoving-leading-to-snogging-and-grinding-up-against-the-wall-until-Potter-is-totally-ravished].

Voila! Angst healed by the magical powers of Draco's cock. :)

[umbo.livejournal.com]

I'm having a bit of a hard time with being stuck at a certain point right now, actually--and I do tend to be mostly a scarf-knitter, although sometimes I will start with a quilt piece and then realize I have to go back and start earlier or add more in between or whatever. It's not easy. It feels like it used to be easier, that I'd just pick an idea and run with it and not second-guess myself as much, but I dunno. Usually I have a picture in my head, somewhat cinematic, of what's going to happen, and until I can figure out how to get from A to C in my head, I can't write more than A. I need the B, man!

Hmm, what helps? Doing research on a different aspect of the story, going back and editing what I've already got, finding music that somehow works as inspiration, watching the source text again if I've got it, trying to write past it with whatever I can cobble together, all that sometimes helps. But sometimes it just takes a persistant waiting and working at the problem both consciously and at the edges of things, waiting for inspiration to strike.

[jenniferjames.livejournal.com]

Love *love* the last pic, Jim. He's so cute with his little hat on and he's just tall enough to look over the range. Looks like you've got an Iron Chef in the making! =)

[jessebee.livejournal.com]

Trust the bloody Malfoys to hate the Dark Mark because it's tacky

::howls with laughter:: Thanks, Jim, I needed that. :-)